Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 469

Erin Reed, LA Blade, and Cass Review: Does republication of SPS in a non SPS publication remove SPS?

Context: @Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist added a critical source to Cass Review by Erin Reed. The source was originally posted on Erin Reed's blog. (削除) It appears lightly editted, (削除ここまで) but is essentially reposted on LA Blade site. @Void if removed deleted the edits claiming WP:BLPSPS. [1]

Two questions: 1) Is LA Blade a reliable publisher? 2) Does reposting the story indicate republishing? Is the story still SPS? Bluethricecreamman (talk) 01:24, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Interesting situation. Generally, coverage of an SPS article in a non-SPS news source is perfectly fine to use so long as the latter source is used as the reference. Not sure how that works for republication in a non-SPS source though. I would think you'd just ignore the SPS version at that point and only consider the republication on its own merits and the news source it was made in. As for the LA Blade, it seems like a fine reliable source, just with an LGBT subject focus? No prior discussions on RSN that I can see. It's a subsidiary of the Washington Blade , which is a rather respected newspaper. Silver seren ^C 01:34, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

If it has been republished and "lightly edited" it's no longer an SPS as long as the edited version is used. Simonm223 (talk) 13:18, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

It wasn't "lightly edited", and I think @Bluethricecreamman should strike that from the top comment to prevent further confusion on this point. Here's a link to a diff between the LA Blade post and the original archived version, and it can be seen the supposed copyedits (name mispelled, lead->led) were actually errors in the original post that LA Blade has retained verbatim. It is the substack which was subsequently corrected. Void if removed (talk) 13:31, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

As I said there - this is a source that is simply padding its inhouse content by reposting content from other sources and in those situations is little more than news aggregation.

Rhode Island Current

https://www.losangelesblade.com/2024/06/19/survey-ranks-rhode-island-first-in-nation-on-lgbtq-safety/

Media Matters:

https://www.losangelesblade.com/2022/05/20/daily-wires-walsh-using-a-trans-mans-shirtless-photo-without-permission/

Alabama Reflector:

https://www.losangelesblade.com/2024/06/19/attorneys-in-alabama-trans-medical-case-turn-over-document/

WeHo Times:

https://www.losangelesblade.com/2024/06/19/weho-is-co-sponsoring-1st-ever-inglewood-pride-festival-june-22/

In each case, LA Blade is not the source. LA Blade confers no reliability upon Media Matters or Alabama Current, nor vice versa - they're just taking their content and reposting it. Void if removed (talk) 04:20, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

When it reposts content from Media Matters, the "real" source is Media Matters. When it reposts from Substack, the "real" source is substack.

Trivially reposting an SPS doesn't make it non SPS, and the fact that this happens just makes this source not a reliable one. Void if removed (talk) 04:21, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

A reliable publishing outfit republishing an article by definition makes the article non-SPS. Because it is no longer self-published, but has been picked up by a publishing group. If the New York Times decided to republish an article by someone (with their permission of course) that was originally on their blog or somewhere else personal to them, of course it would count as a reliable non-SPS published article. Silver seren ^C 04:46, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Does WP:MEDIAMATTERS apply when this source simply reposts MM? Void if removed (talk) 04:53, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

The NYT doesn't verbatim repost hundreds of articles from other sources in an. aggregate news feed, and if it did we would be having the same discussion, ie whether the NYT's reliability was conferred to those sources.

See Yahoo news for a comparable source, where in house content is reliable but syndicated content must be evaluated as the original source. Void if removed (talk) 05:05, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

a news aggregator like Yahoo News openly acts as an algorithmic news aggregator, and reposts hundreds of stories algorithmically.

LA Blade has editors, and it appears they do slight edits and revisions (see the diff). an editor separate from the writer did choose to republish the content. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 05:22, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, this appears to be fundamentally different from a news aggregator. This is republication news done properly, where it's having a writer's work be redone for a real news outlet. Silver seren ^C 05:37, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Isn't it most similar to when a journalist sells their article to multiple newspapers. Not sure what we would usually do in that situation in terms of reliability but that's the best comparison in my mind. LunaHasArrived (talk) 09:14, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

No, they just posted the original version, without even checking the spelling of Hilary/Hillary.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240420010815/https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/dr-cass-backpedals-from-review-hrt

It is Reed who subsequently corrected the substack.

So this is another mark against LA Blade - they didn't even do basic due diligence on spelling. Void if removed (talk) 06:54, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

This looks like a legitimate removal to me. LAB is a generally reliable site and in general I do agree that if a source runs an article by a reporter who originally published it on Substack that doesn't mean LAB didn't apply editorial control. However that does assume this isn't published by LAB as an outside editorial etc. Seeing it published by so many sources somewhat undermines the idea that this is actually editted by LAB vs just republished. That isn't the strong reason for rejection in my view. The stronger reason is how the source was being used. In article it was being used to say "critics said" and it was implying BLP concerns about Dr Cass. Is the author of the substack a noteworthy critic? Is the author a sufficient "expert" to be used to question a medical expert and/or that expert's report? I might consider myself very knowledgeable about automobiles but that doesn't mean any substact rant of mine is "expert criticism of Tesla". One final comment, yeah, if LAB didn't bother to do basic edit checks like checking the spelling of names etc I would say that is a strike against LAB as a RS and further suggests this shouldn't be used. Springee (talk) 12:14, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

For the record, I wasn't the one who added Reed's piece from the LA Blade, that was another editor later.

Apart from that, the LA Blade is definitely a RS, and editing/publishing Reed's work means it is not self-published and should be treated like any other LA Blade article. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ A (talk) 05:37, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

I can't even see an About page on the LA Blade website so they give no details of who they are, their funding, political stance, etc. Zeno27 (talk) 09:29, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

they are an offbranch of washington blade and shares staff with wa blade. [2].

in general wa blade does similar reposts. [3] Bluethricecreamman (talk) 14:14, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

There's clearly a connection between the two but that page says nothing about the relationship between them, their editorial policies, their independence, etc. Zeno27 (talk) 16:06, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

It seems this hinges on whether LA Blade is applying full editorial controls to the piece, or whether they are mechanically republishing it in the manner of a content aggregator. The fact that the piece is reproduced verbatim, including typos, is suggestive that either editorial controls were waived, or those controls were weak-to-non-existent in the first place. I don’t think this is exactly equivalent to the way Yahoo News operates, but that seems a closer analogue than a regular news publishing process. I don’t think such a mechanism should be used to launder an unreliable source into a reliable one.

As to whether the original blog post is reliable... it seems to have been published shortly after the publication of the full Cass Review, and repeats or amplifies (or possibly even originates) some of the misinformation that was circulating at the time, for example regarding large bodies of evidence being "disregarded"[4]. This could be viewed as a problematic for the reliability of LA Blade if they let this sort of thing through without fact checking.

In short, this is not a source that belongs anywhere near our article. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 13:05, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

I cannot speak to the LA Blade's general reliability. However, I don't know that the question here is really whether the LA Blade is generally a reliable publisher, but whether this article in the LA Blade is a reliable source for the specific content sourced to it (WP:RSCONTEXT). Having looked at a diff showing the WP content sourced to Reed/LA Blade, I think the answer to that is yes. Re: question (2), I again think that the specifics will determine whether an SPS remains an SPS when republished by a non-SPS. Some possibilities:

• Is it analogous to Yahoo news, which reposts news algorithmically? (I'd say no; the LA Blade's choices about reposting strike me as clearly curated.)
• Is it a mirrored site? (The LA Blade certainly isn't mirroring Reed's Substack as a whole, and I'm not inclined to see it as a mirror of this specific article, given that the LA Blade sought out / obtained permission to republish it. Seems to me that mirroring isn't curated.)
• Is the republisher simply hosting the original content? (I'd say no, as it was republished with permission, whereas hosting doesn't have to seek permission; by its nature, hosting has the permission of the person(s) using the site as a host.)
• Is it analogous to someone self-publishing a novel and then having a second edition published by an established publishing house, or to someone self-publishing a blog and then selling an entry as an article to one or more newspapers as a freelancer? (The latter is more analogous, and my answer is probably yes. The LA Blade sought permission to republish it. It's republished in a couple of other places, but a freelancer can grant simultaneous publishing rights. On the other hand, I don't know that she sold rights to any of these publishers.)
• Was any editorial review used in the republishing? (This is mixed; on the one hand, typos weren't corrected, and on the other hand, I doubt that the LA Blade would have republished it without an editor first judging it to be a worthwhile article.)

So on the whole, I'm inclined to treat this particular article in the LA Blade as a non-self-published source. FactOrOpinion (talk) 16:46, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

(The LA Blade certainly isn't mirroring Reed's Substack as a whole, and I'm not inclined to see it as a mirror of this specific article, given that the LA Blade sought out / obtained permission to republish it. Seems to me that mirroring isn't curated.)

The LA Blade search is awful, but from a quick scan they seemed to be mirroring every post from Erin's blog until June 17th.

Scanning down the archive at https://www.erininthemorning.com/archive from June 17th and comparing to https://www.losangelesblade.com/?s=%22Erin+in+the+morning%22

By eyeballing it I got about 15 in a row before the random ordering of the LA Blade search made it impossible to keep track, but there's many dozens more, and some of the others appeared out of order further down the search. It is definitely not just this one article, and I'd say it is more like a syndication arrangement, especially given the number of other reposted titles on LA Blade. Void if removed (talk) 17:17, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

If it were mirroring her Substack as a whole, it would include all of her columns, all of the comments on her columns, her home page, her About page, and her Archive page. It's very clearly not mirroring her Substack as a whole. Having looked more closely at the article on Reed's Substack, the LA Blade's vertion isn't even mirroring this one column, since the page on her site contains additional content (e.g., comments) that doesn't appear in the LA Blade version. Mirroring has a specific meaning. FactOrOpinion (talk) 18:19, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

When we talk about sites that mirror Wikipedia articles, we don't demand it include all the category tags and side bars or else it isn't proper mirroring. But I'm just trying to find a term for what this is. It's not like when, say, an essay that started as a blog post gets rewritten and republished as a long form piece in a lifestyle magazine. It's a shallower process.

What we have here is something like a curated news aggregator, taking hundreds of posts from dozens of other sources and sharing them. It doesn't confer additional reliability or political neutrality to media matters when it posts them. It doesn't convert an opinion source into non opinion. In all cases, for this directly reshared content, it's the underlying source we have to look at to assess it's reliability. What if we deprecated the Alabama Reflector for some reason - would we be expected to close our eyes and pretend not to notice if someone tried to cite them reposted on the LA Blade?

Can you imagine using this trivially reposted content to get two bites at the apple when sourcing contentious material? You couldn't point at a reposted article *and* it's underlying source and argue this was two separate sources.

In every sensible instance, you wouldn't cite this reposted copy, you'd cite the original source. It's there, linked in every post, why would you not? I can think of no reason not to, other than if the underlying source was disallowed by policy (OPINION, DEPRECATED, BLPSPS), and this process offered enough of a figleaf to get around that, and that should be concerning. Void if removed (talk) 20:40, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

The question is whether the republication of this column confers non-SPS status. No one is proposing "two bites at the apple." I see the situation as somewhat analogous to the first question you answered here, where you suggested that it's possible for the same text to be SPS in its original but non-SPS when republished elsewhere. (You weren't certain whether the original was SPS as you weren't familiar with it. You never clarified whether you consider material published by the US Department of Justice to be self-published, but based on your comments elsewhere, my impression is that you do.) I disagree with "In every sensible instance, you wouldn't cite this reposted copy, you'd cite the original source." Why? In large part because of the BLPSPS policy. If you want to use something as a source for content about a living person, you'd have no choice but to cite the non-SPS republication rather than the original. I accept that you don't consider the LA Blade's republication to constitute a non-SPS. FactOrOpinion (talk) 21:17, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

If another source publishes then it is no longer WP:BLPSPS, and the specific usage and the source doing the republishing have to be assessed on their own merits which might nonetheless lead to exclusion. Self-publication does not inherently mean non-reliability, even if most cases it does (hence the strict BLPSPS bar) so upon republication (i.e. endorsement by an RS), we have to go to the merits. -- Patar knight - ^chat /_{contributions} 20:39, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

I added the LA Blade link. It seemed to me to be a clearly valid source, and I added it after VIR complained about a different source being used. I don't think the LA Blade would republish without any editorial oversight—they'd be as liable as Erin Reed if they got sued—so it seems the basis of the argument is "I don't believe it's been [properly?] edited", which is clearly an opinion and trying to prove it requires WP:OR. Typos are easy enough to explain, and their existence doesn't also imply fact checks weren't done. The two things aren't the same. "Lead"/"led" is a common thing for editors to miss, for example.

In the simplest terms: it's no longer an WP:SPS, so WP:BLPSPS doesn't apply. A few typos are not a smoking gun for lack of editorial oversight, either. Lewisguile (talk) 22:38, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

I'd been meaning to ask RSN about this for some time. Bluethricecreamman noted above that the LA Blade was republishing Reed's work, but they aren't the only RS to do so. In addition to the LA Blade, America's oldest gay newspaper The Advocate also routinely republishes her substack[5], and her work has been reposted by the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention.[6] Reed has won journalism awards from the National LGBT Journalist Association and GLAAD.[7] [8]

I think her substack should generally be considered an SPS, but when reposted by the LA Blade, Advocate, or Lemkin Institute should be considered published/reliable. Especially if, as Bluethricecreamman, they are edited prior to republication. Would like to hear others thoughts on that. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ A (talk) 05:30, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

It's definitely becoming a more common thing, particularly with so many well known and respected journalists writing news on Substack now and also publishing those same stories in actual news outlets. Feels like a new method of journalism that needs to be considered, just as the change to website based publications and not solely print media was once upon a time. Silver seren ^C 05:39, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

There clearly is some editing being done (see diff), indicating oversight. I guess philosophical question is if editorial control during drafting is necessary to not be SPS, or the work is selected because it is so good that editorial control would not improve it.

I personally believe the choice to republish indicate that a publisher considers the work exemplary enough to elevate beyond just SPS, by definition, if the publisher is known to have an editorial team. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 05:43, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes, of course. Consider:

• Sal Scientist self-publishes a WP:PREPRINT online. It later goes through peer review and appears in the Journal of Important Things. Of course it's not self-published any longer. Nobody expects you to track down whether the article first appeared as a self-published pre-print.
• Alice Author self-publishes a novel. It sells so well that Big Famous Publisher offers to produce and market a second edition. Of course it's not self-published any longer. Nobody expects you to look at the name of a Big Five publisher on the copyright page and think "Oh, maybe it says Penguin Random House here, but I shouldn't trust what the source says, and should make sure that the author never self-published it before this reputable publisher picked it up."

But online you need to watch out for something that might be better described as "mirroring" or maybe "hosting". Yahoo! News and Apple News aren't really publishers. They're just pass-through websites for the actual publishers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:06, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

I'll repeat my question here then.

Does WP:MEDIAMATTERS apply to this: https://www.losangelesblade.com/2022/05/20/daily-wires-walsh-using-a-trans-mans-shirtless-photo-without-permission/

Because this looks like simple pass through reposting to me. Void if removed (talk) 06:16, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

No, the source is the LA Blade. Loki (talk) 06:23, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Meanwhile this is really the BBC.

https://www.lemkininstitute.com/single-post/time-has-come-for-reparations-dialogue-commonwealth-heads-agree

We can all see what the real source is, we can't be expected to pretend otherwise. I think that if you tried to cite either of these, it would be sensible to just cite the original story, from the original source.

The only reason I could see not to in these cases is if the aim is to circumvent policy or existing consensus that would apply to the original source. Void if removed (talk) 06:46, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

If publisher A publishes a story from author B, then it's just general Wikipedia policy to say that the publisher is the source. We don't say that every NYT story is sourced to the byline, we say they're NYT stories and reliable because they're in the NYT.

So, for instance, this is very clearly a BBC story. It's published by the BBC. Loki (talk) 07:13, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

There's a big distinction to be made between an organization that aggregates news articles relevant to its cause [9] and a new organization publishing work by a freelancer. The former is not doing any editorial oversight besides the aggregation, whereas the latter is providing its imprimatur of reliability to what it publishes. -- Patar knight - ^chat /_{contributions} 20:44, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

The key here is that the article was edited by subsequent publishers. If the article were not edited then I'd say it remains SPS. However having gone through even "light" editorial controls the article is no longer self-published. Simonm223 (talk) 13:21, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

The key here is that the article was edited by subsequent publishers

As I've made clear in this thread multiple times, it was not. It was posted verbatim, complete with errors, and the substack was corrected afterwards, while the mirrored copy never has. Void if removed (talk) 13:26, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

The editing process includes acceptance/legal/compliance/etc. It's not just spellchecking. Typos do not mean the other stuff didn't happen. Lewisguile (talk) 23:00, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

As I said upthread you're wrong about the editing.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240420010815/https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/dr-cass-backpedals-from-review-hrt

They just posted it complete with the original misspellings, which Reed later corrected on Substack.

They didn't even check the spelling of the name of the subject, and they never corrected it. This is junk. Void if removed (talk) 07:00, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

For Wikipedia purposes, it doesn't matter whether or not the publisher actually did any editing (except maybe for their own future reliability, not that you're going to seriously harm that with spelling mistakes). The point is that they're putting their name and their reputation on it. Loki (talk) 07:15, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

For discussion purposes, both YFNS and Bluethriceman have claimed that this was edited before publication, based on a misreading of the order of events. That needs to be clear.

When it comes to reliability, a source mirroring a blog without even checking that the name of the person it is about is actually correct is a red flag for that source's reliability.

The fact that the mirrored blogposts themselves also contains outright misinformation is also a red flag. For example here:

the review dismissed over 100 studies

This is completely false. Multiple activists and groups wrongly made this claim and had to retract it. Erin Reed is one of those who spread - and continues to spread - this misinformation.

LA Blade seem to have two different kinds of article on their site - in house content and mirrored content.

Their in-house content may be reliable, but their mirrored content is just that - a mirror. You're asking that we disengage our common sense and pretend we don't know that a source is "really" Media Matters or a blog, simply because it is appearing in a branded content feed, and pretend that confers some new status on it. We wouldn't do that with an RS mirroring wikipedia content, because we can engage our faculties and see this is straightforward mirroring.

From digging around, it is hard to tell because their search seems quite broken, but it seems stories tagged as "Special to LA Blade" were, until 7 months ago, largely mirrored content.

If you scroll down this list, they are all in house, until you get to this from 7 months ago which is from "Rhode Island Current".

From that point on, the majority are mirrored content from a variety of sources - Media Matters, WeHo Times, Florida Phoenix, Alabama Reflector and so on. None of these change their reliability simply by being mirrored on another site - we can all verify what the actual source is. If an WP:OPINION source was mirrored by LA Blade without being tagged as opinion, the original source would still be opinion, it wouldn't magically become reliable for facts.

This search brings all the mirrored content up. There's hundreds, stretching back years.

Mixed in with this, it also seems to include every substack post made by Erin Reed during that period, but none since.

So, whether LA Blade's own content is reliable or not, they were (for a time at least) mirroring a large amount of content from other sources, and mixed in with that mirroring Erin Reed's error-strewn blogposts containing outright misinformation, but seem to have stopped about 7 months ago.

I think we need to distinguish clearly between the two kinds of article, similar to the difference between in-house news alongside syndicated newsfeeds, where what we do is judge feed content case by case based on the originating source. Void if removed (talk) 09:25, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

That "misinformation" from "activists" is appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine? From synopsis: "Improperly excluded non-English articles ... and other articles not identified by its simplistic search strategy". Or does that not add up to over 100 studies? VintageVernacular (talk) 06:31, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

@VintageVernacular

We are talking about two superficially similar but very different claims, both incorrect or misleading for different reasons. The first is that the York team excluded almost all of the studies they found, your new one is that the search employed didn't find enough studies. I'll explain the first then deal with your new one:

In April 2024, a badly worded press release announcing the final report of the Cass review described two of the systematic reviews that accompanied its publication, saying:

• Of the 50 studies included in the review looking at the effectiveness of puberty blockers for gender questioning teens, only one was of high quality
• of the 53 studies included in the review on the use of masculinising and feminising hormones, only 1 was of sufficiently high quality

Without actually looking at what the systematic reviews said, activists Like Erin Reed, Alajandro Carabello, Transactual and many more seized on the "sufficiently" in the second quote, put 1 and 1 together and came up with "over 100 papers were excluded/dismissed/disregarded" or "98% of the evidence was ignored".

2 seconds of actually looking at the reviews shows that both high and moderate evidence was included, and they each only excluded 19 and 24 studies from synthesis as poor quality. In neither case is this 100, or the majority, or anything other than good and standard practice with a systematic review trying to avoid being biased by poor quality studies.

Erin Reed said the review dismissed over 100 studies on the efficacy of transgender care as not suitably high quality which is exactly this nonsense claim, and it has been reposted by the LA Blade, with no correction or acknowledgment, ever. Reed repeated it multiple times in various forms and has never walked it back.

Activist group Transactual included it in a briefing ("Out of 102 studies into puberty blockers and hormones, only 2 were included by the Cass Review team"), and stealth-edited it out when it was revealed to be nonsense, without ever acknowledging it. MP Dawn Butler - after being wrongly briefed on this by Stonewall - repeated it in the House of Commons and had to apologise afterwards, because it is nonsense on stilts.

Now, your new, similar sounding claim is something different which arose months later.

The origin of this is with a white paper from the Integrity Project at Yale Law School, created by Meredithe McNamara and Ann Allsott. McNamara is an expert witness in several of the contentious legal cases in the US where right-wing legislatures are trying ban paediatric transition, eg. Boe vs Marshall, and her testimony is that the evidence to support it is strong. After the Cass Review was published, the AG in Alabama moved to have her expert testimony struck because it was so contrary to this newly available assessment that the evidence base was in fact poor.

On July 1st 2024, McNamara and co-authors published a white paper criticising the Cass Review, and the same day McNamara submitted it attached to an affadavit in Boe vs Marshall saying why the Cass Review was bad and no-one should pay any attention to it.

If one was so minded, one could argue this isn't exactly an independent critique.

One of the (many) specious claims in that document is the one you bring up, which is that the York systematic reviews - as that NEJM perspective piece puts it - improperly excluded non-English articles, "gray literature" (non–peer-reviewed articles and documents), and other articles not identified by its simplistic search strategy.

• I'm not aware of any non-English papers that were excluded, nor are any identified in either of these sources. As complaints go, this is an empty one. Its been 9 months, surely someone would have named one by now, no?
• If you think that unpublished theses, buried negative studies, commentaries and preprints are enough to completely change the outcome of a systematic review from "shockingly poor" to "unquestionably good", I have a bridge to sell you. Grey literature is by no means a standard inclusion in a systematic review, and one justification when it is is to address "unpublication" bias, ie those inconvenient negative results that don't make it into print.
• The white paper in fact identifies no improperly excluded papers, merely complaining that one study released after the date cutoff was excluded.
• By "simplistic" what the NEJM perspective authors actually mean (and are clearly misunderstanding) is that the York team employed a single search strategy that supported all of the reviews - that is they did a very broad search for all papers on anything related to gender care, then filtered those papers into each subject-area review (blockers, hormones, social transition etc). The Yale white paper says The York team used a single search strategy for all SRs, which likely excluded many relevant studies in each of the specific areas but despite claiming it is "likely" they don't identify any.

This is chaff from a non peer-reviewed source, trying to poke holes in the most comprehensive systematic reviews of this field ever undertaken, one that completely concurs with previous and subsequent reviews. For all the hyperbole, the York reviews aren't outliers, they are absolutely mainstream.

Now, this new article you're citing from the NEJM is a law & policy "perspective" piece, and thus opinion, merely repeating (and citing) the claim which originates in that white paper 6 months prior, and if it was peer-reviewed I don't think it reflects well on NEJM for publishing it frankly. For example, in the body it goes on to say:

Embracing RCTs as the standard, it finds only 2 of 51 puberty-blocker and 1 of 53 hormone studies to be high-quality.

But of course the York reviews did not "embrace RCTs as the standard" - they found one cohort and one cross-sectional study to be high quality. This perspective piece is wrong both in number and in kind, and somehow neglects to mention the inclusion of moderate quality evidence. These are not a small details - the entire thrust of that opinion piece is that RCTs are too high a standard, which falls apart because that is not the standard that was applied.

That of course is just my interpretation as a lowly editor - but in terms of policy, it is RSOPINION and acceptable only with attribution if due, and absolutely nowhere near a top-of-the-pyramid MEDRS like the York reviews in terms of making wikivoice claims of fact on a biomedical subject. Void if removed (talk) 16:24, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

In re "I'm not aware of any non-English papers that were excluded, nor are any identified in either of these sources": I believe that a website (non-peer-reviewed, but perhaps scholarly-ish in intention) recently said that they didn't limit their search to English-language papers and found exactly one non-English (Spanish language) paper on the subject. There was no indication that including/excluding it would have changed the results.

I would not be surprised if this will change scholarly practices to explicitly identify how few non-English papers exist: "We limited our search to English papers. To be sure that this was a reasonable limitation, we checked again without this limitation, and found (zero, one, two) non-English studies that could have been included. We therefore conclude that restricting it to English sources had no effect on the net outcome..." WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:40, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

I think it does matter if the republisher didn't do anything. If they republished errors then it suggests the republisher has poor editorial oversite. Using the example above, if a RSN discussion regarding LAB came up again I would argue this counts against it as it doesn't appear to excersize editorial oversite of the material it publishes. It might claim it does (and might as they aren't required to publish anything by a particular author) but if they don't bother to catch things or update with the substack then it does appear they passed an article through rather than actually checked it before republishing. If ABC News republished and AP article we don't view ABC News as the publisher, we view AP as the publisher and editor in control. If LAB is going to pass the article through without correcting errors then we have to assume a similar relationship where they are leaving editorial oversite to the Substack publisher. At least in the case of an AP pass through, that relationship is clear. In this case it isn't clear who is excersizing editorial control thus I suggest this might be an example of LAB not using editorial control and publishing based on bias rather than proven facts in the Substack (again a negative about LAB). That doesn't mean I would say avoid using LAB in general. As a "use with caution" source they would be great for expressing the views/opinions of LGBTQ+ thought leaders with respect to some topic/law/etc. However, it means we should be very cautious when the source is used to support a negative BLP claim or contentious factual claims/analysis. Springee (talk) 12:24, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Adding a specific example - this Lemkin post is not clearly marked as WP:OPINION - but the source it is mirroring is.

So is the above link reliable for facts, or not?

It obviously isn't, because its an opinion source that's been mirrored, but we can only know this by evaluating the original source. If you take at face value a trivially mirrored source is "published" by someone else, then it is suddenly reliable for facts, which is nonsensical. Void if removed (talk) 13:22, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

I've changed my mind on the Lemkin piece, which I'm happy to leave out. The LA Blade is another matter. Lemkin, it seems, does just repost stuff and they're open about that. There's no indication the LA Blade is doing the same thing. Lewisguile (talk) 23:02, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

• Reliability is always dependent on context. Isn't this similar to how we treat material in Forbes? We treat content produced by Forbes staff as generally reliable, but content from Forbes contributors as self-published. Merely appearing in an otherwise reliable source does not make self-published content reliable. - Donald Albury 17:14, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

  Forbes contributors' articles are considered SPS because they're added by the contributors themselves without review. There's no evidence that Reed uploaded this article herself rather than a member of the LA Blade's staff reading the article and thinking it would be good to publish. I don't see evidence that the LA Blade has anything equivalent to Forbes contributors (which Forbes describes here as "our 2,400-plus network of contributors—Ph.D. economists, bestselling authors, hotshot gamers—who bring expertise to hundreds of topics. On any given day, some 300 contributor pieces shoot across our digital channels"), and where its contributor articles are identified with "Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own." FactOrOpinion (talk) 18:30, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

• Last time I checked our definition of Wikipedia:Reliable sources included the "piece of work itself" and the "creator of the work". The piece of work cited is internet conspiracy b****t based on twitter gossip. The creator of the work doesn't even know how to spell the name of the author of the Cass review, and was one of the main sources for the most significant disinformation about this review, that it "dismissed over 100 studies". A fact that they and losangelesblade seem uninterested in correcting, despite being widely demonstrated as false (something you can confirm with a most basic level of reading and comprehension ability). MEDRS are attacked by peddlers of disinformation and internet conspiracy theories and this is all apparently just fine because losangelesblade has washed the sins away by, as Void clearly demonstrates, republishing all their work unedited on the basis that the facts are inconvenient to The Cause.

What really is the point of Wikipedia, if the very worst sources can get cleansed simply because losangelesblade is doing what it seems all US politics is doing, which is that facts and integrity are entirely unimportant any more, and if the story fits the activist agenda it gets published. Our guideline says "Signals that a news organization engages in fact-checking and has a reputation for accuracy are the publication of corrections and disclosures of conflicts of interest." Clearly losangelesblade and erin's substack fail that.

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, where fact checking and integrity are essential, otherwise why bother? But is also a community project. And sadly here I see a community who also don't seem to care about facts or correcting mistakes. Void has carefully pointed out that the substack was not "lightly edited" but in fact reprinted verbatim with the glaring face-palm-level mistakes retained. And both YFNS and Bluethriceman have not amended/struck their comments in light of this.

I do despair really. Erin gets their activist substack reprinted in an online mag that clearly performs no editorial function whatsoever, not even bothering to check if the subject of the piece, Dr Hilary Cass, has their name spelled correctly, never mind any, you know, actual claims or facts. And suddenly editors now proclaim every single word of that is a reliable source. That's a clever trick if you can pull it off. -- Colin°^Talk 18:28, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, but suddenly editors now proclaim every single word of that is a reliable source simply isn't true. For example, I said "the question here isn't really whether the LA Blade is generally a reliable publisher, but whether this article in the LA Blade "is a reliable source for the specific content sourced to it" (WP:RSCONTEXT). Having looked at a diff showing the WP content sourced to Reed/LA Blade, I think the answer to that is yes." We're not even discussing the Reed article that you quoted. Please don't describe your fellow editors as doing something they haven't done. FactOrOpinion (talk) 18:51, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

If what Colin says is true then we really should ask if LAB can be generally reliable. If true I would argue they would at best be a use with caution source and this Substack/LAB article would be a clear not reliable source. Springee (talk) 19:32, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't think that Colin has provided evidence of Reed's columns being unreliable. He quotes "dismissed over 100 studies" and says that this was "widely demonstrated as false." I think that's a mistaken interpretation. First, if you read the entire sentence, it says "To justify these recommendations, the review dismissed over 100 studies on the efficacy of transgender care as not suitably high quality, applying standards that are unattainable and not required of most other pediatric medicine." Reed linked the phrase "dismissed over 100 studies" to this BMJ Group article as evidence for her claim. (The BMJ Group publishes the BMJ, but this isn't a BMJ article.) The BMJ Group article refers to "two systematic reviews of the available research, published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood," saying:

Of the 50 studies included in the review looking at the effectiveness of puberty blockers for gender questioning teens, only one was of high quality, leading the authors to conclude that although most of the studies suggested that treatment might affect bone health and height: "No conclusions can be drawn about the impact on gender dysphoria, mental and psychosocial health or cognitive development." Similarly, of the 53 studies included in the review on the use of masculinising and feminising hormones, only 1 was of sufficiently high quality, with little or only inconsistent evidence on key outcomes, such as body satisfaction, psychosocial and cognitive outcomes, fertility, bone health and cardiometabolic effects.

I don't think it's false to say that the review "dismissed over 100 studies ... as not suitably high quality." The site that Void if removed linked to in their comment "This is completely false" is actually discussing a quote from a UK Labour MP who said "Around 100 studies have not been included in the Cass report..." There's a difference between "have not been included" (the MP quote the other site addressed, which is false) and "dismissed ... as not suitably high quality" (Reed's claim, which was based on the BMJ Group column and is arguably true). FactOrOpinion (talk) 20:18, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

The FAQ published by Cass makes it clear that "dismissed ... as not suitably high quality" is also incorrect: All high quality and moderate quality reviews were included, however as only two of the studies across these two systematic reviews were identified as being of high quality, this has been misinterpreted by some to mean that only two studies were considered and the rest were discarded. In reality, conclusions were based on the high quality and moderate quality studies (i.e. 58% of the total studies based on the quality assessment). Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 22:25, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Emphasis should be placed on the phrase '...that only two studies were considered and the rest were discarded...', which lends more credence to FactOrOpinion's point that there is a distinction. Reed did not state they were excluded, she stated that they were not deemed high quality. Relm (talk) 22:41, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

The article under consideration stated: The report disregarded a substantial amount of evidence for transgender care as not "high quality" enough. I think it's hard to read "disregarded" as much different from "excluded". Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 22:58, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

What you refer to as "the article under consideration" is not the article being discussed. Void if removed linked to this LA Blade article, which originally appeared as this blogpost. Both Vir and Colin quoted "dismissed over 100 studies," a phrase that appears in the article Vir linked to. Your quote doesn't contain that phrase, nor does your sentence appear in the article that Vir linked to (or, for that matter, in the original). You seem to be moving the goalposts to a totally different article. FactOrOpinion (talk) 13:48, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

You are right, "disregarded..." is from a different article (they're both on the same page; I scrolled down too far). But "dismissed..." is just another way of saying the same misinformation. So to Relm's point, I think it's hard to read "dismissed" as much different from "excluded". Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 22:27, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

You can't just pick individual words out of sentences and pretend that the sentences they come from are interchangeable. The first sentence is "To justify these recommendations, the review dismissed over 100 studies on the efficacy of transgender care as not suitably high quality, applying standards that are unattainable and not required of most other pediatric medicine." This sentence links to a BMJ Group column confirming that over 100 studies were characterized by the Cass Review as not "high quality." The second sentence is "The report disregarded a substantial amount of evidence for transgender care as not "high quality" enough and then described the evidence surrounding transgender care as weak, despite other reviews, major medical organizations, and the largest psychological organization in the world finding the evidence compelling enough to support gender affirming care." This sentence links to a letter signed by over 200 Irish academics in response to the Cass Review. Notice that the second sentence did not refer to "over 100 studies." It only referred to "a substantial amount of evidence." Presumably you know that the Cass Review excluded 42% of the 103 studies that were considered for inclusion. I'd say that that's a "substantial amount." You might disagree. But in no way is the second sentence "just another way of saying the same" thing as the first sentence. Details matter in assessing whether a claim is true vs. false. FactOrOpinion (talk) 23:24, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

FactOrOpinion, this page is for determining general reliability of sources. If you want to argue specific article text, the article talk page awaits your wisdom, though your arguments for your case do appear rather circular. The consequence of where this debate appears to be heading is exactly what I claim, and will get cited to edit war disinformation into our articles.

This is a very obvious example of washing twitter trash rumours, self published in an activist blog and verbatim republished in a internet magazine without any editorial control whatsoever. This is like someone reposting an article credulously repeating twitter rumours about Lisa Truz, former president of the Unity Kingdum.

When dealing with MEDRS topics, our sources should be commenting and disagreeing at the highest level of the pyramid here. The best quality sources, medical journals and multi-year government reviews by distinguished authors. Instead we have these findings attacked by editors whose sources are operating at the bottom of the pyramid. Whatever negative shit turns up on a Google search is posted in the hope some of it sticks. Internet nonsense about who is rumoured of talking to who or met who or followed who on twitter. That trash should stay on twitter where hopefully someone will turn off the power switch.

The "dismissed over 100 studies" disinformation is essentially the "Donald trump won the 2020 US election" shibboleth for the topic of the Cass review. If you have a source repeating such tripe, and which in 2025 has failed to strike or retract it, then it is clear it has zero reputation for fact checking and reliability, and a clear reputation for credulously publishing things they wished were true without concern about whether it is or not. Both LAB and Reed failed that test when they published this and continue to fail it today. And yes, per Springee, it raises questions about LAB's reliability more generally. This as a good example of a wider US malaise. That neither side in these culture wars is arguing with any integrity. -- Colin°^Talk 20:16, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

FactOrOpinion, this page is for determining general reliability of sources. No, actually, the RSN is a place for discussing both general reliability and specific reliability. Read the top of the noticeboard: "Welcome — ask about reliability of sources in context!", excluding only "general discussions unrelated to the reliability of sources." That phrase "in context" at the top of the page is there for a reason: because the reliability of a source depends on the content being sourced to it. My comment was hardly "unrelated" to the source's reliability. When dealing with MEDRS topics, our sources should be commenting and disagreeing at the highest level of the pyramid here. That's the case if the WP content is itself medical in nature. But the WP text in question was not medical in nature. A WP article can include both medical content and non-medical content, as is the case in the Cass Review article. For example, there is zero need for the statement in the lead that the Cass Review "was commissioned in 2020 by NHS England and NHS Improvement" to be sourced to a MEDRS source. FactOrOpinion (talk) 20:46, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Please WP:AGF. This is starting to get hostile, making it harder to reach a consensus, not easier. Civility is important here (not least because the subject is a designated contentious topic).

No one is arguing to include the "dismissed 100 studies" thing, either. That's not in the article or the proposed text. Lewisguile (talk) 12:27, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

LA Blade and Advocate are fine. I think the Lemkin Institute is different because, as someone rightly says upthread, it is open about the fact it just reposts stuff. The LA Blade will have a legal team, editors, contracts, fact checkers, etc. It's a different kettle of fish. Lewisguile (talk) 23:04, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

"The LA Blade will have a legal team, editors, contracts, fact checkers, etc." Yet the website makes no mention of any of this - it's supposition. They provide no editorial policy and the only policy document on their website is their 'Privacy Policy' - and that gives a 404. It comes across as a very amateurish outfit that does not merit any measure of reliability or credibility. Zeno27 (talk) 00:48, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

What are you talking about? The list of staff and their positions and all of that is on the Contact Us page. Are you seriously calling the Washington Blade amateurish? Silver seren ^C 01:08, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

As I said, they have no published editorial policy, nor any details of fact-checkers, legal team or contracts. One person with a LABlade email address and LA phone number is listed as the 'Local news Editor'. The only other editor listed is Naff, located in Washington. All they say is "Editorial positions of the Los Angeles Blade are expressed in editorials and in editors’ notes as determined by the paper’s editors..." Are you seriously calling that their 'Editorial Policy'?

"Are you seriously calling the Washington Blade amateurish?" That's not something I said. What I said was that the link on the LABlade website for their 'Privacy Policy' gives a 404. Providing a privacy policy is something any reputable organisation should be doing - and it's a legal requirement in many countries. As I said, LABlade does not come across as a reliable or credible source. Zeno27 (talk) 11:44, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Just quickly noting that the claim that "the only other editor listed is Naff" isn't quite accurate; the LA Blade contact page also lists International editor Michael K. Lavers.... again, a Washington Blade email, but that makes sense in this being a localized version of the DC paper.

Looks like the privacy pollicy was there in late 2022, gone by early 2023.... and at about the same time, the layout of their classifieds section changed. The privacy page was set up as a subset of classifieds (for some reason.) So presumably it was not an intentional deletion, just no one never noticed that the restructuring broke the link. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 16:43, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

My guess is they moved everything here and then forgot to properly update the links: https://www.washingtonblade.com/terms-of-service/ The same "Privacy Policy" link is broken on the Washington Blade website too, but much of what you'd expect to find there is on the TOS page instead. Lewisguile (talk) 23:10, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Regardless of presumed reasons for it being a 404 now, the fact remains it is - and it has been for several years. This can only be a lack of due diligence on their part and indicative of an organisation with a careless and indifferent attitude to their website. Zeno27 (talk) 23:37, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I'd missed Lavers. As you say, he's got a Washington Blade email address. Zeno27 (talk) 23:29, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

In re "The LA Blade will have a legal team, editors, contracts, fact checkers, etc." For a publication of that size, I understand that the usual number of media lawyers is zero. Instead, you have a specialist service on retainer, and the editors call them if they're especially worried about anything. In the US, the cheapest way to do this is usually to join your state's newspaper association, which typically offers a small amount of legal advice at no charge (e.g., https://cnpa.com/legal-help/). For smaller publications, this, plus the name of a lawyer to call in an emergency, may be all they have.

The usual number of fact checkers on the staff of a smaller publication like this is also zero. The editors do the fact checking themselves, and they only do this if they see anything that they are particularly concerned about. In any given article, the usual number of statements independently fact-checked before publication is zero. The most you can expect is that the journalist (not an editor, not a fact checker) might drop a quick e-mail message to anyone they spoke to in person that says something like "Thanks for your time earlier today. I just want to make sure that I've got your name spelled right, and that I'm quoting you correctly. I have "Alice Expert, a professor of expertise at Big University, said, 'Most people don't understand just how big the Sun really is'." Please let me know right away if I've got anything wrong. Thanks."

"Having a legal team" is not what makes a source be reliable, and it has nothing to do with whether the source is self-published. Donald Trump has many legal teams. His tweets are still self-published. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:50, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Quite possibly. But the same could be said of any small/local news outlet as well. That's still more rigour/oversight than a blog, for example, which is the key comparator here. I also don't think the presence of details which some editors find misleading is proof they didn't fact check — it just means their assessment of that material was different. And given how split people are here on the same topic, I don't think that's evidence of anything other than inherent subjectivity/bias (which we all have). As this is becoming a very long topic, however, I'll leave it there for now. Lewisguile (talk) 09:35, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Are Erin Reed’s reposted blog pieces reliable and non-SPS if republished by a reputable source such as The Advocate or LA/Wa Blade? Bluethricecreamman (talk) 03:01, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Generally yes - republication by an editorial team indicates team believes the piece is worth publication. Proper attribution of opinion remains important, and dueness remains a concern.

Making this RFC because I want a close to point to. Above discussion remains sufficiently mixed up at this point I think RFC and close by an uninvolved participant could clear stuff up. YFNS also pointed out this situtation has occurred previously as well, where sufficiently motivated editors will claim BLPSPS whenever Erin Reed’s work is republished. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 03:05, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes - Honestly, I don't think we even need to have the "reposted blog pieces" bit. Someone who wrote something elsewhere who then got it officially published in a reliable news publication has always been a reliable non-SPS. It's irrelevant if the content was used anywhere else previously so long as it isn't another news publication who is just being reprinted a la the Associated Press and its article use in various outlets (which is reliable anyways as it is). Question to anyone who would say no: If there was no evidence of there being a blog post or anything else like that, but just this published article, would you consider it fine as an article publication? Why does the former bit make any difference whatsoever? (And no, having a name spelled with an extra L or having lead spelled as led in a sentence doesn't make a reliable source unreliable) Silver seren ^C 03:15, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Since you ask, as I laid out here, the edit that started this was one where text from a third-party summary was misleadingly presented by an SPS as if it were a direct quote from Hilary Cass, which was then reposted by LA Blade and then wrongly attributed from there to a WP:BLP on a WP:CTOP. That's a pretty bad chain of events IMO.

Any source that does that is a source we should be avoiding, so if they had posted this article themselves then that would be a black mark against them in the reliability stakes.

In this case however, we can charitably consider LA Blade in two parts - their in-house content, and their hundreds of reposted articles from other sources, which are all clearly indicated as originating elsewhere.

LA Blade's in-house content is probably fine, I have no idea, I've not checked - I think that would require a separate discussion. But their reposted content has all the characteristics of the various underlying sources with no added reliability, and so we should always go direct to the source, and judge that directly. Void if removed (talk) 14:15, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

* Bad RFC / No The above discussion encompasses three sources - Lemkin, LA Blade and The Advocate. These have very different publishing characteristics, and @Bluethricecreamman still has not struck the claim that LA Blade edited prior to reposting, which they did not. The Advocate has barely been discussed and doesn't seem to be behaving in the same way as Lemkin and LA Blade.

• Lemkin simply copy and repost occasional stories of interest from various sources into a newsfeed, including the BBC and the Guardian, without any claim to their veracity or taking responsibility for them.
• LA Blade mechanistically repost (or at least did) hundreds of stories from dozens of outlets, and mixed in amongst them are dozens of sequential posts from Reed's blog. There search is bad so it is hard to be sure, but I saw very few, if any, gaps in that process - for a time it simply seemed to be shadowing every blogpost as it appeared.

A reliable source occasionally picking up a self-published source, and elevating it to an article, with some editorial oversight, would certainly mean it was no longer SPS. But an indiscriminate reposting of dozens of blogposts as soon as they appear into a shared newsfeed of dozens of posts culled from other sites is not that.

There is a general point here - if a source is simply reposting content from other sources somewhat like Yahoo News, but on a smaller scale, do the reposted sources have the reliability characteristics of the reposting source, or the original? This on Lemkin is WP:OPINION because the original source is, despite not being marked as such on the Lemkin site. This on LA Blade is WP:MEDIAMATTERS because its just straight-up copied from there with attribution. If we have to go to the underlying source to understand its properties, then the reposting source confers no reliability onto it and we shouldn't cite it, ever. Exactly as with Yahoo news syndication, content that is merely being reposted en masse into a newsfeed has to be judged by the originating source - and if that is the case it remains SPS, or else any blog content aggregator (curated or automated) would get around BLPSPS. The only reason to cite this sort of content would be to circumvent policy that applies to the original source, and that seems not in the spirit of policy.

On top of that, the RFC begs the question of whether LA Blade are a reliable outlet if what they did was mechanically repost dozens of blogposts until June 17th, - complete with still-uncorrected misspellings and typos and false and misleading claims about the Cass Review or BLP claims about Hilary Cass - from someone described in a peer reviewed report the British Medical Journal as a prominent activist attempting to discredit other aspects of Cass, both the review and the person.

For example, per the BMJ, Erin Reed said Cass collaborated on a trans care ban in Florida when the truth is Cass spoke with a clinical member of the state’s board of medicine as part of her review. Reed is a hyperbolic, partisan, untrustworthy source, full stop, and should be nowhere near pages of subjects she is actively trying to discredit via smear and misrepresentation. Void if removed (talk) 09:19, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

To be very clear, the edit which precipitated this RFC was to source a direct quote to Hilary Cass, using Erin Reed as a source, by way of her substack reposted on LA Blade.

[Cass] said she was "not aware of his wider connections and political affiliations" when she met him

Let's look at the post being cited: https://www.losangelesblade.com/2024/04/19/anti-trans-british-pediatrician-backpedals-on-her-review-on-hrt/

This is a response to a Q&A posted by the Kite Trust here in April 2024.

Throughout, Reed presents this as an interview, with quoted statements attributed as Cass' responses, eg:

Dr. Cass, in the latest interview, denies any wrongdoing, stating: "Patrick Hunter approached the Cass Review stating he was a paediatrician who had worked in this area. The Cass Review team were not aware of his wider connections and political affiliations at this time and so he met the criteria for clinicians who were offered an initial meeting. This initial contact was the same as any paediatrician who approached the study. The Cass Review team declined any further contact with Patrick Hunter after this meeting. Patrick Hunter and his political connections has had no influence on the content of the Cass Review Report."

This is the whole basis of the article. If this were a reliable source, we could use that for a direct quote attributable to Hilary Cass herself, because that is how it is presented.

However, according to the FAQ on the Cass Review website, that is a misrepresentation and this is categorically not a verbatim quote. None of these are verbatim quotes, nor are they even a reliable paraphrase:

Dr Cass met with support and advocacy organisations on 17 April 2024. The organisations shared concerns about the misinformation being spread about the contents of the report and what it meant for the children and young people seeking support. Dr Cass responded to a number of questions that young people and their families had raised with the organisations. Following the meeting the Kite Trust (which is a small, locally focused youth organisation) produced a myth buster to support their youth workers responding to questions from the young people they support. The Kite Trust sent this through to the Review team (on 17 April) but did not state the intention to publish. The myth buster was published on their website the day after the meeting (18 April) before the Review had reviewed its contents and the Review did not sign off the document. Sadly, this was quickly picked up on social media and was used to attack the credibility of the Review and the integrity of the Kite Trust. The Review understands that there was no intention from the Kite Trust (or any of the other organisations present) to misrepresent the meeting. While the language used was not that which the Review uses, the Kite Trust’s statement was not represented as verbatim comments from Dr Cass. Their intention was to correct some misconceptions, it was written to be accessible to the young people they support who are anxious and worried by what they are hearing. The Review has issued its own FAQs, which represents the Reviews position on the matters raised.

This is not a verbatim quote, despite being misrepresented as such by Reed, and reproduced with apparently no oversight on LA Blade.

Erin Reed is exceptionally unreliable on this subject, and the edit which precipitated this entire RFC demonstrates it perfectly. Void if removed (talk) 11:21, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

(削除) I can see you care about this situation very deeply, as do we all. You also clearly have very strong feelings about Erin Reed in particular ("Erin Reed is exceptionally unreliable"). However, we all feel that way about certain sources and we all have to grit our teeth and bear it sometimes, so let's try to stick to the facts as much as we can, so that this doesn't become any more emotive than it needs to. (削除ここまで)

(削除) Given that Cass says those aren't her verbatim words but are the Kite Trust's summary of them, I think it's fair to use in-line attribution to the KT for those parts of the paragraph sourced to it. (削除ここまで)

(削除) Cass doesn't seem to be disputing the content of what they said—merely the wording used/the framing by others that it was a verbatim quote. So the FAQ actually confirms the interview took place and is a paraphrasing of her words. She hasn't requested a retraction or alteration of those words, has she? If she has, that makes things much simpler. If she hasn't, I don't think the FAQ contradicts the Q&A. If a source such as the LA Blade article has elements which are objectively misleading, we obviously shouldn't repeat the misleading info (or the misleading framing, as the case may be) in Wikivoice. (削除ここまで)Whoops! Didn't see the new header and thought this was still the discussion. Same point is already covered elsewhere anyway. Sorry about that. Lewisguile (talk) 12:11, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

If you want to continue to debate content, please do it on the talk page of the page in question, not in a reply to my vote on an RFC. Void if removed (talk) 13:15, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Here's a question that interests me Void if removed can you please name one trans author who supports affirmative care and who you would call a reliable source? Simonm223 (talk) 14:41, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Erin Reed is exceptionally unreliable As best I can tell, you've presented two examples to substantiate this claim; if you've presented more examples and I missed the other(s), please point them out. Otherwise, I think you need to present more evidence for a claim like "Erin Reed is exceptionally unreliable."

Example 1: in the preceding discussion (above) you quoted her saying "the review dismissed over 100 studies," and you said that her claim was "completely false." I discussed above why I believe that your claim is inaccurate.

Example 2 (here): the Kite Trust reported on a "Q&A with Dr. Hilary Cass." The Kite Trust stated at the top of its report "Here are her answers" and presented what appears as a Q&A format (questions in bold, answers non-bolded). The Kite Trust didn't state explicitly that these answers weren't direct quotes, but in several places used wording that indicates portions weren't direct quotes (e.g., the text of one answer says in part that "Dr. Cass feels this is important...," when Cass would not be referring to herself in the third person). It's unclear whether any of the text in the Kite Trust's Q&A report was verbatim from Cass. The Review's FAQ later said "the Kite Trust’s statement was not represented as verbatim comments from Dr Cass. ... it was written to be accessible to the young people." The Q&A took place on 4/17, Reed's article appeared on 4/19, and it's unclear when the Review's FAQ was published, but the Internet Archive's first archive of it is on 4/26. In her 4/19 column, Reed described the Q&A as an "interview," used the phrase "Her answer" three times, and then writes "Dr. Cass, in the latest interview, denies any wrongdoing, stating...," followed by a quote of one answer. So Reed is definitely presenting that specific quote as a statement from Cass. On the one hand, the Kite Trust did say "Here are her answers"; on the other hand, it's clear from the text that in several places, these answers weren't verbatim, calling into question whether any parts of the answers were verbatim. It's definitely wrong on Reed's part to present the quoted answer as a statement from Cass rather than as the Kite Trust's statement about Cass's answer. But that falls short of making Reed "exceptionally unreliable." FactOrOpinion (talk) 16:20, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

It's definitely wrong on Reed's part to present the quoted answer as a statement from Cass rather than as the Kite Trust's statement about Cass's answer.

I think this was all you needed to say. Reed presented it as a direct quote, LA Blade reposted it, and an editor added it as a direct quote from a BLP on a CTOP on that basis.

Your response asking me for more evidence of Erin Reed's reliability is exactly why this is a bad RFC. There's about 5 different things at play here, from how we judge sites the blanket repost material from other, better sources, to whether Reed is unreliable, to whether that makes La Blade unreliable for reposting her with no editorial oversight.

Reed has repeatedly claimed that studies were dismissed and disregarded for not being "high quality".

• In this article: the review dismissed over 100 studies on the efficacy of transgender care as not suitably high quality,
• In the article at the top of this RFC. disregarded a substantial amount of evidence for transgender care as not "high quality"
• In this blogpost: disregarded the body of research on transgender care as not "high quality,"

However you try to spin "dismissed" or "the body" or "a substantial amount", I don't see how you can argue that saying that the claim the review dismissed over 100 studies on the efficacy of transgender care as not suitably high quality isn't false when the review commissioned multiple systematic reviews, two of which covered blockers and hormones, one of which excluded 19 studies from synthesis as poor quality, and the other excluded 24 from synthesis as poor quality. Its not even arguable - it is completely false. Any claim that anything was dismissed or disregarded for not being "high" quality is false and by this point deliberately so, because anyone with eyes can see that in the York reviews, the majority of material that was included in the synthesis was "moderate" quality. You can simply read them yourself and verify.

Ironically a recent report from the Commission on Human Medicines revealed that the York team bent over backwards to include the evidence they did:

we were informed that by usual standards the impacts identified as moderate quality evidence would usually be consistent with poor quality evidence, but were placed in this category as the overall quality was so poor they considered a need to provide some differentiation.

The evidence in this area is poor.

In the article at the top of this RFC Reed says Cass described the evidence surrounding transgender care as weak, despite other reviews, [...] finding the evidence compelling enough. Reed continually misrepresents Cass as some sort of outlier, when review after review after review after review and now again this month another review agree on this, and no amount of activists like Reed convincing their social media following that some supposed massive amount of really good evidence was wrongly excluded by evil bigots changes what is very dismal picture.

If all this isn't enough to at least raise an eyebrow, I don't know what to tell you, but here's one more anyway.

• June 2024 Kemi Badenoch, admitted that "gender critical" individuals were placed in health roles to facilitate the Cass Review, and June 2024 Kemi Badenoch revealed that members of the movement were put in key health positions to produce the Cass Review - this is a conspiracist misrepresentation of this tweet which is merely noting that the Cass Review happened in part because Sajid Javid was health minister at the time not that he was placed there to facilitate it! This is a Tory politician blowing her own trumpet as Equalities minister, taking credit for a success and having a pop at how "Labour did not want to know" in the run up to a general election in the UK, not Reed's invented fantasy about some "movement" having taken over key positions in order to engineer the Cass Review.

Do you actually want more? I can give you dozens, but this isn't an RFC about the reliability of Erin Reed, and I can't see anyone else caring. Void if removed (talk) 23:07, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

this isn't an RFC about the reliability of Erin Reed OK, I won't respond further about her reliability. FactOrOpinion (talk) 23:35, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

i argue the question i pose in the RFC includes that. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 02:42, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

As I understood your question, it's not about whether her columns are reliable on their own, but whether they inherit reliability from the publications that republish her work. I can't answer that question. (I've heard that the LA Blade or The Advocate have good reputations, but outside of the 2 Reed columns I looked at for this discussion, I haven't read either publication, so I'm not familiar enough with them to judge that for myself. In addition, it's entirely possible for a GREL publication to have a writer whose work I consider unreliable.) I actually dislike questions about the general reliability of publications; I think reliability of source X is best judged in relation to the WP content sourced to X. A given source might be reliable for one thing and not reliable for another. I did respond above re: whether I believed the republication to establish the columns as non-SPS, but I guess I should add something about that to your RfC. FactOrOpinion (talk) 03:42, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

I also think that the reliability of source X is best judged in relation to the WP content sourced to X. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:02, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

I've reconsidered Bluethricecreamman's comment and so will respond further about the reliability of several specific statements you've quoted from Reed: I think this was all you needed to say. You're free to think that, but I clearly don't agree, which is why I went into more detail. I don't see how you can argue that saying that the claim "the review dismissed over 100 studies on the efficacy of transgender care as not suitably high quality" isn't false But I did argue that her statement is arguably true, and I linked to the comment of mine where I did it, which you appear to have ignored. it is completely false No, it isn't, as I said in my comment about it.

I also discussed above your second partial quote from her saying that the Report "disregarded a substantial amount of evidence for transgender care as not 'high quality,'" and I disagree with your assessment there as well. However you try to spin "dismissed" or "the body" or "a substantial amount"... In that second comment of mine, I stressed the importance of not pulling select words out of context and suggesting that the statements are interchangeable.

Your third partial quote is "disregarded the body of research on transgender care as not 'high quality.'" It's once again important to look at the full sentence and what she links to in support of her claim. The sentence is "The review, highly susceptible to subjectivity, disregarded the body of research on transgender care as not "high quality," a subjective judgment that cannot be trusted as politically unbiased given prior concerns." She supported her claim that the measure used (the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale) is subjective via the study she linked to. The second link no longer works (that user appears to have closed their X account), so I cannot read what it said, but Reed's claim there seems to fall in the general category of what she said in the first two quotes you presented, and I disagree with your assessment. anyone with eyes can see that in the York reviews, the majority of material that was included in the synthesis was "moderate" quality. Anyone can see that the reviewers assessed them that way, and anyone can read the study she linked to as support for her claim that assessments using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale are "highly susceptible to subjectivity."

Reed says Cass "described the evidence surrounding transgender care as weak, despite other reviews, [...] finding the evidence compelling enough." Once again, you're not quoting the full sentence. The full sentence is "The report disregarded a substantial amount of evidence for transgender care as not "high quality" enough and then described the evidence surrounding transgender care as weak, despite other reviews, major medical organizations, and the largest psychological organization in the world finding the evidence compelling enough to support gender affirming care." Notice that she linked to a letter from over 200 Irish academics, and their discussion supports her claim that "other reviews, major medical organizations, and the largest psychological organization in the world finding the evidence compelling enough to support gender affirming care." Reed continually misrepresents Cass as some sort of outlier, when review after review after review after review and now again this month another review agree on this. But the various reviews clearly don't agree on it, as the reviews linked in the letter from Irish academics shows. I also don't think that she's presenting the Cass Review as "some sort of outlier," only that it comes to a different conclusion than other reviews and organizations.

Look, I get it. You believe that "Erin Reed is exceptionally unreliable." I clearly disagree with your interpretations of specific examples you gave to substantiate your opinion. I have no opinion about Reed in general as I haven't read enough of her work. In the little I've looked at, she appears to support her claims. FactOrOpinion (talk) 16:29, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

which you appear to have ignored

No - you just made a defence based on parsing the very same press release which Reed misunderstood in the first place. You can check the reviews themselves to see they don't say this, and thus the claim is false, and your defence of it based on not actually checking the reviews a bit of a waste of effort.

You might well argue it is an understandable error - but it still wrong.

the reviews linked in the letter from Irish academics shows

None of the linked articles are reviews, I'm afraid you can't just take these claims at face value - click the links, and check - they aren't reviews, either systematic or narrative. They don't include more evidence than the Cass Review.

• One is included in the York review on hormones, and was rated moderate quality (4/6).
• One was included in the York review on puberty blockers and was rated poor (3/6).
• One about adults, not children and adolescents, and so is irrelevant.

When someone says "reviews" and gives a link to support it, and that link also says "reviews" and claims they represent more evidence than the Cass Review, and it turns out they aren't actually reviews, 1 is irrelevant, and 2 were included anyway, this is multiple layers of misinformation.

You're not helping your case IMO. Void if removed (talk) 18:53, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

You can check the reviews themselves to see they don't say this. It's unclear what the referent of "this" is: they don't say what? She was not making a claim that over 100 studies were excluded from 2 of the systematic reviews, no matter how much you wish to interpret it that way. She said that the Cass Review "dismissed over 100 studies on the efficacy of transgender care as not suitably high quality." The reviews confirm that 101 studies were deemed not be be "high quality" using the NOS. None of the linked articles are reviews My mistake. I'm guessing that they meant to link reviews instead of studies, but there's no way for me to know. The letter does say "the Cass Review’s systematic reviews deviated from best practice in systematic review methodology in several ways," noting six different ways in which that occurred. The letter also supports her claim that "major medical organizations, and the largest psychological organization in the world find[] the evidence compelling enough to support gender affirming care." FactOrOpinion (talk) 20:06, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm guessing that they meant to link reviews instead of studies

So when sources are proven to be unreliable, we can just imagine they meant to be reliable and give them a pass anyway?

I'm done. Void if removed (talk) 21:31, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

That you choose to interpret "My mistake. I'm guessing ... but there's no way for me to know" as "give them a pass anyway" is counterproductive. FactOrOpinion (talk) 21:45, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Reed said the Cass Review disregarded a substantial amount of evidence providing this open letter as a citation, and I have demonstrated to you why it does not support this claim: because it claimed to present 3 reviews [...] that include more evidence than the Cass Review, when actually they weren't reviews they were single studies, 1 was irrelevant and the other 2 were actually included. It is just wrong in every way its possible to be wrong.

You responded with an incredibly charitable I'm guessing that they meant to link reviews instead of studies which is about as convincing as saying the dog ate their homework, and a selective demand for rigour, and having dismissed that moved on to taking their "six different ways" at face value.

Do you see how that could be quite frustrating? Having explained why an original claim was false, you don't acknowledge it, and throw up a different one for me to respond to.

You could always - having found them to be unreliable in one way - consider the possibility is that this really is an unreliable source, cited by an unreliable source, spreading misinformation about a systematic review from a world class centre of systematic reviews who know a thing or two about conducting systematic reviews, and that maybe the six criticisms are as misleading as those links you took at face value.

But lets just look at point 4 as a simple illustration. They complain 2 reviews didn't use a risk of bias tool, but that's because those reviews weren't looking at effect sizes - they were looking at the demographics and care pathways.

https://adc.bmj.com/content/109/Suppl_2/s3

https://adc.bmj.com/content/109/Suppl_2/s57

Risk of bias tools help you determine if your effect sizes are false positives or negatives - did intervention x result in outcome y. But these reviews weren't checking effects - they were collating eg. the numbers of referrals to clinics worldwide and plotting them. What they did was completely valid, which isn't surprising what with them being a world class centre of systematic reviews.

And then complaining that NOS isn't "best practice" when its one of the most widely used tools and recommended in the Cochrane handbook for exactly this kind of nonrandomised assessment. And in any case, having these reviews completely concur with the findings of three other systematic reviews that used GRADE just demonstrates how robust these findings are, across different methodologies - that's good science.

It's a nonsense criticism. This stuff is nonsense all the way down. It takes them 2 sentences to knock out nonsense like this, and multiple paragraphs for me to walk you through the explanation why it is nonsense, yet you keep giving them an unwarranted level of benefit of the doubt. Void if removed (talk) 11:10, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

I guess you're not done. And you're not alone in being frustrated here. I quoted part of one of your statements and asked you a straightforward question about it ("It's unclear what the referent of "this" is: they don't say what?") — a question that I needed answered in order to understand what you were trying to say — but you chose not to clarify. In the very same sentence that I quoted part of / asked about, you falsely asserted that I hadn't checked something that I'd checked ("your defence of it based on not actually checking the reviews"). You've clearly chosen to walk away from resolving the issue of whether her statement about the 100 studies was/wasn't false. I think we're unlikely to be able to resolve anything else if we cannot resolve something as straightforward as that. You've twice clipped my statement "My mistake. I'm guessing that they meant to link reviews instead of studies, but there's no way for me to know," ignoring the first and last parts and now characterize my response "as convincing as saying the dog ate their homework." When I say that I was mistaken and am guessing something but don't know, I'm not trying to convince you, and I'm baffled that you'd interpret it as an attempt to convince you. You claim that I'm making "a selective demand for rigour," without giving even a hint of what "demand for rigour" you're referring to. You now falsely claim "Having explained why an original claim was false, you don't acknowledge it..." Just what part of "My mistake" do you not understand? FactOrOpinion (talk) 15:31, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

I am guessing something but don't know

Ok, so perhaps I'm taking it too much to heart, but after days of being challenged and WP:HOUNDED (by others) for (I think) trying to uphold some sort of standards, when you reply to guess that they meant to link to reviews which supposedly covered more information as they claimed, I find it really quite insulting to my time and effort. It is not what I expect of the process of evaluating a source's reliability. I just showed you they misrepresented evidence to you, and I know that no such evidence demonstrating their claim exists. But what is the point in me showing you in time-consuming detail a source is misrepresenting the evidence, if your response is just to guess there are ways in which they might not have been?

It seems quite a simple process to me. I don't especially care if the source lied on purpose or is just incompetent - it is unreliable. An unreliable source citing an unreliable source citing studies that disprove their claims.

You've clearly chosen to walk away from resolving the issue of whether her statement about the 100 studies was/wasn't false.

Yes, I've said all I'm going to say on that one, IMO you're quibbling over whether saying "dismissed" as not "suitably high quality" or "sufficiently high quality" is the same as saying they were "excluded, "discarded", "disregarded", not included or rejected" which is an unsustainable reading when the threshold for "sufficiently" or "suitably" was "moderate".

101 out of 103 studies on gender-affirming care were dismissed for not being of "sufficiently high quality," is such a clear recitation of this misinformation, I'm not interested in engaging with any further defence of it. At this point we're reading the same words and you're denying what to me is their plain meaning and that's that. Void if removed (talk) 17:06, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Re: Badenoch, her tweet [10] says it was the Conservative appointment of government ministers who were gender-critical to the health and equalities portfolios that lead to the Cass Review being commissioned. She ways that Labour wouldn't have commissioned the Cass Review because they did not want to know while the Conservatives did, which is why it happened and puberty blockers for minors was blocked. Reed is accurately summarizing what Badenoch herself is saying, but you're assuming she is actually saying the most conspiratorial interpretation possible. -- Patar knight - ^chat /_{contributions} 21:21, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Reed literally says placed in health roles to facilitate the Cass Review, I'm assuming nothing - that is conspiratorial.

There is no other way to read that than that Javid was appointed to facilitate the Cass Review.

This is an extreme level of conspiracism as well as ignorance of UK politics. Javid was made home secretary by Theresa May, who was the PM who commissioned the 2018 consultation on the reform of the gender recognition act. That's being placed in one of the three great offices of state by a PM who has been massively supportive of things like self-id. He then became chancellor under Johnson, another of the great offices. After that, Health Secretary is essentially a demotion. He was made HS after Matt Hancock resigned during the pandemic for breaking social distancing. The idea that Johnson appointed him in the midst of a national crisis to facilitate the Cass Review is one of the most bizarre conspiracy theories I've ever heard. Void if removed (talk) 21:45, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Javid only became health secretary in 2021 and the Cass Review was commissioned in 2020. Since Badenoch is specifically talking about a Conservative willingness to commission the review that only came about after a change in holders of the Equalities and Health portfolios, I don't see how he is relevant. In any case, Reed does not say that Javid was appointed to facilitate the Cass Review, does not mention Javid, and only cites Badenoch, who clearly does think that the appointment of gender critical ministers facilitated the commissioning of the Cass Review. Unless you think she's lying? -- Patar knight - ^chat /_{contributions} 01:02, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Unless you think she's lying

What's that you say? A Tory politician lying? Say it ain't so.

Seriously, Tories exaggerating their successes in an election campaign is par for the course.

What Javid did do is issue a statutory instrument to facilitate data sharing and responded immediately to the interim report.

So all Badenoch is taking credit for is that Javid allowed it to proceed effectively and responded immediately to interim findings, while a Labour government (in her view) would not have been so sympathetic.

See how far we've wandered from a conspiracy where "gender critical" individuals were placed in health roles to facilitate the Cass Review—a mechanism remarkably similar to how Florida’s review led to the banning of care in the state, borrowing from DeSantis’ strategy? Void if removed (talk) 11:25, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Unless there's a serious case to be made that Tory cabinet ministers weren't gender critical in 2020, then what Reed reported was 100% true. Badenoch did say that the appointment of gender critical cabinet ministers led to the commissioning and the mechanism is similar to how the ban went down in Florida (i.e. through medical regulation using a favourable review as opposed to criminalization or passing a law). What Javid did in 2022 to facilitate the Cass Review has no bearing on what Badenoch's claims. -- Patar knight - ^chat /_{contributions} 03:37, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

• No for statements of facts, yes for statements attributed to them. Slatersteven (talk) 14:19, 30 January 2025 (UTC)
• Yes When a traditional publisher republishes a self-published work the work is no longer self-published as long as the citation points to the traditionally published version rather than the original. Frankly if we didn't know about the blog and then saw the piece in the trad publisher then the idea of WP:SPS would never have even come up. Simonm223 (talk) 15:37, 30 January 2025 (UTC)
• Yes, and in general when a work is published by someone other than the original author it is no longer self-published. (Whether it's reliable depends on the reputation of the publisher, but that's not an issue in this case.) Loki (talk) 17:00, 30 January 2025 (UTC)
• Yes. By definition, if another source republishes an SPS, then it's no longer an SPS. Lewisguile (talk) 17:13, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

• Question How do we decide when a source is acting as an aggregator vs when it's acting to republish under it's own name? We seem to have different standards or do we have "use the strongest" as the standard? If a minor (LocalInterestNews) site legally republishes an AP news wire report I presume we would use the strength of the AP's reputation not that of LocalInterestNew. If the NYT were to republish a Substack article verbatim I presume we would say the Substack article gains the strength of the NYT because the NYT, presumably, doesn't do aggregation. How do we decide when a media source is just aggregating? Also, if the Substack article contains errors and the NYT doesn't correct them how do we handle it? Finally, if the NYT republishes the Substack article and it's later shown that the Substack article is wrong does that count against the NYT's overall reputation? In the case here it appears the Erin Reed article had both clear signs of a failure to do fact checking before it was published and is repeating claims in a misleading or factually incorrect way. If LAB is just aggregating then we should view this as something that wasn't carefully checked/edited and thus is more like an editorial. Errors don't reflect on LAB rather they reflect on Erin Reed herself in which case we treat the whole article as an unreliable editorial. On the other hand, if they reflect on LAB then we should question LAB's editorial standards and treat it as a use with caution source. Either way, if the errors alleged above are true then the specific article should be viewed as unreliable (and certainly UNDUE to discuss a medical report) regardless of where we stand on a SPS being republished by another source. To be clear, the outcome of this RfC should not be viewed as establishing this Erin Reed article as reliable or DUE in the Cass Review article. Springee (talk) 22:07, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

  Re: your first question, news aggregation typically involves an algorithm that automates the selection/republication of articles on the aggregator's site. The LA Blade's selection of articles is clearly curated, which makes it less likely that they engage in news aggregation. If you think they are engaged in news aggregation, a first step is for you to identify for us some other news sources that LAB regularly republishes. Re: "it appears the Erin Reed article had both clear signs of a failure to do fact checking before it was published and is repeating claims in a misleading or factually incorrect way," would you quote the parts you're referring to? FactOrOpinion (talk) 23:03, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

  I already did that here in the WP:RFCBEFORE.

  Their search is terrible but this should bring back everything that's been reposted. Looks like they stopped doing it about 7 months ago (including Erin Reed's blog), but again the search is terrible so I can't be sure.

  Some random samples:

  • WeHo Times
  • WeHo Times
  • WeHo Times
  • New Hampshire Bulletin
  • Texas Tribune
  • Georgia Recorder

  Void if removed (talk) 23:13, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

  Those results definitely don't look like news aggregation to me. BTW, if you don't like LAB's search function, you can do a site-limited search using a standard search engine. FactOrOpinion (talk) 23:39, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

  I find it telling that VIR has time to write all these WP:WALLSOFTEXT but couldn't provide any answer at all to the question of whether they could name one trans writer who supports affirmative care who they would consider reliable in any context. Simonm223 (talk) 14:48, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

  How they feel about other sources wouldn't show that this sources is reliable or unreliable. I suggest taking the question elsewhere. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:50, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

• Yes and no. Why the confusing answer? Because the RfC question has a big if. Yes, if a blog post is republished by a reputable source which applies the same editorial controls that give rise to its reliability, then it is no longer a self-published blog post and should be considered a publication of the outlet in question. No, because in this specific case, it seems that at least in the case of LA Blade, there were no such controls in operation. It's not that a typo is the most serious offence, but it seems to be a smoking gun that zero editorial control was applied to the article. Particularly egregious is the passthrough of a blog post which repeats misinformation, per Fullfact, and still stands uncorrected nearly a year later. Mass republishing of blog posts verbatim does not satisfy the if posed in the RfC, and puts a question mark over the reliability of any outlet doing so. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 22:22, 30 January 2025 (UTC)
• Yes and no. Barnards.tar.gz says it well. If it is published as an editorially reviewed article, then yes, it is both not a SPS and it is the same reliability as any other article published by that source. However, if it is simply repeated as an editorial, or copied without review/editorial review, then no. The devil is in the details here - many sources, even the "best" such as the NY Times, will offer to individuals to republish their blog pieces/opinion pieces, because they want to "report a wide range of viewpoints". That does not mean they accept editorial responsibility for the content, even if it's not published in the opinion section. Generally speaking, sources only exert editorial control over their own reporters, or over reporters they specifically contract with to produce actual content on a one time/short term basis. -bɜ:rkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 23:10, 30 January 2025 (UTC)
• Comment and Yes (yes only to the second part of the question). The question has two parts: "Are Erin Reed’s reposted blog pieces reliable ... if republished by a reputable source such as The Advocate or LA/Wa Blade?" and "Are Erin Reed’s reposted blog pieces ... non-SPS if republished by a reputable source such as The Advocate or LA/Wa Blade?" People's answers to these two parts need not be the same. I cannot answer the part about inherited reliability, as I don't know enough about the reliability of The Advocate and the LA/WA Blade, and a quick search of the RSN archives suggests that there hasn't been a general reliability discussion of either paper, though I didn't search in depth. I also think it's mistake to come to conclusions about general reliability without first discussing multiple specific examples; I recognize that people want general guidance, but it's still the case that in assessing the reliability of a source, WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. I gave my analysis of the non-SPS status above. I don't think that republication guarantees non-SPS status, but in this case my answer is yes, per that analysis. FactOrOpinion (talk) 14:11, 31 January 2025 (UTC)
• Yes, if something is republished by a RS then it inherits the reliability of the RS - only the final publisher of a particular piece matters. In fact, it's quite normal for things to be published in an unreliable venue only to later be published in a reliable venue (eg. preprints.) Some people have speculated that the Advocate and the Blade may not have applied their usual editorial controls and fact-checking to it (big, if true - this would obviously be a problem not just for this piece but for their overall reliability) but there's simply no reason to think that is the case here beyond people disagreeing with or disliking the piece itself, which is obviously not a valid WP:RS argument. It's a circular argument that could be used to dismiss anything - "no reliable source says X! You've presented an RS saying X? No, it says X and is therefore unreliable, its publisher must have dropped the ball or something." The entire point of evaluating the broad reliability of sources is to avoid that scenario - and the fact that multiple reliable sources have put their weight behind it makes it a particularly weak argument here and suggests that the criticisms of the piece just aren't as well-grounded as its critics think. EDIT: Sine I was referenced below, I'll reiterate the point that most of the opposition to this relies on editors disagreeing with the source's conclusions. Look at the amount of text spilled arguing over individual points of fact, above and below. None of that matters one iota for RS purposes. You cannot disprove a source to render it unreliable, that's not how reliability works - it's about the source's reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Our job is to reflect what sources with such reputations say, including potentially harsh criticism that not everyone may agree with, when it's published in prominent reliable sources. In short, the publisher is essentially all that matters in a case like this. Otherwise we end up with editors trying to litigate the entire underlying real-world dispute (ie. the legitimacy of the Cass review and the political connections of its critics), which is WP:OR. Trying to substantiate your disagreement doesn't change that fact that you're trying to exclude the source based on disagreement; that's still not how RS works. --Aquillion (talk) 20:09, 31 January 2025 (UTC)
• No Reed's blog pieces are unreliable because they fail all three of our aspects of reliability:

1. The piece of work. This isn't a systematic review or government commissioned analysis. It is conspiracy-theory activist attack pieces operating at the bottom of the argument pyramid I posted above.
2. The author. Reed has on multiple occasions made claims that are false. This has been covered above, mostly by Void. I would agree with their statement that Reed is exceptionally unreliable on the topic of the Cass Review.
3. The publisher. Self-published on Substack that one's obvious no.

The question in this RFC posts is that simply by altering the third aspect, the publisher, it becomes reliable. Literally "Are Erin Reed’s reposted blog pieces reliable" merely by being reposted in LAB? Aquillion's suggestion that some editors "dislike" the work is unfair and unjustified, as is their assumption against all the evidence void posted, that they are preforming any kind of editorial or fact checking. Even if the mythical editorial board and team of fact checkers that editors above have invented existed, we'd then expect some evidence that they earned their wage. That some contentious paragraphs get dropped. Some facts corrected. Some of the blog pieces refused. But as Void demonstrates above, they reprinted literally every piece Erin produced over a substantial time period. This isn't how journalism works. Because it isn't journalism. It's activism. Does John Crace's political sketch become a reliable source on UK politics by being republished in The Guardian. No, because his work is mostly made up nonsense with a tenuous connection to what actually happened, done so for humorous intent. The Guardian publish it to give its readers a laugh, not because they regard it as political journalism. The LAB republish Reed's blog pieces because their readers likely support the agenda, but if they actually regarded it as serious journalism, .... well I think the first thing you might try to get right is spelling Hilary Cass's name properly. That might be a teensie bit of an indication you cared.

We all know that news media is increasingly short of cash. Once mighty newspapers are now staffed by a handful, no longer employing photographers, full of product reviews rather than investigative reporting. Wikipedia over-relies on internet news sites for its sourcing. When it does that, the results often lower themselves into whatever negativity activist editors have found on this mornings Google search. Rather than a balanced analysis of the topic. I think we are in a dangerous situation where unreliable material on a contentious topic is being washed through clearly automatic republication without any effort for "fact checking and accuracy". It does not automatically become reliable through this process.

Following the Cass Review, which was for NHS England, the Scottish government asked a multidisciplinary clinical team to consider it. After three months of deliberations this team of health experts enthusiastically supported the evidence base of the review, and produced a 57 page document how Cass's conclusions might be best implemented in Scotland's different NHS. This is the consequential reality of when serious people who seriously matter have reviewed this topic. The "alternative facts" conspiracy theory voices get too much weight already in that article. Washing such blog pieces as "reliable sources" as this RFC is attempting, weakens Wikipedia considerably. The boring news that serious clinical professionals agreed with Cass and the health bodies who actually matter in England and Scotland are implementing their recommendations is not the topic of the twitterati and the blogosphere. The news about Scotland didn't get a look in at the LAB. The multiple systematic reviews that agree with the Cass's own reviews don't get a look in at the LAB. The Cass review met with over 1000 individuals and organisations, including transgender children and adults and activists supporting gender affirming care. But the misleading impression you'd get with Reed's work in the LAB is that they once might have met a Bad Person. And weirdly that Bad Person's thoughts so infected the entire report whereas the 999 other people they met left no impression on them at all. Maybe they were all "dismissed" like the fake news about the "dismissed" research? This unbalanced thinking is what happens when one sources to activists. Maybe in 10 years time some actual proper journalist or historian will write a book and we can source to that. In the meantime, please let's not cite trash like this. The LAB reprinting activist blogs verbatim is not journalism with a reputation for fact checking an accuracy. -- Colin°^Talk 16:04, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

@Colin, unless you have an RS that describes Reed as a "conspiracy-theory activist," I ask that you retract this per the WP:BLP policy re: contentious material about living persons that is unsourced. I recognize that there's some leeway to make claims on talk pages that wouldn't be allowed in an article, but this particular claim goes too far over the line. FactOrOpinion (talk) 16:40, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Erin Reed: The "independent" review was lead by Dr. Hillary Cass, who reportedly followed several anti-trans organizations on social media and who met with Governor DeSantis’ medical board and offered information in their efforts to ban care in Florida, leading to some to question that independence.[11] (note the scare quotes)

Cass Review FAQ: the Review has been underpinned by an extensive programme of proactive engagement, which is described in Chapter 1 of the report. The Review has met with over 1000 individuals and organisations across the breadth of opinion on this subject but prioritised two categories of stakeholders:

People with relevant lived experience (direct or as a parent/carer) and organisations working with LGBTQ+ children and young people generally.

Clinicians and other relevant professionals with experience of and/ or responsibility for providing care and support to children and young people within specialist gender services and beyond.

A mixed-methods approach was taken, which included weekly listening sessions with people with lived experience, 6-weekly meetings with support and advocacy groups throughout the course of the Review, and focus groups with young people and young adults.

Reports from the focus groups with young people with lived experience are published on the Review’s website and the learning from these sessions and the listening sessions are represented in the final report.

The Review also commissioned qualitative research from the University of York, who conducted interviews with young people, young adults, parents and clinicians. A summary of the findings from this research is included as appendix 3 of the final report.[12]

Conspiracy theory: an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.

The more probable explanation that Cass's commissioned systematic reviews and ultimate report produced results they did is because they are based on sound evidence based medicine (multiple other systematic reviews agree with them, they are published in the most prestigious journals and the York team are world experts in such reviews) and was written by an esteemed paediatrician after consultation with more than a thousand individuals and organisations. The conspiracy theory explanation is that never mind the science or those more than 1000 individuals and orgs, one of them turned out to have a connection with DeSantis, ah ha! Evil sinister groups. A join the dots of who once met who and implications that somehow that taints the report and its underling research.

In my actual world, the Cass Review was a report for NHS England about a clearly failing gender clinic, and which has been accepted and adopted by NHS England and in turn NHS Scotland (which had no obligation to do so). In the conspiracy theory world, the Cass Review was created in collaboration with evil conservative US politicians to harm American trans healthcare.

Further up, Void quotes two pieces by Reed where they make unjustified and unevidenced and outrageously untrue conspiracy claims that the government had gender critical individuals "put in key health positions to produce the Cass Review". The more probable explanation was that GIDS was widely regarded by all sides as a failing clinic and that any government would have commissioned a report and Cass was chosen very explicitly because they had no prejudicial leanings and huge expertise in paediatric medicine.

FactOrOpinion, there really are activists and editors here who believe with all their hearts that the Cass Review was ghost-written by genspect or some other Sinister Organisation working in collaboration with DeSantis. It is textbook conspiracy theory. -- Colin°^Talk 17:50, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

This is something of a failure of WP:AGF. Simonm223 (talk) 18:33, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

The quotation from Reed seems to be challenging whether Cass was truly independent or someone who may have pre-judged the outcome of her review. The article says nothing similar to the conspiracy theories you brought up that it was ghost-written by an organization collaborating with DeSantis. The article just notes that Cass downplayed the extent of the communications that they had with the DeSantis-linked officials (i.e. Cass said they met once, deposition in a Florida lawsuit shows that it was repeatedly). You are essentially arguing that because extreme, patently unreasonable conspiracy theories about the Cass Review exists, even mild, good-faith questions about impartiality are conspiracy theories. -- Patar knight - ^chat /_{contributions} 18:36, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

mild, good-faith questions

As stated in the BMJ, Erin Reed is a prominent activist who has attempted to discredit other aspects of Cass, both the review and the person.

Erin Reed, who has a quarter of a million followers between X and Substack and is a go-to media source, accused Cass of having "collaborated on a trans care ban in Florida." Cass spoke with a clinical member of the state’s board of medicine as part of her review. On the Majority Report, a podcast with 1.5 million subscribers, Reed said that Cass represents "the playbook for how to ban trans care."

Saying Two years ago, Hillary Cass met with DeSantis picks and collaborated on a trans care ban in Florida. is a conspiracy theory.

Caveating it with "reportedly" is a weasel-worded conspiracy theory.

Pretending this is a mild, good-faith question is hard to swallow. Void if removed (talk) 19:32, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

According to that piece, the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (an SPLC designated hate group known for bullshit and lobbying) thinks the Cass Review the bees knees and the whole article is a long string of complaints that American medical professionals and organizations don't agree.

Block's reporting has been previously criticized by:

• the Royal College of Surgeons's LGBT group[13]
• The UK's Association of LGBT Doctors and Dentists[14]
• the British Medical Association [15]: We have recently written to the BMJ, which is editorially independent, to challenge its article "Gender dysphoria in young people is rising—and so is professional disagreement" and express our concern, that alongside criticisms made by LGTBQ+ organisations such as GLADD and neurodivergent doctors, in our view, it lacks equality, diversity and inclusion awareness and patient voice. That the article has been used by transphobic lobby groups around the world is of particular concern to us.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ A (talk) 20:26, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Trying to discredit something/someone doesn't inherently make someone a conspiracy theorist.

Reed cites emails produced as part of the case against the Florida ban showing that Cass met with members of the Florida team and they exchanged information. [16] Collaboration does not require someone to be a co-author, and meeting people and sharing information as Cass did would fit most people's definition of the word. Given that the court challenge (which was successful [17]) received plenty of coverage and none about evidence falsification despite the obvious massive scandal that would be, it seems the emails are legitimate. -- Patar knight - ^chat /_{contributions} 20:31, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

@Colin, perhaps I wasn't clear enough. That you, personally, believe that it's a good description is not sufficient. Do you have any RS that uses that phrase to describe her? If not, then you should retract your use of the phrase. WP:BLP says "Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page, including but not limited to articles, talk pages, project pages, and drafts." The BLP policy applies to RSN discussions. There is some leeway given to editors' statements outside of articles, so that editors can present their arguments (e.g., on talk pages, on noticeboards), but unsourced contentious material doesn't belong on any page. Unless you have an RS that uses that phrase about her, your claim, no matter how strongly you believe it, is contentious and should be retracted. And I join Simonm223. Your last paragraph "is something of a failure of WP:AGF" about your fellow editors. FactOrOpinion (talk) 18:55, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Em, wrt your and Simonnm223's supposed claim of failure of WP:AGF, my comment in the last paragraph is based on conversations with editors. For example, one summarised my support of the Cass Review as "This is built on or is a systematic review, therefore it is automatically reliable evidence according to MEDRS" and contrasted this with their take on it: "was put together by numerous names listed as major figures in fringe group SEGM who have expressed some wildly bigoted views on trans people in the past and have taken an active role in conservative politics, therefore it is not reliable evidence" and "a theoretically top MEDRS source that was ghostwritten by a fringe medical org".

Wrt BLP violations, you have been here long enough to know the procedure. If you believe there's a BLP violation on this page, ask an admin quietly to delete it. But I think it probably best if you and I agree to disagree about whether this is one of those conspiracy theories that will turn out to be right all along. You relitigating the "dismissed over 100 studies" trope isn't impressive, as that's been argued to death by reliable sources. I get it you think Reed is a reliable source. The actual health service the report was commissioned for, and the neighbouring one in Scotland, disagree. Me, I'm going with the top UK health professionals being right on this one. You can side with the bedroom bloggers if you want. -- Colin°^Talk 16:20, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Can I suggest that discussion of other editors happen elsewhere, how editors edit or how editors behave doesn't make a source more or less reliable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:28, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

"I get it you think Reed is a reliable source." I haven't said anything like that. I haven't read enough of her work to have an opinion about it either way. Best not to assume that people believe things they haven't said or implied. FactOrOpinion (talk) 01:27, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

• No per Colin. Sweet6970 (talk) 16:14, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

• Yes. Reed is a respected journalist who covers the anti-LGBT movement and LGBT rights and has been awarded for her work. California's largest gay newspaper (The LA Blade) and America's oldest gay magazine (The Advocate) both think her work is reliable enough to republish and they aren't in the business of reposting any random blog.

FactOrOpinion has covered how claims that Reed promoted misinformation are unfounded. The Cass Review isn't a WP:MEDRS as some have claimed. The systematic reviews were indeed MEDRS, but Cass's reports were non-peer reviewed works making false claims written by Cass and an anonymous team. One only has to look at Cass Review#Criticisms to see how suspicious is the claim it's the end all be all of trans healthcare.

Finally, I find it funny that some are claiming Cass meeting with anti-trans activists is a negligible issue because she also met with 1000 trans kids and community organizations (she didn't say that, she said she met over 1000 people). Of the clinicians she surveyed, 34% said "there is no such thing as a trans child", and she never once noted that this is bullshit.[18] [19] Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ A (talk) 20:05, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

• No for the reasons I gave above and because of what Void if removed, Sweet6970 and Colin have said and the evidence and argument they have provided. Zeno27 (talk) 20:59, 31 January 2025 (UTC)
• Not in this case. Misspelling the name of the article's primary subject, and copying the article from Substack with no changes at all, are a clear indication that the article did not undergo strong editorial review before publication. The article in question uses the byline "Special to the LA Blade". This byline is used whenever the paper reposts articles from other media outlets verbatim, and even for publishing promotional articles about NGOs that the NGOs write themselves (see [20] and [21], where the authors' conflict of interest is not made clear to the reader). The level of editorial control for these "special" articles is unclear, which makes them plainly insufficient for supporting controversial claims. Astaire (talk) 21:14, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

  The article defines Reed's piece as Political commentary & analysis, a section whose bylines are all reporters and journalists.[22] Of the two pieces by NGO's you cited, the first is labelled "viewpoint", not a republication, and clearly attributed to "Amie Bishop and Kendra Hughbanks", about whom it says "Amie Bishop is director of humanitarian and global development programs for Outright International and Kendra Hughbanks is a guest writer for Outright International." [23] The second is labelled "commentary", is not a republication, and says "Written By AIDAN CURRIE and ZEKE STOKES".[24]

  All articles by writers who aren't in-house seem to be labelled "Special to the LA Blade" in addition to having a byline of the author and a description of the article type. You can't compare "commentary" and "viewpoint pieces" that aren't republications and already to be treated with suspicion per WP:RS with explicit republishing of a journalist under "political commentary and analysis" just because both have the "not-an-in-house-writer" tag. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ A (talk) 21:42, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

  You can't compare "commentary" and "viewpoint pieces" that aren't republications and already to be treated with suspicion per WP:RS with explicit republishing of a journalist under "political commentary and analysis"

  Well yes, actually we can, because if you go to the LA Blade's "Political Commentary and Analysis" category, guess which article is displayed front and center? (archive)

  So the LA Blade is classifying what appears to be a paid editorial under the "political commentary and analysis" tag, the same tag being used for the article under debate.

  We know far too little about the paper's editorial controls, and what little we know doesn't look good. Astaire (talk) 23:02, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

  Where it is labelled "commentary", not "political analysis and commentary" like all the content on the left of the page. The page also includes a section on the right with many newly published/popular stories, none of which are marked "commentary" or "political analysis and commentary".

  Furthermore, if you click the "commentary" at the top of that editorial, you get to "https://www.losangelesblade.com/category/health/commentary-health/opinions/". Meanwhile, political analysis and commentary's page is "https://www.losangelesblade.com/category/news/political-news/political-commentary-analysis/".

  One is marked news, the other is marked opinion/commentary. A link to a clearly labelled commentary on a news page doesn't mean it stops being commentary, or the news stops being news. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ A (talk) 23:22, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

  If it's a "commentary" piece and not a "political analysis and commentary" piece, then it should not be displayed as a headliner on the "political analysis and commentary" page.

  Either it's an error that has gone unnoticed and uncorrected for the past 4 months, or they're being incentivized to put it there. Neither one speaks well of the editorial team. Astaire (talk) 01:53, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

• No-ish As I noted above I can see the argument that a SPS, published by a RS would become reliable assuming the RS applied their own editing to the article. My pre-print journal article on some lab work is self published until the Journal of Something publishes it. Then it becomes scholarship. Astaire's observation that the source uses a special byline for these articles as well as when republishing statements from NGOs strongly supports the view that these are not published with full editorial oversite. They would be more like a guest essay/OpEd and should be treated as such. The alternative requires actually scrutinizing the work as Colin and others have done. If we put full editorial ownership on LAB then the serious identified issues with the article/source are now owned by the LAB. As editors have noted in prior discussions, if a RS republishes something from the Daily Wire Wikipedia editors would ask if the republishing source should be viewed as a RS. I would say that is the case here. The issues observed by Colin et al are serious enough that if we are going to assign editorial responsibility to LAB then we should be discussing the credibility of LAB as a source. At this point I would say they are a "use with caution" and generally used for perspectives rather than facts and certainly not for analysis/criticism to MED topics. Certainly they should not be used as a source for valid criticism of the Cass Report which was the original question here. Springee (talk) 21:25, 31 January 2025 (UTC)
• Yes per Your Friendly Neighborhood's point above about the editorial standards of The LA Blade (California's largest gay newspaper) and The Advocate (America's oldest gay magazine). They appear to use Reed as a subject expert and republish her work with occasional editing which indicates her articles are going through their review process. Sariel Xilo (talk) 21:38, 31 January 2025 (UTC)
• Yes. Once a self-published source is published by another source, then it is no longer self-published for the purposes of WP:BLPSPS, and normal reliability analysis is done on the source doing the publishing. The LA/Washington Blade has a reputation as a reliable source and has explicitly named Reed as a contributor.[25] As for Reed, she has won awards for her reporting. [26] [27]. The factual concerns with Reed brought up in this thread, presumably the most damning examples, seem to be extremely uncharitable readings instead of serious factual errors. -- Patar knight - ^chat /_{contributions} 01:45, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

  Boris Johnson won an award for his journalism. It doesn't make one a reliable source. The misinformation presented here is just a small sample of statements that have required FAQs to counter and even an MP apologising to the house. Many of us are deeply sympathetic to the cause Reed advocates for, but not at all impressed that in the US, activism on both sides has no concern for facts, and quite willing to make false statements and hold to them in the presence of rebuttal. That has no place as a source on Wikipedia. -- Colin°^Talk 17:02, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

  constant allusion to how erin reed is spreading conspiracy seems wrong:

  • FullFact [28] confirms that Cass Review said more than 100 studies were not high-quality in its lit review. It also says it was misleading to suggest all the studies are "dismissed", but not far from the truth.
  • One preprint sleighted for publication in Lancet [29] suggests that weighing of studies as high-quality was arbitrary. Other white papers [30] have identified that GRADE was not applied, only terminology was borrowed, in significant departure from other review articles in the field.
  • Criticism of how Cass Review did systematic weighing of literature seems widespread. Attributing criticism should be allowed on wikipedia.

  Bluethricecreamman (talk) 17:18, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

  It doesn't, but it shows that Reed is not just some random crank as others have claimed (e.g. in the vein of some old Huffington Post/Forbes contributors). Searching for variants of "Los Angeles/Washington Blade" in close proximity with "contributor" shows that the Blade outlets are pretty selective with who can contribute, similar to other reputable news orgs. Others have already addressed the issues with attributing general misconceptions to Reed, so I won't repeat it. -- Patar knight - ^chat /_{contributions} 04:09, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

• No (with this specific case). They aren't claiming to take editorial oversight for this article, it's not like academia where we know someone peer reviewed it in depth. That someone clicked a button and reposted it does not equate to that, especially since they aren't taking responsibility for the story. It's like an AP/wire story or Yahoo News/MSN, except the original source is SPS so that is inherited no matter where it pops up. PARAKANYAA (talk) 11:23, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

  especially since they aren't taking responsibility for the story Can you explain this? I don't understand how publishing it alongside the rest of their content isn't taking responsibility for it. It's not like this is part of a "posts we like!" vertical or section. They have chosen to publish it without caveat. Parabolist (talk) 21:11, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

  Does Yahoo News or MSN take responsibility for what they aggregate? No, because it's clearly marked as a story from somewhere else. The fact that it is not algorithmic makes little difference. PARAKANYAA (talk) 00:45, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

• Not in this case. I think there could be cases where if a reliable source republishes something like this, exercising actual editorial control and fact checking over it, that could count as them essentially "vouching" for it and make it reliable. But in this case, where it clearly wasn't even proofread before republication, that shows that the republishers were exercising minimal if any editorial control and checking on it, so it does not gain any imprimatur of reliability from them. In that case, it's essentially like an uncritical copy and paste of a press release, and that does not make the reprinted press release a bit more reliable or independent than the original. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 22:53, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Yes, for the reasons laid out by YFNS, Silverseren, and Bluethricecreamman Bejakyo (talk) 22:07, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

• No, in this case. Republishing someone's social media post without an editorial oversight does not make the story an RS. JonJ937 (talk) 11:24, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Making a discussion tab for RFC, also to ask users to avoid WP:BLUDGEONy responses, especially in poll section.

@User:Void if removed, you added 6,616 words out of the total 20,626 words in this entire section (35%). 28 out of the 132 total responses (21%) in the entire section are from you. @User:Colin, you added 1717 words out of the 11,917 words in the RFC subsection alone (15%).

Could you please try to avoid repeating and keep responses shorter for readability? Bluethricecreamman (talk) 17:40, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

@Bluethricecreamman, seriously, just drop the RFC. That's well out of line for you to pull out two editors you disagree with and ignore the voluminous contributions of editors you agree with or your own (and no, I'm not interested in the numbers).

It is ironic that a debate on a source of misinformation about a medical report was from the get-go corrupted by your false claim that Reed's work was "lightly edited" by LAB. It has taken you three days to finally strike that claim. But that vitally misinformative untruth remains repeated and used as evidence for LAB supposedly enhancing the reliability of Reed's blog by Simonm223 and YFNS, who have yet to strike. Ironic that it is this sort of "false claim, highly convenient to the argument and retained in the face of debunking" is what medical editors are facing on Wikipedia, from both sources and their fellow editors.

Bluethricecreamman, this has no hope of succeeding. Aside from the the blog being a well documented source of medical misinformation about the Cass Review... No admin could close in your favour when your opening claim about the source was in fact false. The truth all along was that LAB copy/paste Reed's work and they have clearly no editorial or fact checking process in place, as laughably demonstrated by the subject of the article being spelled incorrectly multiple times. And given that Reed has herself corrected the mistake on her substack (no doubt after much mocking on Twitter) and the LAB has not, it fails one of the tests of a reliable source that it corrects errors. LAB's reprints of Reed's blog are actually less reliable than Reed's blog. Snowball close. -- Colin°^Talk 19:04, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

responding to me pointing out gigantic bludgeony responses by making another gigantic bludgeony response Bluethricecreamman (talk) 19:12, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

The Cass Review is a well documented source of misinformation about trans healthcare (such as Cass's repeated unevidenced claim that most trans kids grow out of it, support of gender exploratory therapy, pathologization of trans people, and etc) and Reed's piece has not been conclusively shown to be misinformation as you claim. As one my favorite medical editors, I continue to be at a loss for how you attack every single criticism of the Cass Review as supposed misinformation. Is there a single thing you think the Cass Review did wrong?

And this obviously shouldn't be snowclosed, it's split pretty evenly. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ A (talk) 19:16, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Is there a single thing you think the Cass Review did wrong?

A naive trust that evidence-based medicine would speak for itself. Failing to anticipate the ensuing attempts to discredit it from those deeply invested in litigation in the US, and so not planning for a followup to address the pernicious misinformation from those quarters. Void if removed (talk) 12:27, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Is the Cass Review evidence-based medicine? It was never published in a scientific journal, or went through peer-review. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 19:49, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Ah yes, the non-peer reviewed report, written by an anonymous team and Cass, criticized by just about every trans adult and kid in the UK, every trans rights org in the UK, every trans academic in the UK who's written about it, every LGBT doctors group in the UK, and medical groups worldwide - which made objectively false statements like "most kids grow out of being trans", refers to kids 100% sure they're trans as "gender-questioning", and has received it's harshest criticism from trans people in the UK effected by it - has only been criticized because all of them care soooooo much about US politics....

Frankly, that's ridiculously insulting to all trans people/kids/orgs/academics in the UK. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ A (talk) 20:29, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Not only is it not peer-reviewed, the Final Report is also self-published (author = Cass Review, publisher = Cass Review), without any clear editorial expertise. Per WP:MEDRS: Ideal sources for biomedical material include (1) literature reviews or systematic reviews in reliable, third-party, published secondary sources (such as reputable medical journals), (2) recognised standard textbooks by experts in a field, or (3) medical guidelines and position statements from national or international expert bodies. (1) doesn't apply, as it's self-published and Cass' recommendations are ultimately her own opinion. (2) doesn't apply because it's not a textbook and Cass was, intentionally, a non-expert in the topic. (3) doesn't apply because the report is, again intentionally, independent of the NHS, isn't published by it, and doesn't serve as a medical guideline (such as a NICE guideline would). She's also not a "national or international expert body" (although WPATH, USPATH, etc, are, ironically). Lewisguile (talk) 08:29, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

I apologize for my part in that. FactOrOpinion (talk) 20:25, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Just to be clear, replying to direct questions from half dozen editors who piled onto my vote isn't WP:BLUDGEON. However, I will note you gave a reply to someone else under my vote on the matter of the reliability of Erin Reed stating i argue the question i pose in the RFC includes that, provoking even more questions asking for my responses, on ever more complex subjects.

You caused this - and you made none of this scope clear in your RFC, and settled none of this in WP:RFCBEFORE.

This is why it is a bad RFC. Void if removed (talk) 22:06, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Brandolini's law. I rest my case. -- Colin°^Talk 18:53, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Just to note that if the discussion keeps growing in the same way it has been, then it will have to be moved off to a separate page. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:18, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

would like post to remain on RSP\N for a bit longer to see if folks are still interested in responding. Been about 3-4 days so far, would like another few days to see if convo keeps growing too much. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 21:56, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm just pre-warning. It's grown to 3/5ths the size of the last Telegraph RFC (which was page breakingly large) in four days and there's still another 30 days left on the RFC, if it keeps growing at that rate it will have to be moved after a few more days. As with the Heritage Foundation RFC notification would be left here as long as the RFC is open. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:36, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Since the time this RFC was opened, it has been reported that a top editor at the LA Blade between June 2022 and June 2024 (the timeframe of this article's publication) was allegedly living under a false identity while being a fugitive sex offender: [31] [32] Sources are unclear about what this individual's precise role at the LA Blade was: Lynne Brown, co-founder and owner of Brown Naff Pitts OmniMedia, Inc.—the parent company of the Los Angeles Blade and Washington Blode—told The Advocate that Levesque was an editor at the publication, but never Editor-in-Chief. However, he was introduced as Editor-in-Chief multiple times by the late Troy Masters, former publisher of the Los Angeles Blade. Looking at the LA Blade masthead (e.g. pg. 14 of this link), it's not clear whether the LA Blade actually has an "editor-in-chief" position, possibly because it is a subsidiary of the Washington Blade. However, the individual in question is the only one listed as an "editor" in the masthead, besides the "national editor" Kevin Naff who is at the Washington Blade. Should this development be seen as a strike against the LA Blade's reliability, at least for this time period? Astaire (talk) 01:47, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

"National Editor" would be the senior editor (and equivalent of "Editor-in-Chief") in this case.

Ordinarily, the names would appear on the masthead in the order of seniority, but that's thrown off by the "Contributing Writer" coming above the editors. But if you check their online masthead, there's both a "Local News Editor" and a "National Editor". Which suggests "Editor" alone refers to the former.

As LA Blade is a subsidiary of WaBlade, Naff would appear to have seniority and ultimate editorial accountability. Naff is also one of the founders (LA Blade and WaBlade are owned by "Brown Naff Pitts OmniMedia, Inc").

Either way, this news may indicate a need to return to the topic of this particular publication in a few months anyway, once there's more info. For now, it's hard to gauge what impact, if any, the alleged criminality would have had on the quality of the news itself during that period. It may prove to have no bearing at all. Lewisguile (talk) 09:15, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Uh, no? Criminal acts committed by an employee of a publication don't have any bearing on the reliability of the publication unless proven otherwise. Loki (talk) 21:50, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Here[33] is an LA Blade article which has the following in the footer: Brody Levesque is the Editor-in-Chief of the Los Angeles Blade and a veteran journalist.. The Advocate casts doubt on his claimed CV, so "veteran journalist" is probably false. It's only been a couple of weeks since the story broke, so perhaps they haven't got round to issuing a correction yet...

Some criminal acts may have no bearing on an employee's work, but offences of dishonesty are more damaging to a role where integrity is paramount. A sweeping deception like this is fatal to trust. When we declare a source generally reliable, we are declaring trust in its editors. We have to trust them, because we cannot check their work for them. If the editors are untrustworthy, then yes, it's absolutely a strike against that publication's reliability. Doubly so if it's the editor-in-chief. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 10:23, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

If the LA Blade republishes a Substack article with a bunch of typos from the original version left intact, that surely undermines the reliability of that publication, and yes, that is republishing and SPS since there was apparently limited or no editorial oversight.Manuductive (talk) 04:41, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

More generally, I believe that the Lemkin Institute is unreliable, at least regarding American politics and transgender issues, due to their repeated promotion of baseless conspiracy theories (see my comment on Talk:Cass Review). Partofthemachine (talk) 19:08, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Honestly I think Lewisguile's reply on that point says it better than I could. Loki (talk) 21:11, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Ringwatchers.com

Use of US government sources after January 20, 2025

US GNIS whitewashed?

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)

Maps

Iron Alps Complex Fire

Media Manipulation policy brief by Emily Dreyfuss

More clarity on Frontiers Media, particularly Frontiers in Communication

Really not reliable?

Are Oxford Bibliographies Online listed sources always reliable?