Talk:Cass Review

Title

I wonder whether the page title should have "The" in it. What do we do for other reviews named after people, or is their any MOS guidance about it? The page terms of reference seem to sometimes say "The Cass Review" and sometimes "Cass Review" (e.g. green text bottom left). The review appears to have a sub-title "Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People" which we should probably mention in the article, and perhaps that's its official title. Can we find out? On the interim report every other page header has "Independent review of gender identity services for children and young people". This NHS Page seems to use the longer name as the official title. I'm happy for us to use the shorter name for the article title per WP:COMMONNAME. -- Colin°^Talk 12:53, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Good point - see eg. Leveson Enquiry, I think it should probably lose the the. Void if removed (talk) 13:46, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

@Void if removed do you want to do the page move then. Have you got the rights (a Move Tool on the right hand side). -- Colin°^Talk 13:56, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

I can move this page but the existing "Cass Review" redirect is in the way, and I don't think I can delete that myself. Should I move it to something like "Cass Review (Old)" and request a speedy delete? Void if removed (talk) 14:17, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Ah. I think this is fixable by an admin. See Wikipedia:Moving a page#Moves where the target name has an existing page. Would be good to get this fixed today. -- Colin°^Talk 14:20, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

I've raised the request there, thank you! Void if removed (talk) 14:55, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Do you think I've interpreted the "official title" correctly. I see Leveson Enquiry is titled "An inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press" in the actual publications, but also retains the shorthand form of "Leveson Enquiry" in prominent position. Our article doesn't mention the long form of Leveson. For our purposes, the long form is very handy to explain what it is! I wonder if there are other examples we can compare. If we drop this long-form title from being bolded as though it is the official name, we could still say something like "The Cass Review (Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People) was commissioned in 2020 by..." or similar, and gain from this more explanatory name. -- Colin°^Talk 14:05, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Exploratory

I agree with this edit which removed a link for "exploratory". The whole debate over whether therapies some describe as "exploratory" are and in all cases are conversion therapy is ongoing. Regardless, the text in question is in quotes and so we'd have to be entirely confident that the ACP-UK were in that quote referring to a therapy who's aim is to convert a trans child back to being cis. This is likely to be a continued battleground following the publication tomorrow. There is likely a divergence between the UK and US wrt what exactly is meant by "exploratory" and even from one clinical practice and another. We must be careful not to put words into people's mouths by linking one meaning when that meaning is not clear or not intended. -- Colin°^Talk 13:55, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

You can debate whether they meant GET or not, but GET is very widely considered a form of conversion therapy. Snokalok (talk) 14:26, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Snokalok, the point is you and I can't insert our views, even if widely held, into someone else's words. I'm sure there will be opinion sources in the coming days condemning the NHS England position and labelling it so, and that's the place to put the Wiki link. There will likely be opinions on both sides and I very much doubt NHS England nor ACP-UK will agree with you that they are promoting conversion therapy, so we can't link their quoted text as though that's what they meant. That literally is putting words into someone's mouth, even if you think the words you put into their mouth are true. See MOS:LINKQUOTE. -- Colin°^Talk 14:57, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

It's not a personally held view, it's widely established consensus, the conversion therapy page has an entire section on it (which I linked to). As for the NHS and the ACP-UK, this goes back to the longstanding debate between yourself and about five different editors (including myself) across multiple pages now about how much weight to give a country's government on a minority group when said government has a well established and agreed upon (United Nations, Council of Europe, etc etc etc) recent history of targeting said minority group. Snokalok (talk) 15:05, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

I gave up arguing on that page after a pointless debate over whether or not the Cass Review and UKCP are FRINGE. The idea that NHS England is literally recommending conversion therapy is WP:EXTRAORDINARY to the point of absurdity. Void if removed (talk) 15:20, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

If they recommend gender exploratory therapy, we'd wikilink to gender exploratory therapy, which is a subsection on the conversion therapy page. Do you disagree? Snokalok (talk) 15:48, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Snokalok, the MOS guidance is clear. I don't know why you are trying to make this personal or continue with the Terf Island insinuations. Prejudice has no place here. -- Colin°^Talk 15:24, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Acknowledging criticisms of a government by human rights orgs and the UN on a topic is neither personal nor prejudiced, any more than it is to acknowledge China's repression of Uyghurs. The British government is not the same as the British people, and one should not take criticisms of the British government as some prejudiced assault on anyone of British heritage.

As for the MOS, they might not agree on conversion therapy, but if they say they're promoting gender exploratory therapy, adding wikilink brackets to that would link to the gender exploratory therapy section of the conversion therapy page. In this case the meaning of "exploratory" is too ambiguous, but if an NHS official comes out and says "We're implementing gender exploratory therapy", that would warrant a wikilink to GET, which is a subsection of the conversion therapy page. Do you disagree? Snokalok (talk) 15:47, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

To illustrate: Gender exploratory therapy. All I've done is add the brackets here, and it automatically redirects to conversion therapy. It is not my insinuation here, it is Wikipedia's itself, and I fully resent any sentiment to the contrary as incivility. Snokalok (talk) 16:09, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Please stop digging. Your Uyghur comment is as embarrassingly bad as when folk on another page compared gender critical feminists to white supremacism. You may not be aware but NHS England is not Liz Truss and nor is it the mouthpiece of Sunak or Braverman. Nobody of any political or ideological persuasion thinks GIDS was working and the review is explicitly independent - its independence is part of the title.

The GET section of Conversion therapy is a mess in much the same way as "TERF" now means "transphobic person I hate, usually female". That some Americans put three words together and form an acronym doesn't mean that the word "exploratory" has been entirely stolen by the US catholic church, evangelicals or trans activists. Are you seriously telling me that because some random editor created Gender exploratory therapy redirect that "Wikipedia itself" agrees with you that this is uncontestably what ACP-UK meant and the words "exploratory" can never again be used by a psychiatrist again? You know there might be some nuance in what psychiatrists do when they talk to their patients that can't be expressed by whatever some activists fighting political battles in the US think a word in the dictionary now means. Please don't import US political battles to the UK. -- Colin°^Talk 16:34, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

What I'm saying is that, if one mentions gender exploratory therapy, and a wikilink to that redirects to conversion therapy, you cannot accuse someone of making things personal or trying to push their own POV. And sure, the word exploratory in this case might not mean that, but I'd like to note that gender exploratory therapy is not a US political battle, it's one that happens much more heavily on European shores - and I shouldn't have to say this to an editor as venerable as yourself, but WP:AGF and WP:CIVIL. Assume good faith and remain civil. Accusing editors of trying to launch some sort of bigoted soapbox against a country, and calling their stated viewpoints "embarrassingly bad" is neither assuming good faith nor civil. Snokalok (talk) 17:01, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

To clarify, I agree that exploratory might not mean that and thus linking to GET is premature and shouldn't be done, the "And sure, the word exploratory in this case might not mean that, but I'd like to note that gender exploratory therapy is not a US political battle, it's one that happens much more heavily on European shores" is more directly just a rebuttal to your assertion that connecting the word exploratory to GET is an importing of US political battles when GET is primarily a fight taking place in Europe while still acknowledging that it was premature to wikilink Snokalok (talk) 17:16, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Snokalok, I am sure you are editing in good faith but you are pouring petrol on the fire and have quite literally written that you are prejudiced against NHS England. Your (and others elsewhere)'s Council of Europe comments are pre-dismissing the NHS guidance because some random person in some internationally-ignored European committee once looked at the UK and found some hateful MPs and some nasty journalists have said Bad Things. Yes they did say Bad Things, and most democracies have hateful MPs and nasty journalists, and an order of magnitude more so in the US.

You are prejudging Cass because Truss? I mean, seriously? That's just a pretty horrid thing to do to a respected paediatric consultant who was specifically asked to conduct an independent review on a topic that is toxic. Do you have any idea how it reads, when you are pre-dismissing their views because, let's get this correct, because Xi Jinping's China's oppression of Uyghurs, which has detained over 1 million people on the basis of their ethnicity, means I guess we can say prejudiced things about what some Chinese paediatrician might think. Clearly the entire population of 1.4 billion all think the same way. Stop doing this. It is lazy thinking, offensive, and not how the clinical care of trans adolescents should be judged. Let's see the review judged by wise comments from expert clinicians, not people who can't rise about Terf Island comments. Twitter is thataway. -- Colin°^Talk 19:31, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

I would agree with all of this in its entirety, but I think it's a niave view to take when the review has and is being criticised for taking advice and being shaped by some of these "nasty" people. But I definitely think we should wait untill the report is actually published and very careful of Wikipedia:Recentism And Wikipedia:NOTNEWS On the topic of the full report. LunaHasArrived (talk) 20:08, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

I think it's pretty ironic to accuse someone of "prejudging" Cass when her report is literally out for us all to judge, the interim report has been available for months, and a major part of Cass's review was explaining why she looked at 103 studies, and mostly dismissed all but 2 of them. It's not unreasonable to include in the article concerns raised about why Hillary Cass, who isn't some great authority on paediatric gender medicine, was chosen to lead this review, and why she decided to minimize the vast majority of the evidence by people who actually are experts. 174.87.27.244 (talk) 08:01, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

FYI, the full list of independent systematic reviews the Cass Review is based on can be found here: https://adc.bmj.com/pages/gender-identity-service-series Void if removed (talk) 08:59, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Mostly news articles?

This article currently relies way too much on news articles covering it for a medical topic. Is there a reason why this published paper isn't in use in the article? Silverseren^C 20:43, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

No, and I agree - I think the sections should be citing the report directly, following the structure and wording of the review and recommendations, and news articles reserved for commentary/reaction. Void if removed (talk) 20:55, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree: it's a long and detailed report and there needs to be a summary of the different focuses of the report, the recommendations noted and then, in the separate criticism section, commentary and reactions from others. Zeno27 (talk) 22:07, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

My main reason for using news articles when writing the sections this morning was that for a 400 page report, I wasn't certain what would qualify as WP:OR, so I wanted to rely on secondary coverage. Snokalok (talk) 22:32, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

The article OP linked should count as a secondary source. Flounder fillet (talk) 03:16, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree Snokalok (talk) 07:09, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes I think that's fair to flesh it out initially, I think we should aim to reference the review and the 9 accompanying MEDRS in the body in preference now: https://adc.bmj.com/pages/gender-identity-service-series Void if removed (talk) 07:52, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Order of Findings

I think we should follow the order and priority of findings in the summary, and I think the headings can be summed up as follows:

• Rise in cases

• Conflicting clinical views

• International guidelines

• Poor evidence base

• Misrepresentation / Controversy (There's two here but I think they could be combined as "Controversy"?)

• Puberty blockers

• Hormones

• Desistance

• Clinical pathway

• Oversight

Void if removed (talk) 09:23, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I hesitate in this regard, due to the fact that - it's not our job to repeat the Cass Review or shorten it into a more readable format, it's our job to write an article about it. Snokalok (talk) 09:42, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Ah wait I missed the word "summary", in that case I think that many of the sections you've listed here are too short to really merit their own subsections, and should instead be condensed into an "other findings" section. That is, I don't think "There are conflicting clinical views and some providers are afraid to work with trans people" really needs its own section or even warrants it, notability wise. But it would go perfectly in an other findings subsection along with "The report came to the conclusion that no international guideline could be fully applied to NHS England" Snokalok (talk) 09:47, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Also I'd just like to, marvel at the fact that this might be the least friction we've ever had when editing an article together. Snokalok (talk) 09:52, 11 April 2024 (UTC)