While I appreciate you not letting yourself off the hook for this (and it is a rather silly mistake to make), I feel like the much bigger issue is a grant application claiming to have the support of a professional society that apparently doesn't even provide that sort of thing. That feels like some level of scandal? Imagine if a researcher wanted to study conversion therapy and wrote in their grant proposal "We have a letter of support from the APA" when no such letter exists.
Even if the Endocrine Society would, in abstract, support this study, I would think they would have a vested interest in protecting their reputation against people falsely claiming their support.
This was really troubling considering how important and how much work letters of support are.
Also considered fraud and would potentially bar you from further grants for misrepresentation, but they have some plausible deniability since the guy died.
I think I'd give the ES and NIH the most charitable interpretation (your mileage may vary). These are large, bureaucratically-organized entities who deal in enormous numbers of documents and have reasonable staff turnover. Things get misplaced. Things get entirely lost. They get deleted. The exact location of a file, and its title, aren't certain, and people have other responsibilities, other things to occupy them rather than to hunt down an unimportant "endorsement" letter. This will be especially pernicious when the letter in question actually doesn't exist! Bureaucrat1 (Ted) will wonder: "I've done all the regular searching I can do. What am I missing? Maybe I'll ask Bob [or Jennifer] to look at this next week" (or whatever). So it gets pushed around and forgotten. There are bigger fish to fry.
When another FOIA or lawsuit comes around, someone will ask, "Do you recall getting a request about this?" And folks will answer, "No. I don't think so." (Of course some may do it out of embarrassment for not having gotten onto the thing so long ago).
Thank you for tracking this all down and writing about it!
"But fundamentally, the root cause of this confusion is a federal grant application that appears to contain false information."
Yes- either they did it as Olson Kennedy and the other who signed tha application claimed, it they didn't as the es claimed.
Someone is wrong. To be charitable, Olson Kennedy might have unintentionally confused the letter from the ES person as a letter from the ES itself. But then she should put a correction on the record.
"I can imagine a critic accusing me of nitpicking, but shouldn’t researchers seeking millions in federal funding provide accurate information about which professional organizations have or haven’t written them letters of support? "
The way I understand your text, what they've done is claim that the letter endorsing their study design was an official position of the Endocrine Society, rather than just the individual position of the Chair of the Society’s Task Force on Clinical Practice Guidelines for Transgender Care. In terms of calling that research misconduct I think a lot depends on where they make this claim, how often, with how much emphasis and also what hangs on the claim.
This is the kind of thing I could imagine lots of people writing by accident in a grant application. When you write a grant, part of the process is putting aside your personal discomfort with self-promotion and hyping everything up as far as you reasonably can. You can not do that, but then you won't be funded, because your competitors will do it. It's a competition. If we want people to not hype up their research, we should stop making them compete with each other for money.
However, I'd expect this problem to be flagged by a colleague reviewing the grant before it's submitted. If it's flagged by the external NIH grant reviewers it would be a reason not to fund the grant, although not necessarily a fatal one. Honestly It seems like a relatively minor infraction, if I understand it right, unless they are repeatedly emphasising the endorsement of the Endocrine Society and this is a major reason to fund the grant. The chair's letter seems like a nice one and it appears to straightforwardly and clearly endorse what they are proposing. It seems like it isn't a substantive element of the proposal. Maybe I'm wrong about that.
I think it is bad but really all this is front matter, not substance, and the main thing is whether the proposed science is good, and whether the literature supports it. If Olson-Kennedy is constantly making a big song and dance about official endocrine society support, in multiple places, then this starts to look like maybe dishonesty. If it's just mentioned a couple of times at the front of this one application I think it can be passed off as mistaken. This was not the actual scientific content of the proposal, and he did write them a nice letter, and he was the chair of that committee. Did we even clear up whether or not it *was* the official position of that committee? If it explicitly wasn't that would seem to change things, and there may be dishonesty here.
I mean really, it shouldn't matter whether the endocrine society endorses the study design or not. It's not really the place of a support letter to support a study design, that's something the proposal itself should show, not something to be "endorsed" in a letter. The point of support letters is more about showing that the people involved are good professionals with good institutional support in place to implement the research. Maybe it works differently for NIH grants.
I guess in that letter he's discussing the ethics more than strictly the science "Including a randomized non-treatment arm would be unethical based upon existing data documenting adverse effects of failure to treat.", that may the purpose of including it, to mitigate the objection there's no control arm as an ethics constraint.
you say re letters that the ES were able to confirm "Neither of the two letters attached had anything to do with this research project, so those weren’t the ones in question." - but did those letters confirm that the ES position was that it was unethical to withhold blockers? Was that the ES position, or not?
The entire confusion with the Endocrine Society is part of the society-wide misunderstanding of these professional organizations.
They are not scientific organizations. They are business organizations. Their function is to promote and enhance the business of endocrine physicians. They are not there to make scientific statements. They are run, not by physicians, but by staffers. True, the leaders are physicians, but the staffers are not - probably MBAs or accountants.
This lack of understanding of the function of the Endocrine Society, the American Psychiatric Association, Pediatric, Psychology, whatever has led to no end of clueless comments. When the APA (psychiatry or psychology) issues a statement in support of GAC or lobotomies or whatever, this is not done by physician researchers.
While I appreciate you not letting yourself off the hook for this (and it is a rather silly mistake to make), I feel like the much bigger issue is a grant application claiming to have the support of a professional society that apparently doesn't even provide that sort of thing. That feels like some level of scandal? Imagine if a researcher wanted to study conversion therapy and wrote in their grant proposal "We have a letter of support from the APA" when no such letter exists.
Even if the Endocrine Society would, in abstract, support this study, I would think they would have a vested interest in protecting their reputation against people falsely claiming their support.
This was really troubling considering how important and how much work letters of support are.
Also considered fraud and would potentially bar you from further grants for misrepresentation, but they have some plausible deniability since the guy died.
I think I'd give the ES and NIH the most charitable interpretation (your mileage may vary). These are large, bureaucratically-organized entities who deal in enormous numbers of documents and have reasonable staff turnover. Things get misplaced. Things get entirely lost. They get deleted. The exact location of a file, and its title, aren't certain, and people have other responsibilities, other things to occupy them rather than to hunt down an unimportant "endorsement" letter. This will be especially pernicious when the letter in question actually doesn't exist! Bureaucrat1 (Ted) will wonder: "I've done all the regular searching I can do. What am I missing? Maybe I'll ask Bob [or Jennifer] to look at this next week" (or whatever). So it gets pushed around and forgotten. There are bigger fish to fry.
When another FOIA or lawsuit comes around, someone will ask, "Do you recall getting a request about this?" And folks will answer, "No. I don't think so." (Of course some may do it out of embarrassment for not having gotten onto the thing so long ago).
Douglas: Exactly! I've worked for State and City gubmint (big ones) and it's exactly as you say.....
I hear that E. Kale Edmiston claims to have written that letter, but was in fact only on a zoom call with Wylie Hembree.
Thank you for tracking this all down and writing about it!
"But fundamentally, the root cause of this confusion is a federal grant application that appears to contain false information."
Yes- either they did it as Olson Kennedy and the other who signed tha application claimed, it they didn't as the es claimed.
Someone is wrong. To be charitable, Olson Kennedy might have unintentionally confused the letter from the ES person as a letter from the ES itself. But then she should put a correction on the record.
Wow Substack comment weirdness.
Anyways, Jesse, we all make mistakes. Keep fighting the good fight! Common sense silent people are out here loving what you do!
"I can imagine a critic accusing me of nitpicking, but shouldn’t researchers seeking millions in federal funding provide accurate information about which professional organizations have or haven’t written them letters of support? "
The way I understand your text, what they've done is claim that the letter endorsing their study design was an official position of the Endocrine Society, rather than just the individual position of the Chair of the Society’s Task Force on Clinical Practice Guidelines for Transgender Care. In terms of calling that research misconduct I think a lot depends on where they make this claim, how often, with how much emphasis and also what hangs on the claim.
This is the kind of thing I could imagine lots of people writing by accident in a grant application. When you write a grant, part of the process is putting aside your personal discomfort with self-promotion and hyping everything up as far as you reasonably can. You can not do that, but then you won't be funded, because your competitors will do it. It's a competition. If we want people to not hype up their research, we should stop making them compete with each other for money.
However, I'd expect this problem to be flagged by a colleague reviewing the grant before it's submitted. If it's flagged by the external NIH grant reviewers it would be a reason not to fund the grant, although not necessarily a fatal one. Honestly It seems like a relatively minor infraction, if I understand it right, unless they are repeatedly emphasising the endorsement of the Endocrine Society and this is a major reason to fund the grant. The chair's letter seems like a nice one and it appears to straightforwardly and clearly endorse what they are proposing. It seems like it isn't a substantive element of the proposal. Maybe I'm wrong about that.
I think it is bad but really all this is front matter, not substance, and the main thing is whether the proposed science is good, and whether the literature supports it. If Olson-Kennedy is constantly making a big song and dance about official endocrine society support, in multiple places, then this starts to look like maybe dishonesty. If it's just mentioned a couple of times at the front of this one application I think it can be passed off as mistaken. This was not the actual scientific content of the proposal, and he did write them a nice letter, and he was the chair of that committee. Did we even clear up whether or not it *was* the official position of that committee? If it explicitly wasn't that would seem to change things, and there may be dishonesty here.
I mean really, it shouldn't matter whether the endocrine society endorses the study design or not. It's not really the place of a support letter to support a study design, that's something the proposal itself should show, not something to be "endorsed" in a letter. The point of support letters is more about showing that the people involved are good professionals with good institutional support in place to implement the research. Maybe it works differently for NIH grants.
I guess in that letter he's discussing the ethics more than strictly the science "Including a randomized non-treatment arm would be unethical based upon existing data documenting adverse effects of failure to treat.", that may the purpose of including it, to mitigate the objection there's no control arm as an ethics constraint.
you say re letters that the ES were able to confirm "Neither of the two letters attached had anything to do with this research project, so those weren’t the ones in question." - but did those letters confirm that the ES position was that it was unethical to withhold blockers? Was that the ES position, or not?
Why am I left dangling thinking a public institution like UCLA can allow an employee to suppress publication of work performed by employees…
It’s all strangely symmetrical - not really supported (your finding) and not published.
The entire confusion with the Endocrine Society is part of the society-wide misunderstanding of these professional organizations.
They are not scientific organizations. They are business organizations. Their function is to promote and enhance the business of endocrine physicians. They are not there to make scientific statements. They are run, not by physicians, but by staffers. True, the leaders are physicians, but the staffers are not - probably MBAs or accountants.
This lack of understanding of the function of the Endocrine Society, the American Psychiatric Association, Pediatric, Psychology, whatever has led to no end of clueless comments. When the APA (psychiatry or psychology) issues a statement in support of GAC or lobotomies or whatever, this is not done by physician researchers.
JesseJesse