Professional commentary Following publication of the original report in
PLOS One, the
World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) released an official statement on the proposed clinical phenomenon "rapid-onset gender dysphoria", stating that the term is not recognized by any professional association, nor listed in the
DSM or
ICD lists of disorders and diseases. WPATH concluded by warning against the use of any term intended to cause fear about an adolescent's possible transgender status with the goal of avoiding or deterring them from accessing the appropriate treatment, in line with the
standards of care appropriate for the situation. The Gender Dysphoria Affirmative Working Group (GDA) of 44 professionals in transgender health wrote an open letter to
Psychology Today citing previously published criticism of the study, stating it had multiple biases and flaws in methodology, as it drew its subjects from "websites openly hostile to transgender youth" and based its conclusions on the beliefs of parents who presupposed the existence of ROGD. Noting Littman had not interviewed the teens, the GDA stated onset may only have been "rapid" from parents' point of view because teens often delay
coming out. In 2022, the eighth edition of
WPATH's Standards of Care (SOC-8)—a publication providing clinical guidance for healthcare professionals working with transgender and gender diverse individuals—criticized the study due to its methodological flaws. The study's focus on parents of transgender youth recruited from communities with skepticism towards
gender affirming care presents difficulty in establishing social influence as a possible factor in development of gender dysphoria. According to the SOC-8, the study's results also have not been replicated by other researchers. In 2024, the European Academy of Paediatrics published a position statement on clinical management of gender dysphoria in children that briefly noted ROGD as a "controversial suggestion" that had produced a debate "familiar to all, with many experts and scientific bodies critical of the research and concept." The statement also noted that more research into the role of social media in gender dysphoria and mental health was "overdue."
Academic Several critiques of the study have been published in peer-reviewed journals. In a 2020 paper published in
The Sociological Review, bioethicist Florence Ashley described the study as an attempt to circumvent existing research supporting gender-affirming care. Shortly after
PLOS One published the corrected study, a critique of the original study's methodology appeared in
Archives of Sexual Behavior. The author, Arjee Restar, said that Littman's study was fatally methodologically flawed, beginning with the choice to sample exclusively from users of three websites "known for telling parents not to believe their child is transgender", with the result that three-quarters of those surveyed had rejected their child's gender identity; 91 percent of respondents were white, 82 percent were women, and 66 percent were between the ages of 46 and 60. She wrote that the study was mostly composed of "white mothers who have strong oppositional beliefs about their children's trans identification" and that there was very little evidence that Littman's survey responses were representative of trans youth and young adults as a whole. She additionally said "the majority of methodological and design issues stem from the use of a pathologizing framework and language of pathology to conceive, describe, and theorize the phenomenon [of ROGD] as tantamount to both an infectious disease…and a disorder". In a letter to the editor, Littman responded that her methodologies were consistent with those that had been used, without controversy, in widely cited studies supporting gender identity affirmation health care. The
SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies describes ROGD as "an anti-trans theory" that "violates principles of research methods by using a pathologizing framework and language", using terminology that compares gender dysphoria and transgender identification to a contagious disease, in opposition to organizations such as WPATH, the American Psychiatric Association, and the
World Health Organization who state that being trans is not a mental disorder. The encyclopedia further states that bias appears to be present at every stage of the study, including its basic premise, the absence of random sampling, self-selection bias in the recruitment process, and the data collection procedure, which was described as "fundamentally flawed in a number of critical ways". Additionally, the encyclopedia entry notes that, although the parents may have believed the development of their child's gender identity to have been abrupt, the data were not collected from the youths themselves, and so Littman's study cannot ascertain whether these individuals had simply chosen not to reveal their gender identity at an earlier time. According to
MIT Technology Review, "while theories and rumors about something like ROGD had quietly percolated online before the paper was published, Littman's descriptive study gave legitimacy to the concept.... The ROGD paper was not funded by anti-trans zealots. But it arrived at exactly the time people with bad intentions were looking for science to buoy their opinions." ROGD is often cited by
gender-critical groups as a reason not to allow children to
socially transition at school. Littman serves as the president of the Institute for Comprehensive Gender Dysphoria Research (ICGDR), formed in January 2021, and serves on the board of the Gender Dysphoria Alliance with
Ray Blanchard. The ICGDR funds open-access articles that question gender-affirming care and promote ROGD. It receives programmatic support and shares personnel with the overlapping groups
Genspect, the
Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, and the
Gender Exploratory Therapy Association. They had previously stated "The rise of
anti-trans sentiment among
anti-LGBTQ groups has fueled a cottage industry of anti-trans research that in turn is promoted by anti-LGBTQ groups, including
ACPeds, which has become a go-to for expertise in anti-trans
pseudoscience", listing the original study as an example, further stating "anti-LGBTQ media circulated the study widely, and ACPeds' Cretella touted the study at the 2018 Values Voter gathering (sponsored by anti-LGBTQ hate group
Family Research Council)." The
Human Rights Campaign stated "anti-LGBTQ+ activists often use concerns about internet safety in order to spread harmful rumors about the LGBTQ+ community. You may see opponents of trans people specifically use junk science by Lisa Littman at Brown University to falsely claim that access to social media and the internet has created a 'contagion' that causes many youth to mistakenly identify as transgender." Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist at the
American Civil Liberties Union said the paper "laundered what had previously been the rantings of online conspiracy theorists and gave it the resemblance of serious scientific study" and "It is astonishing that such a blatantly bad-faith effort has been taken so seriously".
Popular press Scholars writing in
The Conversation and journalists in
Slate columns have condemned what they saw as
politicization of science by social conservatives. Madeleine Kearns, a contributing writer at
National Review, called for further study into the proposed phenomenon. Writer and transgender advocate Liz Duck-Chong described the hypothesized condition as "a poisonous lie used to discredit trans people" in an
op-ed published in
The Guardian, while Abigail Shrier, who later published the controversial book
Irreversible Damage about the concept, called it an explanation for the experiences of parents in an op-ed published in
The Wall Street Journal. In a
Psychology Today opinion piece,
Rutgers University psychology professor
Lee Jussim described the
PLOS-requested rewrite of the paper as an "Orwellian correction" involving additions and minor changes where no errors had existed.
Jeffrey Flier, a former dean of
Harvard Medical School, called Brown University's failure to defend Littman "an indictment of the integrity of their academic and administrative leadership", and described Brown's explanation of the retraction as "anti-intellectual" and "completely antithetical to academic freedom". == Further research ==