Leaked files versus peer-reviewed research: the difference
Dr Helen Webberley on LBC: trans healthcare, with Tom Swarbrick, LBC
Leaked files and anonymous documents are treated as equally valid evidence alongside peer-reviewed research, or sometimes as more revealing, because they feel like they are exposing something hidden. The assumption is that if something was kept internal, it must contain the real truth.
What I was pointing to there is a pattern that genuinely baffles me. Peer-reviewed research goes through rigorous scrutiny: other experts read it, challenge it, look for flaws, and only then does it reach the public. Leaked files have none of that. We don't know where they came from, who selected them, or what was left out. And yet, in the debate around trans healthcare, the leaked document gets the front page and the published research gets skipped over. That is not scepticism. That is a choice about which kind of evidence we want to believe, and it is worth asking why we keep making it.
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