Schrag is absolutly right about both the Bailey book and the Dreger article not requiring IRB reviews. Neither article nor book were 'doing scientific' research; they were both doing anecdote and opinion.
Both Dreger and Bailey are more aptly called "the editorialists who would be seen as scientists."
Although social scientific research has difficulty rising to the level of "scientific research" one must be using subjects in experimental research of some sort to have to have IRB approvals.
Bailey used no methodology at all in his book. He neither quantified behaviors, tested anything in his writings for quantifiability or validity and his writings on transsexuality have no recourse to reliability or generalizability of any kind at all. He did not 'weight' responses in order to make some sort of statistical statement about HSTSes and ->-bleeped-<-s. He simply gave opinions and then made-up a test that was biased from the git and entirely predictable in its results w/o even having to take and score it. That is hardly science. Most letters-to-the-editor writers can do a better job of removing bias.
Dreger merely wrote an apologia for Bailey. Her 'research' consisted in getting pissed-off at Andrea James, Lynn Conway, Angela Kieltyka and Deidre McCloskey for going after Bailey. IMO, in that respect I agree with her. Transsexuals have done more to get this memoir of "my time in the ->-bleeped-<- bars" publicity than the press itself bothered with. They may have even assured that the press would make their overhead on selling copies of it.
This entire bunch of shyte should just be left alone by all of us at this point. People are gonna have ideas. Profs like Bailey have a tendency to entertain in their lectures in order to push class-registration: the more entertaining the more registrants. It's simply, like the book, an attempt to have one's 15 minutes of fame.
That Bailey has gotten much more than that 15 minutes (he'd have probably had about 10 seconds without them) is a testament to how transsexual women managed to popularize a very unnoticeable book. That 5 years later it's still being talked about and written about is simply absurd.
I realize that for many of us his writings are despicable and his opinions are not us: but that hardly makes him worthy of cult-hero status.
If they haven't, the women named above and others who want to go after Bailey should simply stop. Nothing is going to make the book go away except allowing it to sink as it would have done in 2003 had this campaign against him not been started in the first place.
Nichole
