I'm sorry, Brychanus, if this feels like I'm reading a lot between the lines, but there seems to be something unsaid in this chain of discussion, associated with your initial post:
[edit: removed a paragraph. I rewrote this a few times, and after submitting realized this paragraph just wasn't associated with what I wound up saying, it was focused on the ties of hard/soft money phrasing to hard/soft science assumptions.]
TxMxers response indicated that he interpreted your statements as you bemoaning "the lack of genuine science based analysis of transgender issues" but from my perspective - that wasn't what you were doing at all, as much as you were bemoaning the fact that research institutions often don't give real opportunities for long-term research to people performing analysis of measurement in social sciences.
You weren't saying that their research outcomes weren't genuine or legitimate, just that the researchers are being treated like second class citizens, and it is influencing the track of their research. A research design for a three-year grant is going to be much different than a design for a five-year grant. And a design for any grant where you can be comfortable that you will get your next grant approved will look even more different.
There is plenty of work on the social side of transgender issues that is genuine and the outcomes, assuming it passes the sniff test when we get into the weeds of the methods, can be taken as legitimate science with predictive capability. And it'd be even better if institutions gave researchers a better opportunity to design research we trust will be funded for long term evaluation.
The grant-funded program that employs me teaches preK-3rd grade teachers how to teach the rudimentary basics of science/engineering - and, having put together an IRB for gaining student assent (along with teacher and guardian consent) it seems to me that the institutional answer to this is to just go (rightfully) as over-the-top as possible.
Not so much an answer, regarding where that line is, but that seems to be how our HRPP people deal with the question.
When I write post like that, I am genuinely trying to get people to think about the implications like the part that you are bringing up. And to have conversations.
I think you are taking away one key point. But I also think that TXM is on track that yes, sometimes the dynamics of modern science in practice really do lead to poor behavior. Often it is unconscious or well-intentioned. But sometimes (I personally think much more rarely, but it does happen) it is conscious and explicitly yoked to bad incentives in science. On the other hand, I still think science does more good than harm in the long run. The question for me is who gets hurt along the way.
I realized I want to boost the signal on one part of how the dynamics work in particular.
In general, I think that the issues of yoking salaries and science to paper units out and grant dollars in is one of the major challenges we have in how we practice science as a society. It would take a long time to share all the studies and arguments, so people are encouraged to think/look things up about the dilemmas***. The money dynamics have their pros and cons from a long-term perspective in terms of how much knowledge we gain in any area. Again, in general, we really do learn in that context (in my estimation). I just wish some aspects of it weren't so... weird and ugly.
I think your summary here is fair, but it made me realize I had an even stronger point. Within the modern university context is that researchers are treated like second class citizens from a structural perspective, and I would even be bold enough to say that is the case
in general relative to the expansion of Administration (which I and others call "Big Admin"), which are generally also the highest paid people. Guess how many of their salary dollars come from grants they bring in? I won't be coy - it is exactly $0 in most cases. Guess how many of those salary dollars come from researchers like me who get the NIH or other agencies to sponsor "indirect" costs of running research? I actually cannot tell you because no one will really share the books, and they're complicated. There's a reason that NIH dollars are "preferred" by Big Admin at many major research universities. These are not my opinions. Much has been written about this escalation of Big Admin in universities. If you send kids to college, you should know that all of this is a nontrivial part of what you (or they) are paying for. I guess I am too if you count the grant dollars that I bring in. To be fair, many administrators are doing something that matters. But I assure you, many are not.
In that context, if researchers are second-class citizens, there are tiers of classes after that, with Adjuncts and Instructors being at the "bottom" (arguable depending on the institution's prestige, the students can be higher or lower than that depending on what Big Admin thinks you're bringing to the university. From there, you can imagine how transgendered studies are viewed in the traditional social dynamics and power hierarchies that still exist in research universities. Those dynamics are still very alive and well in many ways in our US universities. That has been well-studied, too. You should hear the stories I get from my non-white, non-male, non-Caucasian etc friends and colleagues.
From there, it is no surprise to me that not only do we not really know much at all about transgendered issues from a core scientific basis relative to what we could (like almost everything else), but we probably know even relatively less than we do in other areas of social or biological sciences. So my statement is not to generally say we know nothing, just that the deck is quite stacked against a sincere effort to dispassionately study it well in most contexts, much less the specific context this threat is about. That is why it really bothers me when people prop up their arguments on "science" without actually talking about science. That's also why I'm very interested in learning from different perspectives if they are in good faith, because I care about people. The clinical psychologist in me never really went away even though I mostly became something else. And it's important to acknowledge that these issues are much closer to home for some people than others.
Your grant-funded example says a lot using only a little. I hear you.
***By the way, I do think that people getting off their ass with a feeling that a fire that their bank accounts might dwindle can promote a form of progress. I just had a long day triaging issues on that front so I'm escaping for a few minutes to respond to you. Back to editing this mess of a paper.