Source: Molecular Psychiatry
Read time: 2.4 minutes
 
This Happened
The academic world’s long-standing romance with the idea that trauma leaves ghostly fingerprints on our very DNA has taken yet another turn—this time via the sperm cells of Finnish men. A new study in this genre found some associations with two types of epigenetic variables.
 
Who Did This?
Jetro Tuulari is an Associate Professor in the Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Turku, Finland. He has published two prior studies on trauma and eighteen prior studies on non-trauma stress. Much of his work is aimed at finding how stress during pregnancy impacts children’s brain development.
 
The Claim
There has been growing interest in the prospect that life experience—in particular, exposure to trauma and stress—can be passed on to subsequent generations through heritable epigenetic modifications, firmly planted in the lush, speculative landscape called “intergenerational transmission of trauma.” The possibility remains highly controversial, even according to some whose careers are invested in the prospect [1]. A first step in proving this claim is that epigenetic changes attributed to trauma and stress exist in sperm.
Tuulari and colleagues measured the amount of trauma exposure for each man with a self-report questionnaire. They measured epigenetic changes in sperm on two variables: (1) The number of small non-coding RNAs (sncRNA). The abundance of five broad classes of sncRNAs did not differ between high-trauma and low-trauma groups. On analyses at a narrower level, however, 29 miRNAs, 15 tsRNAs, and 3 piRNA clusters were lower, and 18 miRNAs, 6 tsRNAs, and 1 piRNA cluster were higher in high-trauma group sperm compared to low-trauma group.
(2) The amount of DNA methylation. Those with high-trauma exposure showed relatively less methylation on three regions compared to those with low trauma. That’s right—three.
 
Analysis
An online supplement reveals (if one hand-counts all their tests) that they tested 509 miRNAs, 266 tsRNAs, 509 piRNA clusters, and 541 DNA methylation sites. Out of 1,825 total tests, seventy-five tests, or 4%, were significant. One must question the random chance nature of these findings.
More importantly, did their findings replicate findings from three previous sperm studies? Overall, the researchers demurely concluded, “We found an interesting overlap with previous reports for miRNAs, particularly miR-34c-5p, although most of our results were distinct from prior reports.”

The Skeptical View: There is no there there. All the findings may be spurious, caused by chance findings in small samples. The sample size of the three prior sperm studies were 28, 34, and 58 men. Tuulari et al.’s sample sizes were 30 for RNAs and 55 for DNA.
 
Why Did This Happen?
Now we come to the heart of the matter.
For decades now, a faction of ideologically-inclined scientists—let’s call them The Trauma Creators—have labored to recast virtually every social ill as the aftershock of some primordial wound. With the discovery of epigenetics, this extraordinary project expanded to an even more extraordinary newer claim that such damage is passed to generations. Their bet is that neuroscience, epigenetics, and a cascade of shimmering brain scans would someday validate their suspicion that trauma not only warps the soul but etches its sorrow into our double helix.
Scientists are allowed their wild speculations. For the time being, however, Lamarckian inheritance of trauma and stress through epigenetics remains a scientific fan fiction—highly readable, emotionally charged, and scientifically unproven.
 
 
References
[1] Nestler EJ. Transgenerational Epigenetic Contributions to Stress Responses: Fact or Fiction? PLoS Biol. 2016 Mar 25;14(3):e1002426. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002426. Erratum in: PLoS Biol. 2016 Jun 7;14(6):e1002486. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002486.
[2] Scheeringa MS (2025). False positives for Criterion A trauma events and PTSD symptoms with questionnaires are common in children and adolescents and could not be eliminated with enhanced instructions. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, DOI: 10.1089/cap.2024.0126.

Source: Journal of Psychiatric Research
Read time: 2.3 minutes
 
This Happened
A meta-analysis was published examining the possibility of a causal relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD).
 
Who Did This?
Arum Lim is a PhD student in the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. This is her first publication as first-author and her only one on trauma.
 
The Premise
Many cross-sectional studies have found a statistically-significant association between PTSD and CVD. Nearly all of them inferred that PTSD caused CVD, thus purposefully creating a sense of crisis in the public. But the causal relationship has always been inferred and is factually unclear.

The result was that authors found the usual cross-sectional association between PTSD and CVD, but, when more specifically analyzing for causation the authors concluded woefully “Evidence of a causal relationship between the two diseases was insufficient.”
 
Analysis
It cannot be overstated that the striking anomaly of this review is the authors’ attempt to find a causal relationship, as opposed to the enormity of studies that found cross-sectional associations, assumed it was causal, and called it a day. For those wishing to perpetuate the sense of crisis, this study might be an example of the old maxim for researchers who want to keep getting their shaky propositions funded: Don’t test things for which you don’t want to know the answers.
 
While this was a noteworthy effort, it was not, however, the best type of evidence that could test causality because the studies encompassed in this literature review were all cross-sectional. Their statistical technique inferred causality based on software modeling.
The best type of evidence to prove causality comes from pretrauma prospective studies in which PTSD and the biological variables are assessed prior to trauma exposure and a second time following trauma exposure. There is only one known pretrauma prospective study involving a cardiac factor [1]. That study (conducted in my lab) failed to find a causal relation between development of PTSD and heart rate variability in young children.
 
So, if there is an association but not a causal relationship, why is there an association? The authors dodged this question, instead doubling down in science-speak and suggesting that “complex networks are involved” and implying that the association still must be causal.
There are two alternative possible explanations. One is that the association finding is spurious (and tiny). A meta-analysis is only as good as the original studies. If the original studies were poor quality samples of convenience, a meta-analysis cannot improve upon that. Garbage in, garbage out. Another is that various profiles of genetic susceptibility to develop PTSD also lead to unhealthy lifestyles that sometimes lead to CVD.
 
Why Is This Happening?
For several decades, PTSD researchers have claimed that psychological trauma causes permanent damage to brains and bodily organs. Many researchers working in this area are deeply committed to the trauma-to-illness hypothesis, both intellectually and emotionally. They are the ‘trauma creators,’ fabricating a false worldview that trauma is the source of nearly all suffering. This commitment may shape how evidence is interpreted and which questions are prioritized. Institutional incentives, including funding priorities and publication trends, may reinforce a narrower focus and limit theoretical diversity. As a result, literature reviews that outright question the trauma-to-illness link are rare. 


References
[1] Mikolajewski AJ, Scheeringa MS (2018). Examining the prospective relationship between pre-disaster respiratory sinus arrhythmia and post-disaster posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, Vol 46(7), Oct, 2018 pp. 1535-1545, DOI: 10.1007/s10802-017-0396-0.

Read time: 2.0 minutes
 
This Happened
The trauma-informed concept has spread like a virus through academia. Having been invented as a term since only 2001, the number of papers with "trauma-informed” in the title or abstract is over 130,000.
 
Who Did This?
A subset of scholars in academia, numbering in the thousands, made this happen, most of them sporting a range of Leftist progressive and neo-Marxist beliefs. An illustrative example is one of the most frequent writers on the topic: Jill Levenson is a social work professor at Barry University who conducts workshops all over the world as a “SAMHSA-certified” trauma-informed care instructor. She has published at least nine papers on trauma-informed care since 2014, explaining how it can be incorporated into work with sex offenders, family members of sex offenders, correctional systems, LGBTQ+ clients, and general social work practice. She also promotes the extraordinary idea that Adverse Childhood Experiences can cause individuals to become sex offenders, and gently refers to pedophilic sex offenders as “minor-attracted persons.”
 
The Premise
In 2001, the concept of trauma-informed services sprang into being absent an empirical base or pedagogical lineage (see here on its birthing and here on its moral basis). The call was for all social service agencies to revolutionize their practices so that trauma victims would not feel frightened to use their services. All staff must upgrade their consciousness towards the permanent Leftist agenda of transforming humans through sensitivity training. All consumers must be considered potential trauma victims who are a unique class of emotionally disabled individuals and who require special treatment no matter how such treatment violates common sense or other people’s rights.

Why Did This Happen?

“Cultures fight wars with one another.
They must do so because values can only be
asserted or posited by overcoming others,
​not by reasoning with them.”
​(Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind)

What is really new about the trauma-informed movement is that being a consumer deserving of trauma-informed care represents a value judgement in creating a new identity that never appeared in American culture before 2001. It joins a lengthy list of other aggrieved factions that relatively recently posited new identities based on sex, race, ethnicity, and other oppressed status claims.
Being a bone-fide trauma-informed scholar or trainer is yet another new identity.
These are part of identity politics, which gains its currency by identifying oppressed groups that demand redress from society. The process usually goes by woke, critical race theory, or anti-racism. While driven mostly by the radical Left, these have become the dominant positions of the Democratic party.
The rise of identity politics is one of the main factors cited by many critics as the source of destroying American civility, if not American democracy. With new identities, comes new rights and new powers. It is a new kind of power, different in kind from most traditional politics in that there is no common ground.
 
References
[1] Lewis NV, Bierce A, Feder GS, Macleod J, Turner KM, Zammit S, Dawson S (2023). Trauma-Informed Approaches in Primary Healthcare and Community Mental Healthcare: A Mixed Methods Systematic Review of Organisational Change Interventions. Health and Social Care in the Community, Volume 2023, Article ID 4475114, 18 pages. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1155/2023/4475114
[2] Chin B, Amin Q, Hernandez N, Wright DD, Awan MU, Plumley D, Zito T, Elkbuli A (2024). Evaluating the Effectiveness of Trauma-Informed Care Frameworks in Provider Education and the Care of Traumatized Patients. J Surg Res. 2024 Apr;296:621-635.  doi: 10.1016/j.jss.2024.01.042.
[3] Mahon, D (2025). A Systematic Review of Trauma Informed Care in Substance Use Settings. Community Ment Health J 61, 734–753. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10597-024-01395-z

Source: New Jersey Education Association
Read time: 1.9 minutes
 
This Happened
The New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) held a four-day summer workshop in 2024 on Culturally Responsive Teaching with a Trauma-Informed Lens for kindergarten through fifth grade teachers in Atlantic County. The workshop was funded by local nonprofit the Atlantic County Collaborative for Educational Equity.
 
Who Did This?
NJEA is a public school employee union.
The leader of the workshop, Tamar Lesure-Owens, is a teacher and is involved in NJ-Heart, an activist teacher group that is “Helping educate anti-racist teachers.” Lesure-Owen holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminal Justice with a certificate in African American Studies.
 
The Premise
Day 1 began with an introduction to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) as the backbone of the workshop’s intellectual framework—stressful experiences are permanently damaging children’s brain and bodies. This included how perceived racism is transmitted through generations as “historical trauma” in minority communities. 

On Day 2, they explored Jewish studies, the Holocaust, and how to integrate cultural celebrations such as Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa into lesson plans.

​Analysis
Lesure-Owens’ teachings are consistent with the Leftist progressive ideology of human fragility, i.e., the world is divided into oppressors and oppressed. Since life experiences can allegedly damage and permanently mold human psyches, then any perceived cultural oppression is a public health crisis.

​Overall, the workshop was euphemistically described as, “In a time when teaching is becoming increasingly multifaceted, educators are searching for innovative ways to connect with and uplift their students.” In reality, the workshop goal was to transform teachers into therapeutic presenters of new interpretations of history and culture, not simply to add a tool to their academic skill sets.

​Why Did This Happen?
Workshop trainings on ACEs are common across the country, but they are usually public awareness campaigns (see here) and stand-alone workshops (see here and here) that focus only on the public health danger of ACEs. The most noteworthy aspect of this training, however, was how ACEs were tied into the progressive cultural narratives of diversity, equity, and inclusion. If there was any doubt about the underlying motivations behind ACEs, this helps make it clear that ACEs is part and parcel of the radical, neo-Marxist agenda to install a public consciousness. It is anything but a public health campaign based in science. This is cultural transformation, not public academic education. 

Read time: 2.5 minutes
 
This Happened
Scholars and activists have never tried to argue for trauma-informed reforms based on empirical evidence, because there is none (see here). Instead, from its inception in 2001 to the geometric growth in publications today, it has always been advocated on qualitative grounds as morally good. But who selected the moral concerns and how were they defined?
 
Who Did This?
The trauma-informed concept was invented in 2001 by two clinician activists Maxine Harris, PhD and Roger Fallot, PhD. Since then, it has been leveraged by thousands of scholars from a wide range of disciplines.
 
The Premise
According to Harris and Fallot, systems that serve trauma survivors can cause “inadvertent retraumatization” by insensitivity [1]. Individuals who experienced trauma are portrayed as permanent victims who are at the mercy of being bombarded by environmental sensations, and interpersonal behaviors that can trigger them at any moment into fear and dysfunction. It is implied that preventing their distress is morally right.
One of their hypothetical examples was a woman who had suffered domestic violence and was seeking help for her drinking problem. She felt the attitude of staff at the addiction center was confrontational, which made her feel ashamed and frightened, so she dropped out. The solution is that staff have an obligation to treat her more gently even if it violates the staff’s empirical expertise and business model, or creates unequal treatment for other patients.
Harris and Fallot did not use the term morals, likely because they were trying to disguise their agenda in the science language of trauma.
 
In Harris and Fallot’s multiple hypothetical examples, nothing illegal or unprofessional happened. 

Analysis
Ever since Socrates, Western philosophers have written about the morals involved in how society ought to balance needs of human groups against personal freedoms. A recent iteration is “moral foundations theory” formulated to describe the evolved, innate virtues that guide human behavior. Morality is a range of different moral concerns consisting of five main foundations: care/harm, fairness/reciprocity, authority/respect, purity/sanctity, and ingroup/loyalty [2].
 
Trauma-informed theory is built on only one foundation of care/harm. Caring for the disadvantaged and oppressed eclipses all other moral foundations. The unspoken aspect of trauma-informed care is that it creates a class of people who are deemed emotionally and cognitively disabled. When considering other classes of people who have problems, none of them are deemed to be so fragile. For example, individuals with cancer are not considered emotionally disabled as they face death. Receptionists have never been mandated to take a special training workshop on how to coddle cancer patients.
 
Why Did This Happen?
In the book The Trouble With Trauma, I described that a large proportion of humans think in fundamentally different ways by being hyper-focused on the care/harm foundation. It starts with the normal search for self-inflation through satisfying a moral concern. In a subset of individuals, this search veers off course when propelled by skewed moral foundations of unbalanced caring for the disadvantaged. This skewness dictates warped views of human nature as highly fragile and necessitates the trampling of the other moral foundations. Yearning for justification of their moral focus, it becomes a mission path guided by heuristics in which their minds “must find something for which to battle” no matter how untrue.
 

References
[1] Harris M, Fallot RD (2001). Envisioning a trauma-informed service system: A vital paradigm shift. New Directions in Mental Health Services 89, Spring:3-22.
[2] Haidt J, Graham J (2007). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research, 20:98-116.

Source: Psychiatry Research
Read time: 2.0 minutes
 
This Happened
Researchers measured heart rate variability repeatedly in individuals for six months after they experienced traumatic incidents, hoping to identify those with more severe PTSD symptoms at a single time point or to predict those whose symptoms would worsen in the future.
This was an attempt to discover a biomarker, which is a measure of biology that indicates a disease state or tracks with the worsening or improvement of symptoms. An example in medicine is the HbA1c blood test which can predict diabetes.
 
Who Did This?
Lauriane Guichard, MD, is Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology at UNC-Chapel Hill. She first- or co-authored approximately thirty publications on anesthesia and surgery. This is her only publication on trauma. This publication had 41 co-authors, many of whom have extensively published on trauma and PTSD.
 
The Claim
The motivation for this study was that the researchers believed the post-trauma psychiatric problems of too many people are not being diagnosed and these people are not receiving treatment that could help them. If successful, this would discover biomarkers of psychological problems that would not require self-disclosure.
They recruited 2,032 adults from 27 emergency departments who suffered traumatic events. These were mostly motor vehicle accidents (76%). For six months, subjects wore wrist devices that measured heart rate. They also answered surveys about their symptoms (nightmares, anxiety, sleep difficulty, etc.) on their smartphones at 10 or 11 time points.
 
Researchers conducted a comprehensive and complicated set of statistical tests that involved 10 psychological outcomes, 50 possible biomarker variables, and both cross-sectionally and longitudinally.
Results were less than exciting. When associations were found between heart rate variables and psychological outcomes, they were small, plagued by both many false positives and false negatives, and results often differed between sexes for inexplicable reasons.
Of the 50 possible biomarkers, not one achieved both sensitivity and precision.
The authors concluded, somewhat wistfully, that “these biomarkers might be most useful as a tool to supplement other existing measures such as self-reported symptoms.”
 
Analysis
This study raises two important concerns. First, this study illustrated that efforts to identify biomarkers for PTSD, and probably for any psychiatric syndrome, are of limited utility.

The manifestation of symptoms in psychiatric syndromes are too heterogenous. The underlying neurobiology of symptoms is much more complicated than people know or pretend to know.
 
Second, even if biomarkers could be identified, no one has presented a strong case for how they might be useful. One weak argument has been that identification of a biomarker could lead to prevention before symptoms develop, but there are no known preventable psychiatric syndromes. Another weak argument is that biomarkers could help clinicians track the course of waxing and waning of syndromes, but this is already easily accomplished simply by asking individuals about their symptoms. A final weak argument is that biomarkers could lead to targeted treatment interventions, but there is no known menu of treatment interventions that can narrowly target specific systems.
 
These are well-known and obvious concerns, but you would not know it by reading this study, or by reading almost any study or review of biomarkers. Like much of trauma research, authors in this field are prone to over-interpret their findings and try to deceive themselves and others that we know more than we do.
 
​
References
[1] Schmidt, U., Willmund, G.-D., Holsboer, F., Wotjak, C. T., Gallinat, J., Kowalski, J. T., & Zimmermann, P. (2015). Searching for non-genetic molecular and imaging PTSD risk and resilience markers: Systematic review of literature and design of the German Armed Forces PTSD biomarker study. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 51, 444–458. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2014.08.020
 
[2] Yang, J.-J., & Jiang, W. (2020). Immune biomarkers alterations in post-traumatic stress disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 268, 39–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.02.044
 
[3] Sbisa, A. M., Madden, K., Toben, C., McFarlane, A. C., Dell, L., & Lawrence-Wood, E. (2023). Potential peripheral biomarkers associated with the emergence and presence of posttraumatic stress disorder symptomatology: A systematic review. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 147, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2022.105954

Source: Development and Psychopathology
Read time: 2.3 minutes
 
This Happened
In December 2024, a study was published that aimed to show how out-of-home child care could lessen mental health problems of very young children. It didn’t work.
 
Who Did This?
The first author was psychologist Michelle Bosquet Enlow, Ph.D., Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. She specializes in infant mental health with a focus on trying to prove that there is an intergenerational impact of parenting on children’s mental health and neurobiology. She has first- or co-authored over thirty publications on this topic.
 
The Claim
As interest in trauma has grown, advocates for early child care have sought to hitch their cart to the trauma wagon by claiming that child care can improve psychological problems. Based on their belief that prior studies had shown cognitive and academic improvements from early child care (which was a cherry-picked misinterpretation), the researchers’ hypothesis for this study was that the more time children spent in early child care, the better would be their general mental health.
They claimed that their hypothesis was likely to be true because child care:

• Can provide stimulating play and quality social interactions
• Can teach strategies to cope with adversity and build self-regulation
• Offers a supportive environment which is lacking at home
• Has emotionally responsive educators

 
They analyzed data from 2,204 children in the 3- to 5-year age range who had been in child care for an average of 26 hours per week. They were forty-nine percent Black and thirty-seven percent White.
 
The results found no effect for their hypothesis. The amount of time spent in child care had zero impact on both internalizing and externalizing problems. Results were the same for private care or center-based care.
 
Analysis
The study likely failed because it was based on the premise that psychiatric problems are environmentally caused. Since it is far more likely that psychiatric problems are largely genetically-based, there was no good reason to think nurture could reverse them.

​In the discussion section of their paper, Enlow and colleagues, however, never considered the possibility for a biological basis of behavior. In fact, they doubled-down on their nurture theory by speculating that the risks these children face are “chronic or fixed” beyond age 3 years, and they need extra support during their entire childhoods.
 
Then they triple-downed by concluding the paper with an inexplicable call for future research because “Evidence that childcare can protect or optimize child mental health would support federal and state policies to expand availability of quality childcare.”
 
This study is the extension of the liberal argument that institutions such as child care, as opposed to home care by poor and often single mothers, can better provide for the emotional care of children.

Head Start was launched in 1965—with no evidence it could work—for three- and four-year-olds. It originally focused on school readiness and raising IQ, but, after dismal results, shifted to social competence goals. Early Head Start was launched in 1995 to extend this model to ages zero to three. Multiple reviews have shown the lack of effectiveness of these programs, while proponents are able only to point to weak effects inconsistently across studies [1].
It’s clear, at least from this study, that the child care advocates continue to oversell their product.

References
[1] Bailey DB, Bruer JT, Symons FJ, Lichtman JW (editors) (2001). Critical Thinking About Critical Periods. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.: Baltimore.

Source: International Psychogeriatrics. The paper is free open access.
Read time: 2.3 minutes
 
This Happened
In January 2025, a study was published claiming that an eight-factor model of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms was the best statistical fit. This is representative of the problem inherent in factor analysis studies that have promoted a false view of human nature that the post-trauma responses can be distilled into a single structure.
 
Who Did This?
The first author was psychologist Joan M. Cook, Ph.D., Professor in the Yale School of Medicine. She has over 150 peer-reviewed publications in the areas of traumatic stress, geriatric mental health and implementation science. She frequently writes op-eds in popular media outlets bashing Trump, pathologizing Trump supporters, and advocating for gun control, the myth that trauma damages brains, climate catastrophe, the fallacy of ACEs, Black Lives Matter, and the view that America is systemically racist.
 
The Claim
Believing that the assessment of PTSD in older adults was under-studied (it’s not), the researchers’ aim was to examine how older adults’ reported their PTSD symptoms. They recruited military veterans 60 years or older, of whom 3,001 self-reported their PTSD symptoms and other problems. One of the study’s main tests was to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis to compare models restricted to one, four, six, seven, and eight factors.  They concluded that the eight-factor model provided the best statistical fit.
The authors concluded that their findings have paved the road for future research that can lead to better diagnosing of PTSD and more targeted treatments despite providing no evidence themselves of real-life benefits.
 
Analysis
This study is one of over six hundred studies over the past four decades using some version of the obtuse factor analysis statistical technique with PTSD symptoms. More background on this useless exercise can be found here and here.
The many problems with the factor analysis technique include that it possesses an unearned aura of importance. Despite massively inconsistent and un-replicated results in the past (see here), the body of factor analysis literature was used in the 2013 DSM-5 revision to change the diagnostic algorithm needlessly from three to four clusters of symptoms.
The premise of factor analysis is the theory that there exists a latent model of PTSD that cannot be observed by the efforts of the human mind. Being a latent, i.e., unobservable model, it is inherently unprovable and whether the latent model exists is a theoretical question not a verifiable proposition.
Of most immediate concern for the useless Cook et al. study is the undisputed fact that whenever models are compared to each other, the model with the most factors obtains the best statistical fit nearly 90% of the time due simply to how mathematical variance is accounted for. A ridiculous eight-factor model is the most any researcher has been willing to conjure so far, but inevitably when someone creates a nine-factor model, that will be best-fitting.
 
Why Did This Happen?
It can be difficult to see in a brief blog post, but this type of psychiatric research is one small part of the liberal progressive false worldview that human nature can be finitely understood by abstract reasoning and controlled by revolutions of cherry-picked “science.” While PTSD is a well-validated discrete syndrome, it is also true that the manifestations of PTSD symptoms are enormously heterogenous between individuals. It is ludicrous to believe that one factor structure can or should be superior to others and would possess unique explanatory powers.

This sort of publication is the real travesty of the peer review system, not the so-called replicability crisis or researchers faking data. (I nevertheless strongly support the current peer review system because all alternatives are worse.) Studies like this get published because peer reviewers have a vested interest in keeping the factor analysis grift going for themselves, or they are ideological academic researchers who have a disinterest in studies that benefit real humans in clinical practice. 

Source: Framingham Source
Read time: 1.5 minutes plus 1-minute video
 
This Happened
In December 2024, MassBay Community College posted a promotion for a new educational video that explains “the urgency of adopting trauma-informed practices in higher education.”
 
Who Did This?
The video is a product of the Institute for Trauma, Adversity, and Resilience in Higher Education of MassBay Community College. The Institute aims at “transforming how higher education addresses the impact of trauma and adversity on adult learners.”
Jeanie Tietjen Ph.D., a professor of English, founded the Institute in 2009 and continues to run it. She has conducted no research and published no papers on trauma or PTSD. She authored one book chapter on trauma-informed practices in colleges.
 
The Premise
The premise of the Institute, and the topic of the video, is that adult learners who have experienced trauma cannot succeed in the classroom unless widespread accommodations are provided for them.
The five-minute video explains an ominous situation. The 68-second clips from the video (below) shows several scenes explaining the Institute’s beliefs about the insidiousness of trauma.

In addition, the Institute provides other resources describing transgender as a valid construct, perceived mistreatment on campuses causes mental and physical problems for lesbian and gay individuals, and perceived racial discrimination is the equivalent of trauma.
 
Analysis
Readers will recognize many problematic concepts within the Institute’s approach. The premise of The Body Keeps The Score—that trauma permanently damages brains, has been debunked (see here). ACEs is unproven primarily because one hundred percent of ACE studies are cross-sectional and no biological mechanism has been validated (see here). Complex PTSD—the source of the catchphrase “It’s What Happened to You”—is not a real disorder, and instead is a cultural phenomenon of research activists (see here).

Their intent is to install a false intellectual framework about Fragilism, that the world is divided into oppressed and oppressors, and all disparities in society are due to environmental causes.
If the professors promoting trauma were truly an altruistic group interested in evidence instead of ideology, these concepts would be widely exposed as fallacies. But with the capture of the social sciences in academia—with over 90% of professors liberal—there are hardly any serious debates (see here).

[The Institute's full 5-minute is available here.]

CATEGORY: CONTROL OF LANGUAGE AND IDEAS

Source: TBnewswatch.com
Read time: 1.6 minutes
 
This Happened
In October 2024, Children’s Centre Thunder Bay announced the launch of a new education campaign on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).
 
Who Did This?
Children's Centre Thunder Bay is a non-profit organization funded by the Canadian national government, Ontario government, and charitable foundations. It is a multi-service organization that provides mental health, child development and parenting services to children and their families living in the Thunder Bay District.
The two-year campaign received $200,000 in funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.
 
The Premise
The aim of the project is to spread the narrative of ACEs to the community by raising awareness and provide resources to mitigate the alleged impacts of ACEs. They launched the project with a training session for several social service agencies. They taught the usual ACE pedagogy that the effects of stressful childhood events can cause adulthood severe physical disease, mental health disorders, and dysfunctional quality of life.
One method of instilling the pedagogy is the interactive Brain Architecture Game in which participants construct brain models with colorful pipe cleaners. This is “a fun, interactive, and engaging way” to learn, said Rene Monsma, project lead. (pictured above). They plan to roll out more of these trainings to schools and business communities.
 
Analysis
This project is another example of the international effort to promote ACEs as a diagnosis of many of society’s ills and a blueprint for Leftist progressive social policies.

“It is about acknowledging that parenting and caregiving and raising kids is a community job,” said Diane Walker, CEO of Children’s Centre Thunder Bay (picture above). That could be a helpful philosophy if it didn’t so often mean liberal progressive programs that tend to undermine the nuclear family and other traditional concepts.
 
Why Is This Happening?
Events like this promoting ACEs have been happening for the past fifteen years around the United States nearly every week in the form of conferences, workshops, and professional development trainings. Trauma Dispatch has documented some of their content here, here, and here, and the lack of scientific evidence for the ACEs theory here.
Non-profit organizations often act as quasi-governmental extensions to accomplish political projects that  governments can’t do as easily and that were never voted on by the public. Government funds can be funneled to non-profits under humanitarian objectives with little debate or citizen input.