>>25405
Before I actually get into why I have the position I do, I think your point about data is worth diving into. Data is extremely useful, but neither the data itself nor the ways it's gathered and analyzed are done in a vacuum. All science has human beings behind it, which affects it at every level.
First and foremost, the data points that one could actually collect aren't always easy to come by, especially in regards to something like transitioning, which may involve medical records that have additional protections. What data is available isn't always reliable, either, and it isn't always free. That last point is especially relevant - science costs money to do well, and the people doing the research itself typically can't fund it out of their own pocket. Even if you're doing research purely based on publicly-available data, you still need to be able to put food on the table, so it either takes second place to a day job or you need some way to fund it. If you want your research to be published, you also need a journal to accept it, and they of course charge just to consider your paper. If a journal decides to publish it, it's typically only available to people who pay for access to it. If you want your results to be publicly viewable, that costs extra.
So, researchers rely on grants or donations of some kind, and it's not unheard of for the results of any research to be "owned" by the one funding it rather than the one who did it. This means that, if the funding party isn't happy with what results are being returned, they just fire the researcher and the work done never sees the light of day. Hell, maybe the one funding it just doesn't find it worth the cost at some point and decides to throw it away for no political reason at all.
Assuming you navigate all these complexities and publish a paper on a hot-button political topic that actually has some impact, your reward will likely be to have the side that your paper disagrees with harass you. Every idiot on Twitter will suddenly think they're a researcher and make threads on how your results were flawed based on their uneducated opinions, and you'll get calls, emails, letters, and DMs telling you you're grooming children or responsible for their suicides.
No rational person would choose to go down this route unless it had personal significance to them in some way. There are plenty of issues in the world that you can research that won't get you death threats. So I would say the number of people with the right combination of education, luck, motivation, and funding to complete this end-to-end process is likely quite small. This also assumes the researcher doesn't have any bias themselves that comes up in their results, intentionally or unintentionally.
All that said, data is great when its available and reliable, but if it's not available there are still conversations to be had. On the liberal side of things, there's a lot of focus lately on listening to the "lived experiences" of minorities, which is functionally the same thing. It's just a matter of contextualizing these anecdotes and being careful how strongly you buy into any of them.
With all that said, my own opinions are based on my own anecdotal experiences with specific individuals, as well what I feel are hypocritical positions held by vocal trans activists that I've seen. In the first category, the individuals I've interacted with personally have been the type guilty of virtue signaling, in my opinion - they've been very quick to tell others why their actions or opinions are wrong in a way that puts people down (and elevates themselves) rather than actually help the offender potentially grow as a person. Some of these individuals were also the loudest "LGBT+ Allies" I knew while having what I would consider to be very harmful opinions - one specific individual I previously knew had argued that males who were raped in prison by other males were gay, as well as suggesting that conversion therapy works.
For the latter point, I find that many of the positions held by these activists contradict other positions they hold, and the response to people pointing this out tends to be to simply respond with attacks rather than explanations. I think the concept of trans-racial individuals is an example of this: reasoning through it myself, I don't see a large difference between them, but trans advocates will attack one position while supporting the other.
Another example is changing rooms. There was controversy a while ago about a MtF trans individual who had male anatomy using the women's changing room, and the women in the room being offended by it. While I understand that the trans individual was more comfortable using that room, the insistence that the needs of this minority should be catered to strikes me as hypocritical. Women also have a history of persecution, why is their comfort less important? Why does a trans person have more of a right to be comfortable than, say, a female victim of sexual assault who would be genuinely triggered by the genitals of the opposite sex?