+After observing this kind of pattern in the world, it's a good idea to do surveys to get some numbers and data to help learn more about what's going on with the pattern. There's clearly a thing here, but is the thing being generated by a visible minority, or is it actually a majority? When [82% of /r/MtF users say Yes to "Did you have a gender/body swap/transformation "fetish" (or similar) before you realised you were trans?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF/comments/89nw0w/did_you_have_a_genderbody_swaptransformation/), that makes me think it's a majority.
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+When you pose a superficially similar-sounding question to a different group, are you measuring the same real-world phenomenon in that other group? Maybe, but I think this is nonobvious.
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+And it contexts where it's not politically inconvenient for him, Scott Alexander agrees with me: he wrote about this methodological issue in ["My IRB Nightmare"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/), expressing skepticism about a screening test for bipolar disorder: