In his groundbreaking book, “Private Truths, Public Lies,” political scientist Timur Kuran attacks a vexing question: How can official orthodoxies persist for so long even when few people believe them?

I read that book hungrily during the “Great Awokening,” trying to understand why so many institutions quickly abandoned their liberal commitments for radical social justice politics — and reread it as the Trump administration sought to impose its own brand of public truth on issues such as free speech. That proved to be excellent preparation for what happened recently.

A jury on Jan. 30 awarded $2 million in damages to a woman who sued her psychologist and plastic surgeon for their role in a “gender-affirming” mastectomy she got when she was 16. This verdict does not necessarily implicate all such surgeries. Erica Anderson, a former president of the U.S. Professional Association for Transgender Health, testified for the plaintiff, whose psychologist she said was “wholly unqualified, failed to observe standards of care and simply blew it.” But the verdict puts practitioners on notice that there are risks to mindlessly affirming.

On Tuesday, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons issued a position paper recommending waiting until age 19 to perform transition surgeries, saying “there is insufficient evidence demonstrating a favorable risk-benefit ratio for the pathway of gender-related endocrine and surgical interventions in children and........

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