The New York Times has published a new investigative report on the pediatric gender clinic at Washington University in St. Louis, home of case-manager-turned-whistleblower Jamie Reed. Last February, Reed alleged in The Free Press that her former clinic was harming adolescents with invasive and unnecessary treatments. “What’s happening to children,” she said, “is medically and morally appalling.”

Reed tried to raise her concerns with her superiors at Washington University but was shut down. She decided to file a sworn affidavit about the medical abuses she witnessed with the Missouri attorney general, an action that triggered a multiagency investigation that remains ongoing.

The Times’s article represents the first attempt by a major left-of-center newspaper to corroborate Reed’s claims. The author, Azeen Ghorayshi, says that “some of Ms. Reed’s claims could not be confirmed” and that “at least one of her claims included factual inaccuracies.” On the whole, however, Ghorayshi corroborates much of what Reed has said about her former clinic. Most important is the clinic’s disregard for clear “red flags.” Adolescents with serious mental health problems were prescribed puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones when they should have received mental health support.

Ghorayshi and the Times deserve credit for a well-researched article. Ghorayshi does a good job allowing different sides in the controversy to be heard. Her discussion of the medical research, though not the focus of her article, is refreshingly honest and accurate. Considering the pressure exerted on the Times and its reporters by transgender advocacy organizations like GLAAD to toe the ideological line, it takes courage to write a piece as rigorous and as thoughtful as this one.