More than 4,000 people have signed a petition supporting a Brown University social scientist who is under fire from activists and her own university for research raising questions about whether social factors, rather than biological ones, could influence young adults’ transgender identities.

Lisa Littman, an Assistant Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences, in a peer-reviewed published study based on anonymous survey responses from 250 parents of teens and young adults who had abruptly expressed gender dysphoria, concluded that “further research” is needed to determine if social factors are contributing to the dramatic increase in “rapid-onset gender dysphoria.”