She was critical of a contentious PwC report into the cost of a plebiscite on same-sex marriage for relying on dodgy figures, but conservative commentator Miranda Devine has been caught trying to pass off a discredited medical association’s claims about transgender people to make her latest argument against equality.

In March, Devine accused PwC of engaging in “advocacy masquerading as accountancy” in releasing a study claiming that a plebiscite would cost the Australian economy close to half a billion dollars, but she is more than happy to look to the expertise of others engaging in their own advocacy masquerading as medical expertise when it suits her agenda.

In this week’s attack on transgender people, Devine quoted the American College of Pediatricians as stating that “gender ideology harms children”:

“The three doctors who authored the statement, college president Michelle Cretella, paediatric endocrinologist Quentin Van Meter, and Paul McHugh, Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School, say that human sexuality is ‘binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species’.”

The statement Devine is referring to was published in March and claims that there’s just a male sex and a female sex, and anyone who believes “that he or she is something they are not is, at best … confused”. It all sounds very legitimate until you look into who the American College of Pediatricians are: a group of somewhere between 60 and 200 socially conservative healthcare workers.

ACP has a name that sounds quite close to the actual peak body for paediatricians in the United States, the 60,000-member professional group the American Academy of Pediatrics. ACP was formed in opposition to the AAP and publishes false and discredited claims about LGBT people, including attempting to link homosexuality to paedophilia, and pushing ex-gay therapy.

As Think Progress noted last month, the claims ACP has made about transgender mental health is the complete opposite from what the much more reputable 36,000-member American Psychiatric Association says, which is that gender nonconformity is not considered a mental disorder.

“The fact such a self-evident truth could appear bold tells you what truly delusional times we live in,” Devine claimed. Well, Miranda, at least some of us are delusional …