In Jon Stewart's recent interview, the Arkansas AG claimed that 98% of trans kids stop being trans. Stewart called it a "made-up" number. As you tweeted: https://twitter.com/JuliaSerano/status/1578517931557675008

I share his certainty that it's made-up. My question is whether this made-up number has ever appeared in print, i.e., what's the origin story of this fake statistic?

I found a 2016 review of 10 studies about kids who stop being trans. The upper limit (i.e., one of the 10 studies) said 98%. So, I think that's where the number comes from. https://doi.org/10.3109/09540261.2015.1115754

I can't read the paper itself because I don't have an institutional login. Free JSTOR isn't doing it for me. So, without being able to read the paper, I still don't know where the 98% number came from, who came up with it, or even what year that study was done, other than that someone was talking about it in 2016. I mention it to you in case you'd like to take a look.