keesan@bbncca.ARPA (Morris Keesan) (10/03/84)
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Here's a summary of an interesting article in this week's (9/29/84)
SCIENCE NEWS, with the somewhat sensational headline "Hormone markers for
homosexuality?"
It seems that a group of researchers at SUNY Stony Brook "have found
what they believe may prove to be a physical correlate to homosexual
behavior." The study "suggests that biological markers for sexual orientation
may exist." The work "does not address the question of what causes
homosexuality." The study was reported in the September 28 SCIENCE.
"There's a good possibility there's a biological element involved with
sexual orientation, but it's a long way from saying that it's determined
biologically," says one of the authors of the report.
The researchers studied 17 straight men, 14 gay men, and 12 straight
women, and monitored the responses to injections of estrogen. In women,
this causes a slight drop and then a sharp rise in the amount of
luteinizing hormone (LH) in the body. This occurs naturally as part of a
woman's monthly hormonal cycle.
The results: four days after the injection, the women's levels of LH were
200 percent of their baseline values, the heterosexual men averaged 88%, and
the homosexual men averaged 138% of baseline. "Although not all the homosexual
men studied showed an enhanced response of LH to estrogen compared to the
heterosexul men, significantly more did." [Note that this means that the
average levels in those WITH the enhanced response were HIGHER than 138%.]
The SCIENCE NEWS article then goes on to mention some responses to this
report, and theorizing by, other members of the research community.
A total population of 43 subjects seems a little low for any statistical
significance, and one is puzzled by the omission of homosexual women from the
study, but it's interesting food for thought, anyway.
--
Morris M. Keesan
{decvax,linus,ihnp4,wivax,wjh12,ima}!bbncca!keesan
keesan @ BBN-UNIX.ARPAmanis@ubc-vision.CDN (Vincent Manis) (10/11/84)
This is another example of silly science: a correlative study using Organization: UBC Vision, Vancouver, B.C., Canada Lines: 19 ill-defined metrics. First, I'm not clear why anybody would care about differential hormone response for people of different sexual orientations; second, the sample group was small and there was apparently some sort of systemic sampling bias. Result? A ``significant'' result which although unconfirmed suggests the need for further research and certainly further funding. Reminds me all too much of Cyril Burt's IQ measurements, which (in the studies which weren't faked) purported to prove that identical twins had the same IQ, regardless of environmental differences. Turns out that Burt's IQ metric was so vague that one has no way of validating it. As I believe that sexual preference has both environmental and congenital components (as do most behaviours), I have little or no patience with studies that attempt to find causes. Why not attempt to correlate hormone response with socioeconomic status, political views, or favourite programming language? I have my own theories about Cobol programming.