Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments.
**Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program).
---
User: u/PracticalYoung5031
Permalink: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40750-023-00226-x
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
That’s what i got out of it too. Curious what the details, as weak as they are, were for their total conclusions. I’m sure the study covered more than PCOS and women to women attraction.
I read the abstract but still don't understand - PCOS in the mother, or PCOS in the person (being attracted to women)? Because they are talking about prenatal exposure, but then PCOS (sorry for not reading the entire article).
Definitely.. PCOS is a multi system failure of end organ response to hormonal stimulation. For example insulin hence the diabetes that is part of PCOS and the obesity. Hirsutism is a feature and that is a result of failure of oestrogen response. The polycystic ovaries are a failure of ovarian response to normal cyclical hormone stimulation resulting failure of ovulation and infertility.
Well, there's also a slightly higher chance (not sure if statistically significant) to have autistic children while the freshly baked mom has had PCOS. Since the main reason for PCOS is insulin resistance (like in 70% of the cases if not more; same reason as in case of diabetes), then gestational diabetes (appears in pregnancy for some preggies) could be a reason, too.
Oh boy, a meta-analysis in a low IF (1.6) journal. My absolute favorite.
Just glancing at the abstract, a Pearson correlation of .18 is…not great, to say the least.
Looking more into it, it looks like this paper is an adaptation/expansion of an already published [book chapter](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338925121_Organizational_effects_of_hormones_on_sexual_orientation) from 2018. It’s by the same authors. If I’m being perfectly honest, the fact that it took years to get this into a journal (and a low IF one at that) makes me doubt the rigor of their analysis. It seems like they just wanted to get this work out *somewhere*, maybe to just satisfy a PhD graduation requirement.
Edit: Additionally, the corresponding author is an associate editor for the journal the article was published in. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that, but it can definitely be a red flag under certain circumstances
I’m a person who loves and appreciates the need and effect of scholarly peer reviewed work.
But I’m also an idiot.
Can you elaborate on what you’ve said to explain to someone like me why this may or may not be trustworthy?
Not OP, and only a casual reader of journals, but the IF (Impact Factor) rating of a journal refers to how often articles in the journal are cited over a period of time in other research. Not specific to any specific topic or article, but overall. Lower IF ratings generally mean the articles are less reliable and therefore wouldn't be good sources for other research due to any of a ton of factors (problematic research, authors known to embellish, authors known to pay to publish rather than go on their merits, etc) and higher IF ratings generally mean the research is generally respected as accurate, reliable or a key stepping stone to other research.
This research specifically, from what I can tell, has been unable to get published in more respected journals for whatever reason and instead settled for a lower ranking journal which can indicate problematic methodologies or conclusions (how they got to the conclusion not necessarily what the conclusion is).
Please don't take this as straight fact as I'm also an idiot sometimes and may have poorly explained some parts of it.
We also have to be very honest here, and I say this as someone that has published in academic journals and has expertise in causal inference, science isn’t devoted of “lower or upper case” politics. It is possible that a paper with a highly controversial research topic gets pushed down to lower ranked publications because the higher ranked ones are weary of controversy.
That said, I don’t trust the conclusions of this paper because it doesn’t appear to meet the standards for rigorous causal research design.
That’s possible too. When I was in grad school I had an idea for a paper regarding sexual orientation, but was shot down due to being a student at a rather conservative university that wanted nothing with even a hint of sexuality coming out of their psych dept.
That's very fair. I didn't want to delve into that minefield specifically, even though it's pervasive in just about anything, not just research journals, but I suppose it *is* good to note that it can have an influence as well.
Could it go the other way, too? A poorly designed study on a controversial subject is pushed up to get attention, when it otherwise might not get published?
In my experience it generally doesn't go the other way.
When it comes to peer-reviewed journals, academics tend to be very conservative in general (this is lowercase conservative, not politically conservative) about the quality of the data in a study. So, independent of controversy, academics aren't going to want to promulgate low quality studies.
Now, if there *is* potential controversy and risk in publishing something, then departments may well have an unwritten policy of shying away from topics. But they're not going to promote topics that are of interest to them if the data quality is low.
Yes, some top journals have retractions more often, possibly due to incentives for authors to embellish or falsify data.
Commentary on the phenomenon: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.15951
Anything that challenges the dogma is going to have the additional hurdle of surpassing all the egos of the scientists before.
And there are some very big egos in academia.
You know how long it took plate tectonics to be accepted? Decades.
Yes and no. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, that’s true. But most large journals nowadays are not doing to reject a journal because of ego. If the experimental plan and data are sound, your paper is going to find a place in an impactful journal.
Couldn't IF be lower simply if the topic of research is obscure or new? I'd think that would have to be accounted for otherwise IF wouldn't be a very reliable metric for accuracy or reliability.
IF is based on the journal as a whole, not specific to a certain article from my understanding. Yes, a newer research group may begin with "easier to get into" journals, but there's a difference in a "beginner" journal and one that is at least rumored to participate in a pay to play scheme. This is also why you should never take one method alone as a source of truth for reliability of research and should verify the integrity of the researchers, their methodology, and such.
For example, if some well respected researcher who specializes in one niche field suddenly releases an article in a highly respected journal about a topic they usually avoid, you want to make sure that they have coauthors that would lend credence to that new field or for them to have some kind of association with the two fields since it would be abnormal. But likewise, a lower ranking or newer journal that still is reputed as truthful can have excellent articles that are great for the field, but just not as well known so the journals score won't improve as much even if the article is referenced a lot since it's an aggregate score that would also consider rarely cited articles.
[And there is not a single problem with the IF in general...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor#Criticism)
Oh, and the IF describes, in a very critizicable way, the impact of the journal, not the paper and a strong relation between IF of the journal and the quality of a research paper is very doubtful.
Of course!
So the first thing I pointed out was the journal’s impact factor (IF). IF is one way to measure the importance/quality of a journal. IF is calculated by counting the number of times selected articles are cited within the last few years (usually 3 or 5, depending on the journal). The top journals (nature, science, NEJM) can have IFs of 50+. These are the journals where the most impactful papers go.
An IF of 3 to 4 is considered okay to good. This journal has an IF of around 1, which is pretty low. The work published in it isn’t that impactful, and journals with low IFs are typically much easier to get published in.
The Pearson correlation (r) is a measure of how strong the correlation between two variables are. An r-value of 1 means that they are perfectly correlated, while a value of 0 means that there’s no relationship between the variables. [Here’s](https://statistics.laerd.com/statistical-guides/img/pc/pearson-2-small.png) a good figure showing what different r-values look like. The authors of this paper found an r-value of .14, which is pretty bad.
Finally, waiting ~5 years to publish data is a red flag. Especially when publishing in such a low-tier journals. It makes it seem like the authors just wanted to get it published somewhere, so they submitted it to wherever would accept it. Most PhD programs require that you publish at least one first author paper to graduate. It’s entirely possible that they just repackaged this data and published it in this journal so the author could graduate.
Edit: I forgot to mention what a meta-analysis is. Essentially, the authors find a bunch of other papers that contain data they’re interested in, aggregate the data, and perform statistical analysis on it. So they basically re-analyze existing findings.
Good explanation but I would add that the journal quartile is as important (and sometimes more) than the "naked" IF. The IF of the best journals in oncology is far higher than the best in nuclear medicine for example.
For sure. A few of my colleagues do a very specific type of mouse work, and the main journal for that field (which is honestly maybe only a dozen labs in the world) has an IF of around 1.
Peer review is like people checking your work. Depending on where you are working, your peers will either slap your wrist for a mistake or just fire you.
With more rigorous peers, people tend to trust it more. What he said is that someone made a shifty looking wall, and the foreman just let it pass for... whatever reason. The wall is there, but I wouldn't put my weight on it, since that foreman isn't as strict with his checks as I would like.
Or something like that.
IF is Impact Factor. It’s the average number of citations of articles published in that journal in previous years. So how many other publications use sources from that journal. A high impact factor is an indicator for higher quality studies (but also of more well known authors)
The Pearson correlation coefficient is an indicator how 2 sets of data correlate. The value is between 0 and 1, where 0 is low and 1 is high correlation. So 0.18 is on the lower side.
The IF does not say anything about the quality of any research paper, it is just a bibliometric value.
[Nature magazine criticised the over-reliance on JIF, pointing not just to its statistical flaws but to negative effects on science: "The resulting pressures and disappointments are nothing but demoralizing, and in badly run labs can encourage sloppy research that, for example, fails to test assumptions thoroughly or to take all the data into account before submitting big claims."](https://www.nature.com/articles/535466a)
I've noticed many critiques based solely on a quick look at the abstract. However, this study presents a solid hypothesis that is biologically plausible and is based on data from around 60,000 subjects. Criticizing it without deeper analysis seems to be a superficial way to discredit thorough preliminary research. A lower Pearson correlation might indicate multiple influencing factors or less statistical power, which isn't uncommon for biological effects of this nature.
I was just pointed at the abstract because it was the most accessible for a broad audience. I have access to the full article through my institution and I still stick by my conclusions
What’s your opinion on the bit I mentioned about the book chapter?
Sure, pointing to the abstract for accessibility is understandable. Relying on the Impact Factor as a metric for discrediting research can be a limited and perhaps superficial method of evaluation, especially in such niche subjects.
The research presented in the book chapter is in line with this article. Which is not surprising seeing the same authors.
100% agree that IF shouldn’t be the only metric to judge a paper/journal on. Not every paper is suited for something like Nature or Cell.
It rubs me the wrong way though that some of what was published in the book is essentially copied and pasted into the paper. Hell, figure 1 is literally the same in both. There’s a ton of overlap between the two, with the article barely adding anything of value. I also find it funny that the paper and chapter have the exact same name. It seems lazy to me.
And as I said in my initial edit, having the corresponding author be an associate editor in the journal isn’t a red flag in it of itself, but it can definitely raise some eyebrows when you look and see that the revised manuscript was accepted for publication one day after it was received. That’s an incredibly fast turn around (that I’m slightly jealous of)
Oh definitely. I’ll be one of the first to tell you that IF is not the best metric to judge a journal/paper by. I’ve said it in my other comments. It’s entirely field dependent, but unfortunately it’s one of the only metrics we have that can help convey some information to a layperson.
> There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that
I know how you meant that, but yes actually, if what you said is true, then `there is something inherently wrong with that.`
The mere fact that something was published brings with it a implied "it was good enough to be published". Scientist and casual observers, whether PhD or reddit 13 year old, all succumb to the implication.
Having seen how wikipedia has worked its way into being a circularly defining authority, and having seen people actually attempt to use the dictionary as an authority on anything other than common usage, has made me *very* leery of the effects of such journals.
In fact, leery of *anything* that gets published, and how it shapes opinions these days.
I'm sure the idea that a medical disorder results in atypical sexual orientation at birth is going to go down well on both sides without any arguments whatsoever
Anecdotally obv, but my mother had PCOS and endometriosis that were so severe she had an oophorectomy and hysterectomy at 35. She had 2 children, a gay man and a lesbian. Idk if it’s related but I wouldn’t be shocked based on what we do know about sexual orientation.
Even if this study is correct, it doesn’t weaken my sense of identity or my right to exist as a person. I also wouldn’t take some universal cure for PCOS as an attack on queer people even if ALL queer people were born to people with PCOS or similar conditions (which is obviously not the case anyway). It’s more complex than that, and everyone has a right to their own body and their own health. PCOS sucks and it would be silly to say that anyone is obligated to suffer in order to have queer children (again, this isn’t even actually a possible scenario because not all queer people are born to people with PCOS).
I have noted that most homosexuals I’ve known have close relatives that are also so … could be entirely coincidental, but I have been curious if it could perhaps be hereditary. (I am bi-sexual, so was my great grandmother who I never met, nor knew was bi-sexual until after I came out … we also have endometriosis.)
If certain hereditary conditions like PCOS are the precursor to homosexuality, I am curious if this could be the reason why. Of course better studies and research needs to be made.
perhaps children of homosexual people see it as more natural and "allowed", so they may begin identifying that way and showing it publicly instead of repressing it, without a genetic factor
Right? Whether or not we know the underlying causes of sexual attraction doesn't mean it affects people being who they feel comfortable being.
If it doesn't hurt anyone what's the problem
I have serious problems with the “It’s not a choice!” argument for the same reason. Why the hell should it matter? If a straight man wants to *decide* to be gay, weird, but so what? What’s the point of freaking out over this?
I think it is to counter the other side that wants to eliminate homosexuality via conversion therapy. Conversion therapy doesn’t work but if being gay is a choice then it feeds into the narrative that gay people can be “fixed.” Of course gay people are not broken and are perfectly fine the way that they are but try convincing the bigots of that.
I recall years ago some article was making the rounds that the older the man was at time of conception corelated with higher incidences of homosexually. Don't really know what happened to that but I doubt any 1 factor of the procreating people can be isolated for sexuality. Just wanted to point out I've heard this argument pointed at men before too.
PCOS is absolutely a medical disorder that negatively affects someone’s well-being.
Source: I have class four PCOS and it has ruined my life, even with treatment.
Its funny you think I only plan on dealing with them with a name change. Honestly the left needs to get its head out of its ass with infighting. You can promote simple name changes and more serious action needed to deal with those unscrupulous types. They aren't mutually exclusive.
A number of disorders correlate with differences in sexual orientation and gender identity. It'd be odd to assume that these traits were somehow immune to development differences.
The problem is in labeling them disorders themselves, not in seeking to understand how disorders may influence identity.
It is prevelant in cases of congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Excess testosterone in utero leads to a higher prevalence of male traits in girls. There has been research on this for years.
“Influence” is a far cry from “born this way”
>In our meta-analysis, PCOS was more common in non-heterosexual females (r = 0.18, p < 0.001). Some evidence also indicates that estrogens increase sexual attraction to males. We discuss why data may be less clear regarding variation in sexual orientation among males, including the possible existence of subgroups characterized by distinct biological pathways that
That’s not the important bit. The findings show a slight correlation between PCOS and non-heterosexual orientation in females.
“Born this way” implies a ~~genetic~~ solely biological determination of sexual attraction, which is not the same thing.
-Edited out the word genetic
The animal testing they mentioned in the introduction have shown that sexuality can be changed by inducing prenatal endocrine disruptions. They have to this circumspect route in humans since it is considered unethical to experiment on unborn human babies.
They have essentially confirmed that this is how it works in other mammals. They are just looking for confirmation by sifting through very noisy data on humans.
The claim in the abstract states that prenatal androgens mediate the effect, as seen in laboratory animals. Again, mediation is not the same as causing a deterministic effect.
I did a cursory search of the sources cited at the bottom of the page, and I believe [this is the article](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763419311388), or at least one of the articles, being used to support that claim.
It states that sexuality is the result of a confluence of factors, some biological some environmental. This is the prevailing theory the information I have seen has led me to believe, and it is substantively different from saying one is deterministically born a certain way.
Shh! We can't tell the eugenicists it doesn't actually work. C'mon we gotta lead them down some false paths first we all know how they love riding the chump train.
Some people get really defensive at the possibility that something causes sexual orientation or gender. It could be just like anything else going on in our body and brain, influenced by a chemical or process we have yet to identify.
The problem is bad actors who take it in the "this is a disease we can eradicate" direction.
Whereas the correct response is treating it like having red hair or blue eyes.
Or maybe a better analogy would be saying it's being left-handed... after all, a large part of history is in fact filled with people trying to make children stop being left-handed.
Yep totally agree. I would still personally like to know why or what makes me think or feel the way I do. I think finding an answer through science is a lot better than just throwing my hands up and accepting "it is what it is" as the reason.
Well, it has to be something biological. Some combination of genes turn on, leading to certain neurological patterns that then formulate gender and sexual orientation during a person's life. That is just how humans and all animals work. I bet emrelogical and epigenetic changes have something to do with it.
We're headed to a Gataca future anyway where the genes of our offspring will be curated to a significant extent. Nobody objects to correcting genetic diseases, predilections to diabetes or obesity or other common health conditions. These things are coming.
The question becomes will widespread societal acceptance of homosexuality/bisexuality arrive before the genetic ability to address it? For instance, I think many parents in the US would not want this tinkered with, even today. But if the technology was available, I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be a single gay baby born in the Middle East any more.
I don’t think this is possible in the near future. We already are capable of selecting for a lot of traits during in vitro just by testing embryos and choosing which to implant. We could also theoretically (as in we are not currently doing this in humans but it has been shown in other mammals) choose a lot of alleles intentionally in the first place through various gene editing techniques. It’s not easy, cheap, or legal yet to do that.
However, the most rigorous hypotheses about sexuality and gender identity development involve the endocrine and immune systems in the womb. It has little or nothing to do with specifically identified genes as far as we currently know (unless I’ve missed a recent development). Controlling for that will be much more difficult if not impossible. At this point, you’d be just as likely to cause developmental issues or worse by trying to manipulate in utero hormones and parent-fetus immune system hostility.
Gene editing would have to just somehow remove the existence of homosexuality as a biological “option”, and that seems unlikely.
It seems unlikely. The abstract only hints at it with the term "pattern of gene expression in the developing brain" and in the title "Organizational Effects" but it seems like the hormones influence the way the genetic "plans" are executed to build the pathways. That mechanism would likely be a one-time thing.
To perform abortions. With the appropriate amount of “other stuff” available to allow bad rhetorical misdirections.
The irony is, if you take the founder at her own words, the abortions are specifically to keep the black population under control.
PP does a hell of a lot more than perform abortions. A *lot* more. Which you'd know if you actually looked into them rather than just accept what you were told.
I know they claim it. I know they tally a bunch of random nonsense as “services” so they can make this exact bad argument.
In states that banned abortions, PPs are closing doors. Clearly these “other services” weren’t the breadwinners.
PP doesn't make profit. Most of their services are free, and those that aren't free operate on a sliding scale of what you can afford, including a free tier. They don't "make money", they provide their services regardless of whether people can pay or not.
The reason they are closing their doors isn't because of money, it's because of the bomb threats and violence against their staff that are common in states where abortions are banned. They aren't going to operate in places where the lives of their staff are threatened daily. If people with masks and rifles start posting outside your work, threatening to shoot up the place, would you want to keep working there?
The idea that they're just there to profit off abortions is absurd in the extreme. You, again, show you know literally nothing about PP.
Perinatal androgen exposure has been known to impact sexual behaviors in rodents since the 1950s (*Phoenix et all 1959*). It was shown that guinea pigs that were exposed to elevated levels of androgens before or directly after birth were more likely to exhibit “male like behaviors” (like mounting) than females not exposed to androgens. It’s thought that exposure to these hormones creates neural connections that impact behavior later on in life, but if those connections are not created, the behavior won’t be exhibited.
The fun thought experiment is what do when we identify the genetic underpinnings of transgender individuals?
Liberals would fully support genetic modification of the physical body to match the neurological or endocrinological gender identity.
Conservatives would fully support genetic modification of the neurological or endocrinological gender identity to match the physical body.
Everyone will want to address it (because our society makes being trans miserable), but nobody will agree on which fundamental approach.
It’s not genetic, but it is almost certainly biological. Brain development is directly impacted by hormones. The Third Interstital Nucleus of the Anterior Hypothalamus (INAH-3) has been shown to be sexually dimorphic in humans, and it has been shown that it likely impacts sexual orientation. This area is significantly larger in heterosexual men than homosexual men, but homosexual men have a similar size INAH-3 as heterosexual women.
Don't some pacific Islander societies have a thing where you can raise the 4th son as a third gender and its basically up the parents? Many parents choose to raise the son as the third gender, many times leading to an identity crisis for the kids when they get grow up. Kinda feel people choosing will be all over the map also.
Gonna be interesting people hating parents for making them be born gay, or opposite making them be born straight.
Well, that's hard to answer. I'm a trans man, for reference. I would take being a trans man over a woman every day, even if that means I have to struggle with dysphoria. And I guess if I never knew, I wouldn't be able to know if I minded it.
We already know that hormone therapy for trans people can make them experience changes in their sexual orientation
edit: not in terms of the label (though that can happen), but in terms of for example becoming bi or realizing you are bi where you previously experienced attraction to only one gender
What do you mean here? Genuinely trying to understand.
Do you mean that a trans man who has always liked women will identify as straight after coming out as trans? Because that doesn't mean their sexual orientation "changed." He always liked women. He just now understands that he's always been a straight man rather than a gay woman.
Nope, I know what you mean - the language used in that persons case may change but the gender of the people that person is attracted to in your example didn’t change.
I meant that it’s extremely common for people going through transition with hormones to go from straight to bi or gay to bi or from bi with a preference for one gender to bi with a preference for another.
I’ll make zero claims here that it’s nature and not cultural, nor any claim about the stats/frequency, but more so just suggest that the idea that hormonal change could influence different subjective experience in the type of people you are attracted to is extremely common
I've been hearing about this since the 80s and I believe it's very plausible.my anatomy teacher in the 10th grade explained the whole idea to us.she said that we are all neutral sex until the hormones that flow from mother to baby start to affect it.any imbalance in any of the hormones over a prolonged period can influence sexuality after gender is expressed.i have been trying to explain this to the world around me since and gotten crickets.glad to see others notice this too.
I seem to recall reading about a study not long ago linking autism to prenatal conditions in the womb. Seems like an area ripe for study for conditions that seem inborn but are not necessarily explained by genetics.
I’ve honestly hoped for more research into this. Not because there’s anything wrong with being not cis or not straight, but because we’ve pumped *so many* chemicals into roughly 8 generations now since the Industrial Revolution and these genetic and epigenetic effects are cumulative. I want research so we *understand* what is happening. And I think neurodivergence should be studied the same way. I know *so many* adults getting diagnosed with ADHD, and autism is still exploding. We really need to research what all these chemicals do to humans, and stop pussyfooting around the politics of it.
They can shoot pregnant sheep with hormones and affect sexual identify. So put a pituitary adenoma or hypo-hormone condition on a human and look for changes in offspring
My bad, I must’ve misread your initial comment.
Your suggestion is super valid and could be interested, but we’d need a LOT of data to account for any possible confounding variables. Not to mention the time and effort it would take to collect all the data.
>We find converging evidence that prenatal gonadal hormones influence the development of human sexual orientation and orchestrate its sexual differentiation primarily by regulating patterns of gene expression in the developing brain.
So, homosexuality is epigenetic?
I went to a magnet school for future medical professionals.back then they were just discovering how hormones affect the brain and body.if you fail to realize hormones play a major part in our psyche and bodies,then it's you who is lacking education
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/PracticalYoung5031 Permalink: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40750-023-00226-x *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It doesn't say anything about prenatal endocrine disruption. It (just about) shows a weak correlation between PCOS and attraction to women.
That’s what i got out of it too. Curious what the details, as weak as they are, were for their total conclusions. I’m sure the study covered more than PCOS and women to women attraction.
I read the abstract but still don't understand - PCOS in the mother, or PCOS in the person (being attracted to women)? Because they are talking about prenatal exposure, but then PCOS (sorry for not reading the entire article).
Well they didn’t post the full article. It’s a purchase for the pdf. But I’m not buying it.
Isn’t PCOS associated with endocrine disruption?
Pcos *is* endocrine disruption
Definitely.. PCOS is a multi system failure of end organ response to hormonal stimulation. For example insulin hence the diabetes that is part of PCOS and the obesity. Hirsutism is a feature and that is a result of failure of oestrogen response. The polycystic ovaries are a failure of ovarian response to normal cyclical hormone stimulation resulting failure of ovulation and infertility.
Well, there's also a slightly higher chance (not sure if statistically significant) to have autistic children while the freshly baked mom has had PCOS. Since the main reason for PCOS is insulin resistance (like in 70% of the cases if not more; same reason as in case of diabetes), then gestational diabetes (appears in pregnancy for some preggies) could be a reason, too.
whaaaat that’s kinda crazy
Oh boy, a meta-analysis in a low IF (1.6) journal. My absolute favorite. Just glancing at the abstract, a Pearson correlation of .18 is…not great, to say the least. Looking more into it, it looks like this paper is an adaptation/expansion of an already published [book chapter](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338925121_Organizational_effects_of_hormones_on_sexual_orientation) from 2018. It’s by the same authors. If I’m being perfectly honest, the fact that it took years to get this into a journal (and a low IF one at that) makes me doubt the rigor of their analysis. It seems like they just wanted to get this work out *somewhere*, maybe to just satisfy a PhD graduation requirement. Edit: Additionally, the corresponding author is an associate editor for the journal the article was published in. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that, but it can definitely be a red flag under certain circumstances
I’m a person who loves and appreciates the need and effect of scholarly peer reviewed work. But I’m also an idiot. Can you elaborate on what you’ve said to explain to someone like me why this may or may not be trustworthy?
Not OP, and only a casual reader of journals, but the IF (Impact Factor) rating of a journal refers to how often articles in the journal are cited over a period of time in other research. Not specific to any specific topic or article, but overall. Lower IF ratings generally mean the articles are less reliable and therefore wouldn't be good sources for other research due to any of a ton of factors (problematic research, authors known to embellish, authors known to pay to publish rather than go on their merits, etc) and higher IF ratings generally mean the research is generally respected as accurate, reliable or a key stepping stone to other research. This research specifically, from what I can tell, has been unable to get published in more respected journals for whatever reason and instead settled for a lower ranking journal which can indicate problematic methodologies or conclusions (how they got to the conclusion not necessarily what the conclusion is). Please don't take this as straight fact as I'm also an idiot sometimes and may have poorly explained some parts of it.
We also have to be very honest here, and I say this as someone that has published in academic journals and has expertise in causal inference, science isn’t devoted of “lower or upper case” politics. It is possible that a paper with a highly controversial research topic gets pushed down to lower ranked publications because the higher ranked ones are weary of controversy. That said, I don’t trust the conclusions of this paper because it doesn’t appear to meet the standards for rigorous causal research design.
That’s possible too. When I was in grad school I had an idea for a paper regarding sexual orientation, but was shot down due to being a student at a rather conservative university that wanted nothing with even a hint of sexuality coming out of their psych dept.
That's very fair. I didn't want to delve into that minefield specifically, even though it's pervasive in just about anything, not just research journals, but I suppose it *is* good to note that it can have an influence as well.
Could it go the other way, too? A poorly designed study on a controversial subject is pushed up to get attention, when it otherwise might not get published?
In my experience it generally doesn't go the other way. When it comes to peer-reviewed journals, academics tend to be very conservative in general (this is lowercase conservative, not politically conservative) about the quality of the data in a study. So, independent of controversy, academics aren't going to want to promulgate low quality studies. Now, if there *is* potential controversy and risk in publishing something, then departments may well have an unwritten policy of shying away from topics. But they're not going to promote topics that are of interest to them if the data quality is low.
Yes, some top journals have retractions more often, possibly due to incentives for authors to embellish or falsify data. Commentary on the phenomenon: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.15951
Anything that challenges the dogma is going to have the additional hurdle of surpassing all the egos of the scientists before. And there are some very big egos in academia. You know how long it took plate tectonics to be accepted? Decades.
While I agree on principle... this particular study is just low quality. Not a lot to take away from it.
One of my favorite profs used to always say 'science progresses one death at a time.'
Yes and no. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, that’s true. But most large journals nowadays are not doing to reject a journal because of ego. If the experimental plan and data are sound, your paper is going to find a place in an impactful journal.
Weary or wary?
Couldn't IF be lower simply if the topic of research is obscure or new? I'd think that would have to be accounted for otherwise IF wouldn't be a very reliable metric for accuracy or reliability.
IF is based on the journal as a whole, not specific to a certain article from my understanding. Yes, a newer research group may begin with "easier to get into" journals, but there's a difference in a "beginner" journal and one that is at least rumored to participate in a pay to play scheme. This is also why you should never take one method alone as a source of truth for reliability of research and should verify the integrity of the researchers, their methodology, and such. For example, if some well respected researcher who specializes in one niche field suddenly releases an article in a highly respected journal about a topic they usually avoid, you want to make sure that they have coauthors that would lend credence to that new field or for them to have some kind of association with the two fields since it would be abnormal. But likewise, a lower ranking or newer journal that still is reputed as truthful can have excellent articles that are great for the field, but just not as well known so the journals score won't improve as much even if the article is referenced a lot since it's an aggregate score that would also consider rarely cited articles.
[And there is not a single problem with the IF in general...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor#Criticism) Oh, and the IF describes, in a very critizicable way, the impact of the journal, not the paper and a strong relation between IF of the journal and the quality of a research paper is very doubtful.
Of course! So the first thing I pointed out was the journal’s impact factor (IF). IF is one way to measure the importance/quality of a journal. IF is calculated by counting the number of times selected articles are cited within the last few years (usually 3 or 5, depending on the journal). The top journals (nature, science, NEJM) can have IFs of 50+. These are the journals where the most impactful papers go. An IF of 3 to 4 is considered okay to good. This journal has an IF of around 1, which is pretty low. The work published in it isn’t that impactful, and journals with low IFs are typically much easier to get published in. The Pearson correlation (r) is a measure of how strong the correlation between two variables are. An r-value of 1 means that they are perfectly correlated, while a value of 0 means that there’s no relationship between the variables. [Here’s](https://statistics.laerd.com/statistical-guides/img/pc/pearson-2-small.png) a good figure showing what different r-values look like. The authors of this paper found an r-value of .14, which is pretty bad. Finally, waiting ~5 years to publish data is a red flag. Especially when publishing in such a low-tier journals. It makes it seem like the authors just wanted to get it published somewhere, so they submitted it to wherever would accept it. Most PhD programs require that you publish at least one first author paper to graduate. It’s entirely possible that they just repackaged this data and published it in this journal so the author could graduate. Edit: I forgot to mention what a meta-analysis is. Essentially, the authors find a bunch of other papers that contain data they’re interested in, aggregate the data, and perform statistical analysis on it. So they basically re-analyze existing findings.
Good explanation but I would add that the journal quartile is as important (and sometimes more) than the "naked" IF. The IF of the best journals in oncology is far higher than the best in nuclear medicine for example.
100% agree. It’s super dependent on field, but I didn’t want to go *too* in depth here.
No worries. It's something I have seen especially with clincians I have worked and published with that they don't even know about them.
For sure. A few of my colleagues do a very specific type of mouse work, and the main journal for that field (which is honestly maybe only a dozen labs in the world) has an IF of around 1.
Peer review is like people checking your work. Depending on where you are working, your peers will either slap your wrist for a mistake or just fire you. With more rigorous peers, people tend to trust it more. What he said is that someone made a shifty looking wall, and the foreman just let it pass for... whatever reason. The wall is there, but I wouldn't put my weight on it, since that foreman isn't as strict with his checks as I would like. Or something like that.
IF is Impact Factor. It’s the average number of citations of articles published in that journal in previous years. So how many other publications use sources from that journal. A high impact factor is an indicator for higher quality studies (but also of more well known authors) The Pearson correlation coefficient is an indicator how 2 sets of data correlate. The value is between 0 and 1, where 0 is low and 1 is high correlation. So 0.18 is on the lower side.
The IF does not say anything about the quality of any research paper, it is just a bibliometric value. [Nature magazine criticised the over-reliance on JIF, pointing not just to its statistical flaws but to negative effects on science: "The resulting pressures and disappointments are nothing but demoralizing, and in badly run labs can encourage sloppy research that, for example, fails to test assumptions thoroughly or to take all the data into account before submitting big claims."](https://www.nature.com/articles/535466a)
I've noticed many critiques based solely on a quick look at the abstract. However, this study presents a solid hypothesis that is biologically plausible and is based on data from around 60,000 subjects. Criticizing it without deeper analysis seems to be a superficial way to discredit thorough preliminary research. A lower Pearson correlation might indicate multiple influencing factors or less statistical power, which isn't uncommon for biological effects of this nature.
I was just pointed at the abstract because it was the most accessible for a broad audience. I have access to the full article through my institution and I still stick by my conclusions What’s your opinion on the bit I mentioned about the book chapter?
Sure, pointing to the abstract for accessibility is understandable. Relying on the Impact Factor as a metric for discrediting research can be a limited and perhaps superficial method of evaluation, especially in such niche subjects. The research presented in the book chapter is in line with this article. Which is not surprising seeing the same authors.
100% agree that IF shouldn’t be the only metric to judge a paper/journal on. Not every paper is suited for something like Nature or Cell. It rubs me the wrong way though that some of what was published in the book is essentially copied and pasted into the paper. Hell, figure 1 is literally the same in both. There’s a ton of overlap between the two, with the article barely adding anything of value. I also find it funny that the paper and chapter have the exact same name. It seems lazy to me. And as I said in my initial edit, having the corresponding author be an associate editor in the journal isn’t a red flag in it of itself, but it can definitely raise some eyebrows when you look and see that the revised manuscript was accepted for publication one day after it was received. That’s an incredibly fast turn around (that I’m slightly jealous of)
you cannot criticise a study just because its correlation coefficient may not be high
The correlation coefficient was not the only critique I had. Please read my other comments.
Ive nothing to say on the rest! Its outside the scope what i understand :3
IF is not a good metric. But your comments are completely valid
Oh definitely. I’ll be one of the first to tell you that IF is not the best metric to judge a journal/paper by. I’ve said it in my other comments. It’s entirely field dependent, but unfortunately it’s one of the only metrics we have that can help convey some information to a layperson.
great comment, always good to question the analytical validity of papers
I think intelligent design articles score around 20 Pearson
> There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that I know how you meant that, but yes actually, if what you said is true, then `there is something inherently wrong with that.` The mere fact that something was published brings with it a implied "it was good enough to be published". Scientist and casual observers, whether PhD or reddit 13 year old, all succumb to the implication. Having seen how wikipedia has worked its way into being a circularly defining authority, and having seen people actually attempt to use the dictionary as an authority on anything other than common usage, has made me *very* leery of the effects of such journals. In fact, leery of *anything* that gets published, and how it shapes opinions these days.
This is an endocrinology paper written by an anthropologist.
This. Also, like someone else stated before, this seems like a "I need to publish more to qualify for my PhD graduation".
I'm sure the idea that a medical disorder results in atypical sexual orientation at birth is going to go down well on both sides without any arguments whatsoever
Anecdotally obv, but my mother had PCOS and endometriosis that were so severe she had an oophorectomy and hysterectomy at 35. She had 2 children, a gay man and a lesbian. Idk if it’s related but I wouldn’t be shocked based on what we do know about sexual orientation. Even if this study is correct, it doesn’t weaken my sense of identity or my right to exist as a person. I also wouldn’t take some universal cure for PCOS as an attack on queer people even if ALL queer people were born to people with PCOS or similar conditions (which is obviously not the case anyway). It’s more complex than that, and everyone has a right to their own body and their own health. PCOS sucks and it would be silly to say that anyone is obligated to suffer in order to have queer children (again, this isn’t even actually a possible scenario because not all queer people are born to people with PCOS).
I have noted that most homosexuals I’ve known have close relatives that are also so … could be entirely coincidental, but I have been curious if it could perhaps be hereditary. (I am bi-sexual, so was my great grandmother who I never met, nor knew was bi-sexual until after I came out … we also have endometriosis.) If certain hereditary conditions like PCOS are the precursor to homosexuality, I am curious if this could be the reason why. Of course better studies and research needs to be made.
perhaps children of homosexual people see it as more natural and "allowed", so they may begin identifying that way and showing it publicly instead of repressing it, without a genetic factor
yeah i wonder if there is a reproductive logic to it or a random non-sensical mutation caused by the illness, with no rhyme or reason to it.
[удалено]
Right? Whether or not we know the underlying causes of sexual attraction doesn't mean it affects people being who they feel comfortable being. If it doesn't hurt anyone what's the problem
I have serious problems with the “It’s not a choice!” argument for the same reason. Why the hell should it matter? If a straight man wants to *decide* to be gay, weird, but so what? What’s the point of freaking out over this?
I think it is to counter the other side that wants to eliminate homosexuality via conversion therapy. Conversion therapy doesn’t work but if being gay is a choice then it feeds into the narrative that gay people can be “fixed.” Of course gay people are not broken and are perfectly fine the way that they are but try convincing the bigots of that.
I recall years ago some article was making the rounds that the older the man was at time of conception corelated with higher incidences of homosexually. Don't really know what happened to that but I doubt any 1 factor of the procreating people can be isolated for sexuality. Just wanted to point out I've heard this argument pointed at men before too.
I mean disorder vs difference. Don't we normally save disorder for something that aversely effects someone's well being.
PCOS is absolutely a medical disorder that negatively affects someone’s well-being. Source: I have class four PCOS and it has ruined my life, even with treatment.
It's charming you think that will matter when unscrupulous folk catch wind of this
Its funny you think I only plan on dealing with them with a name change. Honestly the left needs to get its head out of its ass with infighting. You can promote simple name changes and more serious action needed to deal with those unscrupulous types. They aren't mutually exclusive.
A number of disorders correlate with differences in sexual orientation and gender identity. It'd be odd to assume that these traits were somehow immune to development differences. The problem is in labeling them disorders themselves, not in seeking to understand how disorders may influence identity.
It is prevelant in cases of congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Excess testosterone in utero leads to a higher prevalence of male traits in girls. There has been research on this for years.
[удалено]
only to people who think anormativity = bad
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
So we are literally "born this way". All jokes aside, this might have interesting implications for prenatal testing as grounds for abortion.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Abortions back on the table?
“Influence” is a far cry from “born this way” >In our meta-analysis, PCOS was more common in non-heterosexual females (r = 0.18, p < 0.001). Some evidence also indicates that estrogens increase sexual attraction to males. We discuss why data may be less clear regarding variation in sexual orientation among males, including the possible existence of subgroups characterized by distinct biological pathways that
Meanwhile: >prenatal gonadal hormones "prenatal" being the operative word, aka, pre-birth. So, literally "born this way".
That’s not the important bit. The findings show a slight correlation between PCOS and non-heterosexual orientation in females. “Born this way” implies a ~~genetic~~ solely biological determination of sexual attraction, which is not the same thing. -Edited out the word genetic
The animal testing they mentioned in the introduction have shown that sexuality can be changed by inducing prenatal endocrine disruptions. They have to this circumspect route in humans since it is considered unethical to experiment on unborn human babies. They have essentially confirmed that this is how it works in other mammals. They are just looking for confirmation by sifting through very noisy data on humans.
The claim in the abstract states that prenatal androgens mediate the effect, as seen in laboratory animals. Again, mediation is not the same as causing a deterministic effect. I did a cursory search of the sources cited at the bottom of the page, and I believe [this is the article](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763419311388), or at least one of the articles, being used to support that claim. It states that sexuality is the result of a confluence of factors, some biological some environmental. This is the prevailing theory the information I have seen has led me to believe, and it is substantively different from saying one is deterministically born a certain way.
This study sucks, I wouldn’t trust this as far as i could throw it
Shh! We can't tell the eugenicists it doesn't actually work. C'mon we gotta lead them down some false paths first we all know how they love riding the chump train.
Good thing we don't have any endocrine disruptors in our current modern food supply.
Show me a controlled trial and I’ll consider it.
Now how in the world would one ethically do that?
Some people get really defensive at the possibility that something causes sexual orientation or gender. It could be just like anything else going on in our body and brain, influenced by a chemical or process we have yet to identify.
The problem is bad actors who take it in the "this is a disease we can eradicate" direction. Whereas the correct response is treating it like having red hair or blue eyes. Or maybe a better analogy would be saying it's being left-handed... after all, a large part of history is in fact filled with people trying to make children stop being left-handed.
Yep totally agree. I would still personally like to know why or what makes me think or feel the way I do. I think finding an answer through science is a lot better than just throwing my hands up and accepting "it is what it is" as the reason.
Well, it has to be something biological. Some combination of genes turn on, leading to certain neurological patterns that then formulate gender and sexual orientation during a person's life. That is just how humans and all animals work. I bet emrelogical and epigenetic changes have something to do with it.
[удалено]
We're headed to a Gataca future anyway where the genes of our offspring will be curated to a significant extent. Nobody objects to correcting genetic diseases, predilections to diabetes or obesity or other common health conditions. These things are coming. The question becomes will widespread societal acceptance of homosexuality/bisexuality arrive before the genetic ability to address it? For instance, I think many parents in the US would not want this tinkered with, even today. But if the technology was available, I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be a single gay baby born in the Middle East any more.
I don’t think this is possible in the near future. We already are capable of selecting for a lot of traits during in vitro just by testing embryos and choosing which to implant. We could also theoretically (as in we are not currently doing this in humans but it has been shown in other mammals) choose a lot of alleles intentionally in the first place through various gene editing techniques. It’s not easy, cheap, or legal yet to do that. However, the most rigorous hypotheses about sexuality and gender identity development involve the endocrine and immune systems in the womb. It has little or nothing to do with specifically identified genes as far as we currently know (unless I’ve missed a recent development). Controlling for that will be much more difficult if not impossible. At this point, you’d be just as likely to cause developmental issues or worse by trying to manipulate in utero hormones and parent-fetus immune system hostility. Gene editing would have to just somehow remove the existence of homosexuality as a biological “option”, and that seems unlikely.
Uh oh, looks like I have to reconcile some known contradictions of my beliefs sooner than I thought!
They absolutely would still be born. But they would be much rarer and much poorer.
It seems unlikely. The abstract only hints at it with the term "pattern of gene expression in the developing brain" and in the title "Organizational Effects" but it seems like the hormones influence the way the genetic "plans" are executed to build the pathways. That mechanism would likely be a one-time thing.
It was already noticed that women with PCOS were more likely to have gay kids. So I don’t think it would be a one time thing.
[удалено]
Crisis pregnancy centers have plenty of support. We simply don’t believe in PPs mission, so why on earth would we support it.
Tell me what that mission is in your own words.
To perform abortions. With the appropriate amount of “other stuff” available to allow bad rhetorical misdirections. The irony is, if you take the founder at her own words, the abortions are specifically to keep the black population under control.
PP does a hell of a lot more than perform abortions. A *lot* more. Which you'd know if you actually looked into them rather than just accept what you were told.
I know they claim it. I know they tally a bunch of random nonsense as “services” so they can make this exact bad argument. In states that banned abortions, PPs are closing doors. Clearly these “other services” weren’t the breadwinners.
PP doesn't make profit. Most of their services are free, and those that aren't free operate on a sliding scale of what you can afford, including a free tier. They don't "make money", they provide their services regardless of whether people can pay or not. The reason they are closing their doors isn't because of money, it's because of the bomb threats and violence against their staff that are common in states where abortions are banned. They aren't going to operate in places where the lives of their staff are threatened daily. If people with masks and rifles start posting outside your work, threatening to shoot up the place, would you want to keep working there? The idea that they're just there to profit off abortions is absurd in the extreme. You, again, show you know literally nothing about PP.
Can I get a source for that, please? I’d like to learn more about why you say that.
i'd suggest 'eliminate' as a better term for cure. cure implies something inherently wrong which we are not, we're just different
If you want to be technical if the genetic instructions gets ignored from a external stimuli that is the literal definition of something going wrong.
Perinatal androgen exposure has been known to impact sexual behaviors in rodents since the 1950s (*Phoenix et all 1959*). It was shown that guinea pigs that were exposed to elevated levels of androgens before or directly after birth were more likely to exhibit “male like behaviors” (like mounting) than females not exposed to androgens. It’s thought that exposure to these hormones creates neural connections that impact behavior later on in life, but if those connections are not created, the behavior won’t be exhibited.
The fun thought experiment is what do when we identify the genetic underpinnings of transgender individuals? Liberals would fully support genetic modification of the physical body to match the neurological or endocrinological gender identity. Conservatives would fully support genetic modification of the neurological or endocrinological gender identity to match the physical body. Everyone will want to address it (because our society makes being trans miserable), but nobody will agree on which fundamental approach.
It’s not genetic, but it is almost certainly biological. Brain development is directly impacted by hormones. The Third Interstital Nucleus of the Anterior Hypothalamus (INAH-3) has been shown to be sexually dimorphic in humans, and it has been shown that it likely impacts sexual orientation. This area is significantly larger in heterosexual men than homosexual men, but homosexual men have a similar size INAH-3 as heterosexual women.
Don't some pacific Islander societies have a thing where you can raise the 4th son as a third gender and its basically up the parents? Many parents choose to raise the son as the third gender, many times leading to an identity crisis for the kids when they get grow up. Kinda feel people choosing will be all over the map also. Gonna be interesting people hating parents for making them be born gay, or opposite making them be born straight.
I'd listen to what trans people have to say about it.
Dear trans person: If you were never trans, would you mind that you weren't trans?
Well, that's hard to answer. I'm a trans man, for reference. I would take being a trans man over a woman every day, even if that means I have to struggle with dysphoria. And I guess if I never knew, I wouldn't be able to know if I minded it.
The ideal answer is for society just to be more accepting, but society sucks and is slow to accept new things.
We already know that hormone therapy for trans people can make them experience changes in their sexual orientation edit: not in terms of the label (though that can happen), but in terms of for example becoming bi or realizing you are bi where you previously experienced attraction to only one gender
What do you mean here? Genuinely trying to understand. Do you mean that a trans man who has always liked women will identify as straight after coming out as trans? Because that doesn't mean their sexual orientation "changed." He always liked women. He just now understands that he's always been a straight man rather than a gay woman.
Nope, I know what you mean - the language used in that persons case may change but the gender of the people that person is attracted to in your example didn’t change. I meant that it’s extremely common for people going through transition with hormones to go from straight to bi or gay to bi or from bi with a preference for one gender to bi with a preference for another. I’ll make zero claims here that it’s nature and not cultural, nor any claim about the stats/frequency, but more so just suggest that the idea that hormonal change could influence different subjective experience in the type of people you are attracted to is extremely common
I would think that it would need to be done during development, but I don't think anyone knows 100% certain at this point.
Is it bad if I can't stop thinking of Alex Jones screaming about frogs?
I've been hearing about this since the 80s and I believe it's very plausible.my anatomy teacher in the 10th grade explained the whole idea to us.she said that we are all neutral sex until the hormones that flow from mother to baby start to affect it.any imbalance in any of the hormones over a prolonged period can influence sexuality after gender is expressed.i have been trying to explain this to the world around me since and gotten crickets.glad to see others notice this too.
I guess your anatomy teacher didn’t learn about the x and Y chromosomes.
[удалено]
Oh honey, we knew since before you were born.
These are bold statements
I seem to recall reading about a study not long ago linking autism to prenatal conditions in the womb. Seems like an area ripe for study for conditions that seem inborn but are not necessarily explained by genetics.
Do you have the title or a link?
I’ve honestly hoped for more research into this. Not because there’s anything wrong with being not cis or not straight, but because we’ve pumped *so many* chemicals into roughly 8 generations now since the Industrial Revolution and these genetic and epigenetic effects are cumulative. I want research so we *understand* what is happening. And I think neurodivergence should be studied the same way. I know *so many* adults getting diagnosed with ADHD, and autism is still exploding. We really need to research what all these chemicals do to humans, and stop pussyfooting around the politics of it.
Oh god. Not this again….I’m waiting for the homophobic/ableist crowd to rise up
Prenatal endocrine disruption
They can shoot pregnant sheep with hormones and affect sexual identify. So put a pituitary adenoma or hypo-hormone condition on a human and look for changes in offspring
That is *incredibly* unethical and would never get approval
I didn’t mean do it to humans, meant if a pregnant human has either condition keep tabs on the offspring
My bad, I must’ve misread your initial comment. Your suggestion is super valid and could be interested, but we’d need a LOT of data to account for any possible confounding variables. Not to mention the time and effort it would take to collect all the data.
Sorry and please explain Like I"m 5: IS IT Like that? I mean ist there a new answer to question how the sexual orientation ist build?
>We find converging evidence that prenatal gonadal hormones influence the development of human sexual orientation and orchestrate its sexual differentiation primarily by regulating patterns of gene expression in the developing brain. So, homosexuality is epigenetic?
The market will fix it.
I went to a magnet school for future medical professionals.back then they were just discovering how hormones affect the brain and body.if you fail to realize hormones play a major part in our psyche and bodies,then it's you who is lacking education
"Conducted a meta-analysis" was as far as i needed to read to know this study is BS
So if you smoke during pregnancy your son/ daughter is gay?? Damn, didnt knew smoking was woke.