andrewducker | It's all in the....hormones

An article at Plastic pointed me in the direction of this piece on the whole "what makes people gay" research.

A few choice snippets:

Qazi Rahman and Glenn Wilson conducted a series of neurocognitive tests of spatial skill. They found that gay men performed less well than heterosexual men, but matched the ability of women.

But gay men performed better than heterosexuals and as well as women at remembering the locations of objects in an array.

In several language tests, traditionally a female strong point, gay men did as well as heterosexual women. Lesbians, on the other hand, performed the tests as poorly as “straight” men.

Dr Rahman said: “Because we know that performance on these cognitive tests depends on the integrity of specific brain regions, the differences implicate robust differences between the brains of homosexual and heterosexual men and women and suggest that hormonal factors early in development (probably during the 1st trimester of pregnancy) produce these differences.”

The researchers also found that gay men and lesbians both had longer ring fingers relative to their index fingers than heterosexual men and women.

Relatively long ring fingers are a sign of exposure to elevated levels of the male hormone testosterone in the womb.

The findings supported the idea that high, not low, testosterone levels in men produce shifts in sexual preference.

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In several language tests, traditionally a female strong point, gay men did as well as heterosexual women. Lesbians, on the other hand, performed the tests as poorly as “straight” men.

::giggles:: This whole article is just so silly I couldn't believe it. But this particularly makes me giggle.

Why? Honestly, I'm curious.

I thought it was a fascinating result. I'm wondering why you thought it was funny.

I know I shouldn't find bad science funny: it's too serious to be funny. But sometimes bad science is just completely hilarious - and this is one example.

More details please. Why do you find it hilarious. I find it perfectly plausible (and yes, I've studied science, up to a year and a half of physics at University).

The scientific method has four steps.

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

In this case, good science would suggest that the group of phenomena called "verbal skills" and the other group of phenomena called "spatial skills" are the phenomena to observe and describe. These skills are describable and identifiable.

Now, if you take a group of people - say 100 - and assuming you are deliberately trying to select a random group from the population as whole, you'll end up with 50 women, 50 men. Probably 2 or 3 of those women will openly identify as homosexual, and perhaps 5 or 6 of the men. A larger proportion of the women will openly identify as bisexual, and a smaller proportion of the men. Plus there will be an unknown number of people in the group who will be homosexual or bisexual but who won't want to admit it to the researchers. The chances that this group had funding to study a number as high as 100 is improbable, but let's do them that credit. Assuming that they did it this way, the correct way, that means that when they talk about "homosexual men" and "homosexual women" they're really using a group far too small to show anything statistically sensible - less than ten, even if you add together the men and the women. Even if you include in those who openly identify as bisexual, I would consider it highly unlikely that in any group of randomly selected people you'd get more than 20.

But, given the description of what they claim to have discovered, I would say that they tripped at the first step. Instead of choosing to study the scientifically-identifiable phenomena called "verbal skills"/"spatial skills", they instead decided to study the non-scientifically-identifiable group of phenomena called "homosexuality", and that this caused them to fall over in an amusing manner.

I'll go on to explain how they then fell over on the second, third, and fourth steps too, if you like.

website outlining the scientific method (http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/AppendixE/AppendixE.html#Heading3)

*bitchslap*

Good post. =)

Yup, I know the scientific method. cheers for the link tho - it may come in useful at some point.

A simple "I suspect that the sample size was too small to be statistically significant" would have sufficed there. Following that, an investigation into the actual sample size and methodology can take place and we can then make an objective decision as to whether the methods and sample size were in any way reasonable.

Now, this means tracking down the paper in question. I'll have a go at that when I have some free time, tomorrow or at the weekend.

Sure. I suspect that it will be on the same kind of standard as their finger-measuring "science" though.

I'm seeing a lot of the "I suspect" and "chances are". Not a lot of "here's some proof".

But the news item you posted didn't offer any proof either: merely made a series of rather silly statements. Now, if you're prepared to go look up the actual paper and discover for yourself the methodology used, more power to you, and I hope you'll post it here. From the news report alone, however, it looked like a complete balls-up of the scientific method.

The news report didn't mention the scientific method. All it did was mention the vague course they'd followed (done some tests, found some groupings) and some conclusions they'd come to. There was no mention of the methodology, sample sizes or anything like that.

You, for whatever reasons, have decided that the conclusions are "silly" (possibly the political reasons that Heron alluded to) and have then launched into a series of "I suppose" and "it seems likely" designed to cast aspersions.

While I appreciate Heron's input with his recollections of the finger-measuring experiment, you haven't actually offered anything except the fact that you have doubts. Which is good in one way (hey, everything should be doubted), but not terribly productive. Especially when you launch in with "It's silly. No, just silly."

A tiny bit of courtesy and reasonableness would have gotten the whole thing started off on a much better foot.

(Gah, I'm grumpy. And no, it's not all you. I believe I'll go and shoot things until I feel less so)

No kidding. Btw, the methodology of the finger length study (which was discussed in a Popular Science article in glowing terms about a year ago) was also laughably pathetic. They must be using blackmail to get grants because there is no other way anyone sensible would give them money.

If you remember a link for the anti-finger length thing, I'd like to see it. It seems odd to me, but then I'm not an expert in human development. I'd be interested to see something showing their methodology in a negative light.

Sadly, I saw it in a magazine (Popular Science), but haven't seen this info on-line. The basics were that they set up at a queer-oriented street fair, selected people based on whether they "looked" queer or straight, asked them (before measuring their finger-lengths). They then measured the fingers with a hand-held micrometer at a booth in a street fair. I'm fairly certain that this is an ideal way to obtain useless data based solely on what the researchers expected to find.

And that's not even a vague attempt at science.

Sigh.

More time I have to spend tracking stuff down online.

Cheers for that.

Ok,here I am a straigh female with lesbian finger and
hetersexual male spatial aptitude.
No wonder western civilization is taking a nose dive.
You people waste time trying to sterotype and
discrimmate to the point you think you know how I'm
supposed to think.
Where I from we have traditional roles but we do not
say woman verbal and man spatial.We don't say women watch
for lend marks and male mentall map.
Please never foerce the nonsense on my counttry.

Wada Yemen

It's all in the....hormones

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Then you shouldn't need anyone to explain the scientific method to you!

Re: Then you shouldn't need anyone to explain the scientific method to you!

Re: Then you shouldn't need anyone to explain the scientific method to you!

Re: Then you shouldn't need anyone to explain the scientific method to you!

Re: Then you shouldn't need anyone to explain the scientific method to you!

Re: Then you shouldn't need anyone to explain the scientific method to you!

Re: Then you shouldn't need anyone to explain the scientific method to you!

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Heterosexual Female With Lesbian Finger and Hetro Male Spatial Skils