Are our scientists in such a rush to "prove" that there's some gay gene that they'll just find whatever correlation might possibly fit? Gay men are often related to relatives of their mother that have lots of babies?

That's ludicrous - no genetic factors can influence how many babies a person has. Even if you're the most fertile woman on the planet, you can wind up wtih no kids, and even if there was a "fertility index" evaluating the efficacy of eggs released from a woman's ovaries, it still couldn't predict whether a woman is more or less likely to have kids.

This is the worst kind of scientific correlational non-conclusions. They teach you in Psych 101 of the example of positive correlations between ice cream sales and murder rates (in theory, because it's hotter outside). That's a true correlation too. Also, it doesn't actually mean anything. Same goes for this study.

But clearly high ice cream sales DO increase murder rates. I remember one day in 1979 when my brother jostled me and knocked my mint-chocolate-chip-double-sco­op-in-a-sugar-cone to the ground. I wanted to kill him.

I was only prevented by my androphilic gene.

Genetic factors can certainly influence how many babies you have. In general more fertile women will have more babies, even if sometimes a fertile woman has no children. I don't think anyone knows how exactly and"androphilic" gene would work, but if it existed, it would surely make you have sex more often which would increase your chance of getting pregnant.

I would agree, however, that it is possible that the correlation between gay men and female relatives with more children could be caused by many things besides a gene for attraction to men.

I found the study and Saletan's article on it fascinating. Even though I work in a much different field, I look to science to explain the natural world because that is the purpose of scientific study. And as part of the natural world, we should not be exempt from the scientist's cold probe. Evolutionary science as I understand it seeks to find purpose in the world. If every creature is perfectly suited for its environment and if homosexuality exists, then there must be a reason. I fail to see how a mushy, qualitative analysis of the realities of being gay today are at all relevant to this area of study.

Most sensible people understand that homosexuality is not an abomination, a mistake, a sign of abuse or a choice. We know this from our own lives; from never making a choice either way ourselves. But I've noticed with this subject that emotion is often brought out when it should be the evidence that is speaking.

To me, what is fascinating is that homosexuality exists and I hope one day science can illuminate why without constant pestering from the resilient Cultural Studies crowd. (Yes I know it's wrong to stereotype but I've sat in as many CS classes as a lot of CS degree-holders and that seems to qualify them).

ekutinsky:

That's ludicrous - no genetic factors can influence how many babies a person has.

That's bull and you know it. Certainly genetics isn't the only aspect of how many babies a woman has in this modern age. But saying that it doesn't influence how many babies a person has is, to use your word, ludicruous.

I grew up with a friend who has always wanted a lot of kids. She has one now, not for lack of trying. But, like her mother, she is extremely skinny and doesn't have more than two or three periods a year. But of course, genetics doesn't influence the number of kids a person has.

Even if you're the most fertile woman on the planet, you can wind up wtih no kids, and even if there was a "fertility index" evaluating the efficacy of eggs released from a woman's ovaries, it still couldn't predict whether a woman is more or less likely to have kids.

ekutinsky:

That's a true correlation too. Also, it doesn't actually mean anything. Same goes for this study.

No, it does mean something. If two things are correlated but have no direct causation, you know that there is a hidden variable that they both depend on, such as the temperature in your ice cream versus murder example. This is part of what makes statistical analysis difficult.

In any case, I''m loath to condemn scientific research based on what a layperson says after reading something another layperson wrote who *might* have read the actual paper. The mportant factors, such as the statistical significance and the error bars are lost and in some respects these are more important for drawing a proper conclusion than the actual results.

Once upon a time, the more fertile women (or the hornier women) probably had the most babies. But nowadays we have wonderful inventions like The Pill and (dependable) condoms. Did the people who did this study take birth control methods into account?

You go physics girl. And I might add the following. Statistics tell us very little about an individual. In other words, if you were an Andro X girl, I would not be surprized if you had NO children (you might be a nun, Or had an injury, Or ovarian Cancer). However, if this theory is true, we would expect that the average number of offspring in a randomly selected group of 100 Andro X women would be higher than the average number of offspring of 100 randomly selected women without this genetic polymorphism.

In the scientific community, few people put a lot of stock into a single study. People begin to pay attention when results are replicated and the theory can be used to generate other hypotheses that are supported by the data.