
Two genes in Chromosomes 13 and 14, linked to Homosexuality - sukhadatkeereo
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-15736-4
======
epistasis
Before anybody jumps to conclusions, these are not definitive findings. They
are extremely important findings for those performing active research on the
topic, but are not of general interest to those who are not performing
research. The next steps will be to see if this holds in other cohorts, and in
other populations, etc.

~~~
tremendulo
Indeed. At the present time many or most scientific studies are not
reproducible.

~~~
epistasis
I object tremendously to that characterization, because "reproducible" is a
fuzzy word that never gets defined properly.

These results are almost certainly "reproducible" in that you could take the
same people, regenerate all the measurements again, and get the same results
by running the methods described in the paper.

These results may not be "reproducible" in the sense that when they do this
with a set of 2000 new individuals, they will probably not find the same SNPs
at the same significance.

Public discussion that conflates these two only serves to discredit science,
without improving it or its process. Worse, saying that only only the second
sense of "reproducible" is worthy of "science", would _severely_ impede the
process of discovery.

As long as "reproducible" in the first sense holds, scientists can learn from
each other. Scientists also need to be able to communicate with each other
before announcing to the world "we've solved it all!"

I find that most people (and I'm not including you with this statement, I
don't know what you think!) who are bemoaning the lack of "reproducibility"
are only interested in that second sense of reproducibility, because they want
to open a journal to a random page make broad statements that are widely
applicable. Scientists need to be able to talk about things in narrow terms,
and specifics, or they will never be able to get to the broad rules that are
generally useful.

~~~
tremendulo
_> they will never be able to get to the broad rules that are generally
useful._

Well at least we agree that discovering universal laws is desirable. Because
we want to explain the world, right?

Some more info about reproducibility:

[http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-
on-...](http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-
reproducibility-1.19970?WT.mc_id)

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peatmoss
Wow, the bioethical implications of potentially identifying the mechanism of
sexual orientation are staggering.

I wonder if / how long it will be before parents have the technical means—if
not the legal right—to alter their child to be gay or straight through gene
therapy. Or even simply selectively bring to term one orientation or the
other.

~~~
zer00eyz
In reading your comment I was struck by the dilemma that this reality would
bring. Those most opposed to homosexuality are those most opposed to
terminating pregnancy (mostly). It would create quite a quandary for folks who
are inclined to hold these two beliefs.

~~~
natecavanaugh
Your other comments make me think you're someone who appreciates an honest
discussion, so thanks for that. I do have an honest question of the reverse.
Those most in favor of homosexuality are also those okay with abortion.

But if parents started aborting because they were homosexual, would there be
any sort of moral/ethical issue?

Other comments have rightly commented it could be inverse (selecting for
homosexuality), but I think all pro-lifers would prefer anyone being born, and
allowing them to be responsible for their own soul, so that answer is easier
for me to imagine.

~~~
mfukar
> But if parents started aborting because they were homosexual, would there be
> any sort of moral/ethical issue?

Not more so than terminating a pregnancy for any other reason.

~~~
coldtea
Doesn't sound like it.

Usually it's for some reason that's justifiable, e.g. don't have the means to
support it, don't want a child ever/at this moment in my life, teenage
pregnancy, product of rape, fetus has some inherited disease, etc.

Merely dropping a child because it'll be gay, while being ok to keep another
that wouldn't is not exactly of that nature.

Even the most casual reasoning for abortion ("I don't want a child, period")
doesn't imply anything more, whereas this can be seen as implying you hate gay
people.

~~~
bobthechef
> fetus has some inherited disease

By your logic, if homosexual attraction had genetic causes, could it not also
be seen as "some inherited disease"?

You're doing a great deal of question begging. You're beginning with an
ideological stance vis-a-vis homosexual attraction that is exactly a point of
issue, and then tailoring moral arguments to suit the position. You've
confused "the position that homosexual attraction is disordered" with "hating
gay people" and then unjustifiably construed "hating gay people" as not
entailed by the desire to terminate a pregnancy for whatever reason, i.e.,
it's okay to terminate a pregnancy for whatever reason unless the reason is
that the fetus is genetically conditioned for homosexual attraction, in which
case it isn't okay because that would be an act of hate against gay people by
virtue of my prior ideological commitments.

You must see the absurdity of that line of thought.

The position of sound anti-abortionists would be that no matter the
characteristics of the fetus, the fetus is a human being and the killing of
any innocent human being is immoral. Your position, on the other hand, seems
to be very ad hoc, relying on special pleading that is driven by prior sui
generis ideological commitments.

~~~
vinni2
Firstly, homosexuality has been declassified as a disorder by American
psychological and psychiatric associations for several decades now [1]

Secondly, how is terminating a pregnancy because the fetus is going to be a
homosexual person different from terminating because of a specific gender of
the fetus? For example, in India aborting because the fetus is female is
illegal or it’s rather illegal to find the gender of the baby before he or she
is born.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology)
Edit: typos

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pazimzadeh
"We detected several promising regions of multiple SNPs in the 10^−5 to
10^−7p-value range, as seen in the Manhattan plot (Fig. 1), though no SNP
reached genome-wide significance (5 × 10^−8)."

~~~
bmsran
This is the most important statement in the paper.

~~~
coffeeboy27
Let's pretend I don't have a PhD and don't know what that statement means
though, can I get a summary?

~~~
zmmmmm
It means the result could plausibly have occurred just by chance. The odds may
be against it being chance, but it is at least plausible.

~~~
brucephillips
Eh, not really. What you said is true of any p value. It's tautological.

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throwacide
I gave my saliva to 23andme two years ago. I’ve been suicidal my whole life.
If genetic markers for suicidal tendencies are discovered in the future, can
they use my stored sample to assist in such studies?

~~~
md224
> I’ve been suicidal my whole life.

That’s pretty intense. Have you tried medication or therapy? Or anything else?

~~~
throwacide
That’s not really important. What is important is that they receive data about
the suicidality, because it is inevitable that a large percentage of people
like me who are long term suicidal will not have documented it with a medical
professional. And, due to privacy laws, it’s difficult to say whether that
data if it did exist with a medical professional would make it to 23 and me
for them to be able to make such a correlation. I would presume that they may
be able to and for or data mine from articles if I were to commit suicide for
instance bud

~~~
bflesch
Hey, I appreciate your thoughtfulness on this issue. As you know, all your
feelings are based on the chemistry in your brain. If you want to talk, hmu at
beni@strivewire.com

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Jedd
Would a bio expert be able to comment please on how this may fit with
observations around increased likelihood of male homosexuality correlated to
the number of older male siblings (to the same mother)?

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thisrod
So why is this a surprise? The experiments on identical and fraternal twins
were done decades ago, and there just isn't any doubt that genes influence
sexual orientation. Nor is there any possibility that they determine it: many
gay men and lesbians have straight identical twins.

~~~
matthewmacleod
It's _not_ a surprise, it's just scientific research.

~~~
thisrod
Sure, but the importance of research is strongly correlated with how
surprising it is. That's entropy and information 101.

------
Afforess
I suspect that as we come to better understand genetics, we (as a society) are
going to be more and more uncomfortable with the findings that we uncover.
Physics and mathematics have made it long since clear that the universe is
deterministic, that all the answers lie in the genes and atoms and equations
we are made up of. The implications of this are dire - our society is built on
exactly the opposite foundations; law and order assumes the criminals are
acting of free will, education assumes all students are equal, and societal
success rests on the notion that all men are equal. None of this is true. All
of the implications can be twisted to serve our worst, or our best instincts.

Some will take this study to mean Homosexuality is a disease, to be cured.
Others will reject it, to say the science is not yet "in", the study needs
replications, meta-studies are needed to verify and corroborate it. We should
embrace it, and say that it is good we are not a monoculture, embrace mutation
and variation. To be human is to be different.

~~~
avodonosov
> Physics and mathematics have made it long since clear that the universe is
> deterministic

Have they?

~~~
tclancy
Sure, John Calvin told us so. And then we rejected it. And then it became a
sure thing again. And then not . . . and now here we are.

~~~
itronitron
Can the universe be deterministic if our knowledge of whether the universe is
deterministic is not deterministic?

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b0rsuk
My government will be ecstatic. More and more catholic church makes it to the
ruling party. I imagine some other states (China?) would also want to tamper
with its population genome.

~~~
thisrod
Do you know what's happened to China's sex ratio since it became possible to
selectively abort female foetuses? If some hormone were found to be associated
with men becoming same-sex attracted, the commies would probably put it in the
water.

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mintplant
So... what about bi/pansexuality?

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throws990
First critique that immediately comes to mind is how the 1,077 homosexual men
and 1,231 heterosexual men were selected. If Republicans have taught us
anything, it's that self-reporting is not an accurate measure.

From the paper: "classified men as homosexual based on both their self-
reported sexual identity and sexual feelings"

Furthermore, how does this study explain sexual fluidity? IE: I liked kissing
boys when I was 13 but I married a woman at 25?

~~~
MAGZine
Is this a troll? How do you intend to determine whether or not if someone is
of an orientation EXCEPT for asking them?

"I'm gay."

"Well my 'science test' says that you're not."

Nice.

~~~
brucephillips
The inability to avoid selection bias doesn't preclude selection bias.

Not to say the above comment makes any sense...

