Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] "Queer by Choice"

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Thu, 11 Mar 2004, Jonathan King wrote:

> Hmm, I'd been deleting the whole bunch of these.  Should I know more
> than the following about this, Mike?
>
> Hamer et al. (1993) do a study finding linkage of homosexuality and
> something near Xq28.

Add to that the following:  Hamer was accused by a lab worker of altering
the data:

http://taxa.epi.umn.edu/~mbmiller/hamer.txt

He was not found guilty by ORI, but neither could the show that he was
innocent.


> Hu et al. (1995) repeat the result, but say that it only applies to gay
> men.  (Hamer was a co-author here)

Add to that:  Risch and others criticised Hamer's earlier finding and
suggested that he should have found something more like 67% gene sharing
instead of about 83%.  Hu et al. then found *exactly* 67% which strikes me
as a bit too lucky!  Add to that the fact that Risch's criticism was just
crap, but that would be too long of a discussion for me today.

Also add:  At a Behavior Genetics Association conference in 1995, I did a
talk where I pointed out that the Hu et al. result was not statistically
significant if one accounted for the region where they searched for a
maximum lod score.  Hamer was furious.  So be it.  No one else can
replicate it, so what does that tell us?


> Rice et al. (1999) find zero evidence for markers on Xq28 linked to gay
> identity.
>
> Bailey et al. (1999) in a large sample find good evidence for genetic
> linkage, but zippo on linkage to X let alone Xq28.

Maybe there was another one by Elliot Gershon -- not sure if it is
published.  There is more in the pipeline.


> From which I assume the accepted interpretation is that there is
> probably a genetic component to male homosexuality, but it's certainly
> not always (or ever?) due to anything on Xq28.  Anything else?

There's this...

http://taxa.epi.umn.edu/bgnews/1999/msg00116.html

...but I would want to see that studies done by people other than Hamer
have shown an effect.  Hamer's "meta-analysis" includes his own studies
and it is therefore not interesting to me.

You can look through some of this stuff:

http://taxa.epi.umn.edu/cgi-bin/webglimpse/bgnews?query=hamer%3Bhomosexuality&maxlines=0

That's a search of my BGnews database for "Hamer AND homosexuality".  It
includes some of his other work, all of which is highly suspect.
Interesting that someone can come out of nowhere and suddenly have the
three biggest findings in behavior genetics, but none of them replicate,
he is accused of fraud, and he goes on to write several popular science
books (presumably making some money).

Mike
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