On Fri, 10 Dec 2004, BklynMagus wrote:
> A new study suggests that women who take amphetamine-based diet pills
> when pregnant are more likely to have lesbian and gay children.
>
> Expectant mothers who have taken thyroid medication are also included,
> with similar findings.
>
> Conducted by the Minot State University, North Dakota, the study
> followed more than 5,000 mothers and their offspring. The research will
> be published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
>
> Researchers found that mothers of lesbian women were five times more
> likely to have taken thyroid medications in the early stages of their
> pregnancies than those of heterosexual women. Additionally, they were
> nearly eight times more likely to have taken amphetamine-based diet
> pills.
>
> Conversely, mothers of straight men were 70 percent more likely to have
> taken anti-nausea drugs than those of gay men.
>
> Professor Lee Ellis, one of the researchers for the study, said that the
> data backs claims that sexuality is determined in the womb through a
> variety of genetic and biochemical chain reactions, the Telegraph
> reports.
>
This is wild extrapolation from correlational data! Just as a correlation between ice cream consumption and violent crime on a given day is ludricious evidence that ice cream causes violent crime, a correlation between drug use during pregnancy and sexual orientation of offspring is ludricious evidence for the claim that "sexuality is determined in the womb".
The question the researchers here are dodging: what other social, psychological, and cultural factors distinguish the drug moms from the nondrug moms? Any of hundreds of confounds could be the true cause of the observed correlations here. Sloppy, sloppy--
Miles