Mating Trick (02.13.06) - For all the men out there who think they planned something clever for Valentine's Day, consider the ingenuity of the male Australian cuttlefish.
Hungry for Love (02.10.06) - Do you crave your valentine as much as you crave food and drink? Brain researchers may have discovered why.
Sex and the Senses (09.08.05) - It may be politically incorrect, but genetics researchers have shown that even in the animal kingdom males and females may look at the world very differently.
Is sexual orientation predetermined by biology, or is it a chosen behavior? Attempts to answer that question scientifically tend to get all mixed up in politics.But as this ScienCentral News video reports, a new book reveals that a controversial study on that question has been widely misinterpreted.
Sexuality Spectrum
After an article on the topic elicited a strong response from readers, Scientific American Mind magazine conducted a nationwide Zogby Interactive poll that found that 50 percent of Americans believe sexual orientation is not a choice, while only 11 percent said it is a conscious choice. Thirty-four percent believe it's a combination of both.
But 30 years later, in 2003, he interviewed 200 people who claimed to have changed from gay to straight, and published the study concluding that such change is possible.
"I had been a hero of the gay activists since 1973, and then, not by my own wanting to be, I became the darling of the Christian right with this study," he says.
While Spitzer may not want his work to have a political bent, Drescher says such politicization is not surprising because, "many of the people who are in favor of gay and lesbian civil rights are arguing from the position that homosexuality is innate." Drescher, who chairs the American Psychiatric Association Committee on Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues, adds, "And just as you shouldn't discriminate against people because of their race, because people are born with a race which they can't change, you shouldn't discriminate against gay people. because they can't change their sexual orientation." On the other hand, he says, those opposed to gay rights view sexual orientation as "just a moral or immoral choice."
Drescher felt the Spitzer study was so controversial, he edited a new book of scientists' commentaries on it. While the book includes both critics and supporters of the study, it also reveals a surprising area of agreement — that the rest of Spitzer's conclusion was widely ignored by the media.
Because of his "great difficulty finding subjects," Spitzer points out that he concluded that, "this kind of change is very rare."
The paper he published was not a study that took a random sampling of people and determined how many of them could change from gay to straight. Spitzer simply went out looking for a large enough number of people who claimed to have changed, so that he could report with confidence that there is even the possibility of change. But the length of time it took him to reach that number was telling. "There were 200 subjects in the study and it took me about a year and a half to find those 200," says Spitzer. "It seems to me if it were a more common experience, that is gays going into therapy and changing, I would not have had that much difficulty finding 200."
Indeed, when asked Scientific American Mind's question — "Do gays have a choice?" — Spitzer replies, "They have a choice whether to go into therapy, about whether they adopt a gay lifestyle, whether they tell their friends and their family. They don't have a choice as to whether their basic sexual orientation is gay or straight — that they don't have a choice about."
Even so, Spitzer, who says he supports gay rights, believes that gays who want to change should have access to so-called "conversion therapy" as long as they're told that it may not be effective.
Drescher says that while there are no reliable scientific studies on the success/failure rate of this therapy, most doctors would not offer a therapy where the odds of success are likely to be extremely low. "This is like putting forth a lottery winner on TV and saying you should manage your finances as if you were going to be a lottery winner," he says.
Both researchers have called for a large, controlled study showing just how effective (or not) conversion therapy is, but they both doubt anyone would fund such a study. Meanwhile Drescher and Spitzer both support granting gays the right to go straight… down the aisle.
delicious
digg
magnolia
reddit
newsvine
netscape
netvibes
