An Elsevier journal has issued an expression of concern for a paper it published earlier this year by a Dutch researcher who studies the neurobiology of sexuality.
The article,“Sexual orientation, neuropsychiatric disorders and the neurotransmitters involved,” was written by a group led by Dick Swaab, of the Department of Neuropsychiatric Disorders at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam.
The abstract of the latest study reads:
According to the neuro-hormonal theory, sexual orientation in humans develops in the womb under the influence of sex hormones. In this article, we review the evidence from basic research on the possible role of neurotransmitters on influencing sexual orientation. We show that pharmacological or genetically induced changes in neurotransmitter systems during development might, by hormone-mediated structural and functional brain changes, result in alterations in sexual preference in animal models. We propose that in humans this mechanism may contribute to the relationship between non-heterosexual orientation and increased prevalence of neuropsychiatric disorders. Data to support this idea are reviewed. We suggest that altered neurotransmitter levels during development will increase the chance for both non-heterosexual differentiation of the brain and neuropsychiatric disorders. This possibility may have clinical implications, because medication given to a pregnant woman may, in this way, alter brain development of the fetus in a permanent way.
The expression of concern — a link to which does not appear on the original article — reads:
Regarding: article published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews on 28 September 2021, entitled “Sexual orientation, neuropsychiatric disorders and the neurotransmitters involved”.
Some readers have raised concerns regarding the above article. The journal is in discussion with the authors regarding these concerns. Additional information will be provided as it becomes available.
And, in a refreshing display of self-awareness from the publisher – whose editors often (read, usually) deflect inquires to corporate PR – the notice adds:
Please direct any media inquiries to the Elsevier newsroom [email protected]
It’s unclear which concerns Elsevier is referring to in the notice, but the expression of concern followed an outcry on social media.
Steve Maren, a behavioral neuroscientist at Texas A & M University, and a board member of the journal, tweeted that had has called on the editor to pull the paper:
E. Mae Guthman, a post-doc in neuroscience at Princeton University, wrote:
James Gibb, an anthropology PhD student at Northwestern University who studies LGBTQ+ issues, noted that:
Here’s how the New York Times reported Spitzer’s apology.
Swaab demurred when we asked for his thoughts on the expression of concern and the outcry about his paper, saying his group would:
wait with comments until we have received scientifically well documented concerns.
Swaab’s evidently something of a charmer, at least in person, who enjoys courting controversy. The Guardian in 2014 used the following language to describe him:
Swaab’s delightful manners, the smooth, twinkling charm of a man who has spent a life engaged in things that fascinate him, so that even though every answer is basically “sod off …”, it is impossible not to like him. But it is not, ultimately, impossible to unshackle oneself from the confident steam train of his assertions.
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Ah… Dick Swaab…
This is NOT the first time his work has been found to be less than scientific. Consider his work on transsexual & transgender people (not identical constructs):
https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/the-incredable-shrinking-brain/
The paper’s analysis is bogus on the face of it and the conclusions not only are NOT supported by the data reported, but are in fact the OPPOSITE. Yet, later papers by Swaab continue to cite this work as though it supported it, which continues to distort the science.
This appears to be yet ANOTHER in a long line of papers which the trans bully mob does not like because it uses science to discuss sexuality. The howling mob of trans bullies attempts, over and over, to scream and pout and posture. Hopefully, in this case, they will not be successful. Science should not be done by howling mobs.
Well said. The bully mob would try and ruin his career but facts don’t care about your feelings.
Just out of curiosity, is sillyolme.wordpress.com a peer-reviewed journal? Science is done in peer-reviewed studies.
Science education and critique may be done ANYWHERE by ANYONE. My analysis of Swaab’s work may be double checked by ANYONE. Further, my linking to my essay is by why of convenience to readers. But in them, I ALWAYS cite my sources, which are themselves peer reviewed science papers.
OH… and your snark wasn’t peer reviewed by any established science journal.
And clearly, you didn’t bother to read my essay or attempt to understand it. But before you attempt to comment further on the science involved, I suggest you read my book, as it is meant for people like you who don’t have the prior science background to understand it:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08P3SFF88
I’m a PhD biostatistician and medical researcher with 200+ publications in the scientific literature. You have no medical or research credentials that I can find.
Touche
strike!
(mic drop)
Damn!! *applause*
Yeah, but she wrote a whole essay
BOOM!
Y’all act like it’s not common sense that altered sexual orientation is commonly associated with other mental disorders. You guys are going with the whims of the culture more than anything scientific. Doesnt matter how much evidence there is if it goes against your opinion it must “not” be scientific. Just trying to shush people stating the obvious.
Appeal to authority, really? Even if I were to believe your background (I don’t), a biostatistician is not an expert on sexuality and queer identity, so sit the fuck down. This wasn’t the slam you think it was.
You don’t need a peer reviewed study for a professional to explain a study and how those conclusions came to be. The link is a professional explaining based on their expertise why the data is not correlated correctly. You don’t need a study to prove someone’s math is wrong, you simply need to do the math from the data sets yourself and compare. Please educate yourself as you seem to lack experience in the scientific field or you would understand that.
The RW post doesn’t do much to tell me what is actually wrong with this paper.
Crimethink.
“crime think”. Uh huh. Dick Swaab is a typical crazed heterosexual who never bothered opening up a history book. He spent his entire life growing up thinking “being gay is a choice” through cultural forces. That was wrong.
Now he openly admits that homosexual brains are physically different. Then he goes on to suggest that drugs are somehow creating these homosexuals, which implies homosexuality is some modern thing that popped up out of nowhere. This is just one level up from “The illuminati from the tv are creating these homosexuals! It’s the jewish/zionist culture!”
Apparently him and you forgot that homosexuals have existed since the beginning of time? You also forgot that the overwhelming majority, the norm of humanity in all ancient civilizations was bisexuality?
I feel like heterosexual males such as yourself have tainted the reputation of any respectable field like evolutionary psychology, neuroscience or anything related to behaviour and whenever you’re called out on your stupidity, you immediately resort to the childish “We’Re JuSt HaVinG A CoNvErSaTIon!”.
Half the work coming from these fields is looking into society, being disgruntled by women, gays or god knows what and then trying to rationalize your stupidity by legitimizing it through fraudulent research.
I’m convinced you need your work proof read and checked by an adult homosexual so you stop embarrassing yourself and to stop bringing whatever field you infest into disrepute.
How? How can you not see what he said was incredibly stupid? It wasnt “mean” and he didnt hurt anyone’s feelings. What he said made him look like a stooge. Apparently so are you, hence your sympathy and feeling persecuted…for being an idiot.
Illiteracy continues to grip RW commenters.
>He spent his entire life growing up thinking “being gay is a choice” through cultural forces. That was wrong.
A number of prominent gay people explicitly testify that being gay was a choice. Perhaps it is a choice for some people:
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/is-sexual-orientation-a-choice-9582897.html
>Now he openly admits that homosexual brains are physically different. Then he goes on to suggest that drugs are somehow creating these homosexuals, which implies homosexuality is some modern thing that popped up out of nowhere. This is just one level up from “The illuminati from the tv are creating these homosexuals! It’s the jewish/zionist culture!”
……? This is almost not worth assessing. Compare the zany above to the thoughtful and careful writing in the paper:
It is known now that same-sex preference does not have a single cause, but is determined by a complex interplay of different biological factors, including a genetic component (Bocklandt et al., 2006), hor-monal exposure, fraternal birth order, prenatal stress and so on (Balth-azart, 2020). So, the large heterogeneity in putative causal factors observed within any given sample of gay men may be underlaid by different mechanisms working to different degrees, times or combina-tions with each other during pre- and postnatal development (Swift–Gallant et al., 2019; Tasos, 2021). Future studies should take into account the effects that prenatally administered drugs may have on sexual orientation.
>You also forgot that the overwhelming majority, the norm of humanity in all ancient civilizations was bisexuality?
…..this is just not known to be true in any sense. You are a loon.
RW are journalists- the post gives light to the people and institutions around a modern academic self-correction , wherever it shows up :] the journal made a step & that’s the headline
Mr. Thompson,
The fact is that most transsexuals LOVE Dr. Swaab’s work as it (falsely) suggested that “non-homosexual” transwomen had female brain features. This has been demonstrated NOT to be true, as the effects found by Swaab were in fact artifacts of the Hormones Replacement Therapy they were undergoing.
Your insinuation that there is a “mob of trans bullies” is not only ugly and false transphobic propaganda, but in this instance, proves that you have NOT understood the relationship between Swaab’s work and the majority of transsexuals. Swaab’s papers are often cited by transsexuals in glowing terms.
Only a very tiny minority of transsexuals, mostly those that actually understand the science, have taken Swaab to task for his sloppy analysis of his own data.
Please don’t comment about which you have no understanding.
The RW post highlights the tweet from James K Gibb, “who studies LGBTQ+ issues” and claims:
“What’s really messed up about that NBR paper is that it cites Richard Spitzer’s 2001 study published in ASB in 2003 on conversion therapy which received an official disavowal from the APA and and which he even tried to have retracted from ASB later….”
What does the text of Swaabb’s NBR paper say when it cites Spitzer’s 2003 Study?
“In recent studies, people were reported to change their sexual orientation to some limited degree by different interventions (Spitzer, 2003). However, reparative interventions may focus on changing the behavior rather than the innate orientation itself. Many sexual orientation reparative therapies conducted in history have indeed been reported to be based on faulty assumptions, not effective, and probably doing harm to such individuals (Haldeman, 1994; Bradshaw et al., 2015).”
Why is RW not doing diligence citing such a disingenuous claim from Gibb? How is what Swaabb is saying is “messed up”?
I saw the virtue signalling and outrage on Twitter and expected this. But let’s review the central claims in the abstract:
-Neurotransmitters are involved in sex and behavior (true)
-Altered neurotransmitter function might alter sexuality (sounds reasonable)
-Altered neurotransmitter function is involved in psychiatric illness (true)
-Altering neurotransmitter function during development might affect sexuality (sounds plausible and if true this should be disclosed to women prescribed affected medications)
I’m sure there is more detail in the paper, which is open access. It’s telling to me that there is no homophobic smoking gun here. Do they say that homosexuality is a mental illness? What did they say that was unscientific?
But it probably doesn’t matter. If offensive statements cannot be cited easily, an appropriately skilled inquisitor will be assigned to find enough homophobia and transphobia to justify retraction. Then Dick Swaab will become venerated by the right and receive lucrative speaking invitations and book deals where he can describe his martyrdom at the hands of woke academic twitter mobs.
> Altering neurotransmitter function during development might affect sexuality (sounds plausible and if true this should be disclosed to women prescribed affected medications)
I’m going to take a stab in the dark here, but my read is that even saying that such side-effects require disclosure is an implicit assertion that there’s something “wrong” with trans or homosexual offspring. This is what I took the reference to “pathologizing” trans people.
For instance, would you require a warning if the side-effects were an increased likelihood your child would have blonde hair? Maybe not, which might make you think twice about such a disclosure policy.
On the other hand, blonde kids won’t face any great challenges in their lives solely because of their hair colour, which is emphatically NOT the case with trans or even homosexuality in some places, which again argues for such a disclosure policy.
Walking this tightrope will be interesting, but doable as long as people approach with an open mind and charitably assume everyone is trying to reduce collective suffering.
People are extremely sensitive about their kids, so yes, I would suggest that anything that could affect the development of an unborn child should be disclosed whether we think it’s detrimental or not. To follow your example, if taking medication could accidentally change my kid’s hair color I would want to know about it. Even if it doesn’t change my decision to fill the prescription it might help me explain why they don’t have the same hair color as their parents.
I am also aware of the point about pathologizing – I have seen tweeters rage about it being eugenics intended to wipe out non-heterosexual or trans people. But all I see is a call for further study on the possibility that certain medications might be one of several factors that influence sex characteristics and risks for psychiatric disorders. There is no call to eliminate LGBT people nor is there any suggestion that it’s possible or desirable. Is studying the neurobiology of sexuality intrinsically pathologizing?
By “stab in the dark”, did Sandro mean he read the paper in the dark? This is a paper on *sexuality*.
All occurrences of ‘trans’ are in the context of words like ‘transmitter’ and ‘transmission’, not one in the context of ‘transgender’ or ‘transsexual’.
What in the world are you trying to do?
@gcmale, you do seem confused. I suggest rereading the post we’re all commenting on and pay particular attention to the tweet from @earthagae for the relevant context.
Sandro seems to be suffering from a bout of illiteracy.
You own post quotes the claims about the underlying paper:
“””
> Altering neurotransmitter function during development might affect sexuality (sounds plausible and if true this should be disclosed to women prescribed affected medications)
I’m going to take a stab in the dark here, but my read is that even saying that such side-effects require disclosure is an implicit assertion that there’s something “wrong” with trans or homosexual offspring. This is what I took the reference to “pathologizing” trans people.
“””
Where do you make the inferential leap from sexuality to trans-identification?
@gcmale, I gave you the reference that provides the relevant context. If you’re having trouble finding it, then I don’t think I’m the one struggling with literacy.
gcmale, the trans lobby is powerful enough to cancel papers as transphobic even if they are not mentioned. Watch this one sink.
And the most powerful critique of this paper is by Maren – that they misrepresented another paper’s figure.
https://twitter.com/StephenMaren/status/1468237808997437444?s=20
In normal times it would have meant a correction at most but I think it will be enough to retract in this case.
Many trans people would rather have been born in the body to match their minds. Not all, but if given the option to allow all future potentially transgender people to have a body and mind that matches most would have the empathy to agree to it. Treating existing LGBT+ members as less than human is immoral, but it would also be immoral to allow others to be experience that dysphoria if it could be prevented. The only question that one needs to ask themselves “Would I willingly subject others to the pain I have felt?”
What do these metaphysical/religious ideas have anything to do with the discussion here?
I see you asking many questions so I’ll be as clear as I can, especially as there was nothing metaphysical/religious about my comment.
If the information comes to light that a specific thing causes babies to be atypical *in any way*, then it would be unethical to not avoid that specific thing.
Anon Ymous’ own metaphysical claims:
>Many trans people would rather have been born in the body to match their minds.
Do any of our bodies “match” our minds? My body was never picked out to run the 100m in the Olympics, much to my minds’ disappointment. People suffer from all sorts of severe physical ailments in their bodies, but it must be their minds match them then? It seem not many of us want to die, yet our bodies go about doing so without our minds’ consent….
But maybe it will work the other way round, if homosexual people choose to have homosexual children?
One should note that involving sexual or gender orientation here feels somewhat unnecessary, at least from my perspective. You could just as easily theorize about prenatal exposure to outside neurotransmitter altering chemicals being responsible for cases of mental illness within the population. That alone is sufficient, yeah one could add connections to sexuality, but why take the risk? It actually probably would be helpful for medical researchers in some situations, but science is not ready to deal with such issues.
In this case the inclusion of sexuality is a bit too provocative for my taste, obviously he did it to make the paper more well known, which is kinda scummy. Researchers should know the touchiness of LGBT topics and the amount of damage talking about them can do to your career,
The concerns are not scientific they are emotional. I’m curious how many of the concerned know a neuron from their elbow.
There is a number of very unpleasant assumptions being drawn in the write up of this ‘study’, partly touching on mental health. The inferences and conjectures are of dubious value, in my opinion.
The writers in my opinion fail to properly acknowledge that LGBT+ people are under constant risk of micro and major aggressions that undermine mental health, even among those of us who have greater fortitude.
Homophobia and transphobia in the world is palpable, even in more tolerant countries such as the Netherlands. Attacks in the media, by politicians, and physical violence of others towards us; our not being respected by the police or most churches – these all have an impact on us.
We still read the news, travel, come into contact with those who would do us harm or be careless or ignorant about our dignity. We have to be mindful of personal safety wherever we go. Should we come-out or not to each person we meet, or hide who we are from fear of aggressions of some type.
Mental upset and self-doubt on the back of this is little to do with physiology. These micro aggressions are the real, lived world experience of many LGBT+ people.
So much appears to conflated in this study. And many of the references and inferences are of dubious value, in my opinion. To my mind it gives the appearance of a lack of intellectual rigour. The analysis seems influenced by heteronormative assumptions and misunderstandings.
I am surprised Elsevier published this paper. It appears to only confuse the landscape.
Yet the paper does this for non-heterosexual people (a sensible way to describe LGB, why use the nebulously applied “LGBT” acronym here?) at the outset:
Non-heterosexual individuals have higher prevalence of neuropsychiatric disorders.
Interestingly, accumulating evidence indicates that non-heterosexual individuals have a higher risk for common neuropsychiatric disorders, such as mood, anxiety, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorders (Sandfort et al., 2001; Frisell et al., 2010; Branstrom, 2017). Several causes have been proposed to explain this relationship, the minority stress theory being the most common and better supported (Sandfort et al., 2001; Frisell et al., 2010; Branstrom, 2017). However, other factors, such as personality traits (Park et al., 2016; Zaninotto et al., 2016), genetic traits (Zietsch et al., 2012), structural and functional cerebral characteristics and hormonal factors have also been mentioned as explanations (Hu et al., 2008; Abe et al., 2014; Abe, Rahman et al., 2018). There are reasons to believe that factors underlying the determination of sexual orientation may also take part in the development of neuropsychiatric disorders.
Mr. Thompson,
Yet, you didn’t know that the transsexual community LOVES Swaab, thus demonstrating the common affliction among those who have expertise in one field: falsely believing that they have expertise in another. You falsely stated that transsexuals are bullies, as though a marginalized and demonized medical patient population of only one in ten thousand people has that power… and you falsely stated that said population was gunning for Swaab, in a knee jerk transphobic fashion.
As to MY expertise… You didn’t look very hard:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=nZlQR_sAAAAJ
My professional expertise is at the intersection of psychophysics human vision (itself at the intersection of psychology and neurology) and the design and manufacture of color flat panel displays and the digital signal processing algorithms that drive biomimetic display designs. My autodidactly earned degrees include Physics, Psychology, and Biology and graduate studies at Stanford in Materials Science.
Then, on top of that, years of study and teaching in the field of TransHistory and On The Science of Transsexuality and Transgender sexuality. I routinely correspond with the top researchers in that field… and write extensive essays and two books analyzing the science papers in those fields.
In addition, I’m a REAL long time activist (not an internet slactivist that I’m sure you referenced as being “bullies”) in that I was a co-founding member of the ACLU Transsexual Rights Committee in 1980 and have been a full time legislative lobbyist.
All this adds up to being much more expert than you in this particular subject.
Thank you for your service. This gender queer appreciates it. <3
Honestly I think the outrage of this paper is because the authors do not speak English as a first language, they are Dutch and Chinese. I’ve read segments of Swaab’s book and it is hard to understand at times. As a result, persons have read a few poorly phrased sentences literally. E.g. Swaab cites Spitzer, and says that conversion therapy is dubious because it is only self reported behavior changes (e.g. marrying a woman due to religious belief) and never presenting evidence of actual arousal to women and not to men. Yet the sentence kind of seems like it’s endorsing conversion therapy to people who read quickly. Swaab is very much pro-lgbt rights so I think this whole thing has gone awry.
Secondly, I think the whole ‘endocrine disruptor’ speculation is probably not as big as they make it out to be. E.g. around 2.5% of men in Samoa are ‘Fa’afafine’ which translates to a “man in the manner of a woman”. They are their version of a gay man, because they only accept them in the ‘female’ typical role. There aren’t any endocrine disrupters in most of these villages. It’s just more wild speculation because we barely understand an epigenetic/hormonal explanation thus far. I feel bad for Swaab, he means well. I don’t find his work impressive though.
There is nothing wrong with English in the paper. I’ve quoted the part that cites Spitzer and it’s completely fine. It is the critics who don’t seem to have a grasp of English. I don’t find the paper to be much past some speculation, fine, but some of the criticism seems to be fueled by strange motivations
When did “Retraction Watch” become “Cancellation Endorsement?”
How so? This reported an expression of concern. It’s reporting, not advocacy.
RW has a habit of employing some fairly subtle but appropriate snark when discussing shenanigans. RW hasn’t had the same courage for posts on the topic of this one.
I do not believe that a person “becomes” gay in the womb. I believe that it is something that each person is born to be. I do however believe there may be some truth in an “eventual” discovery a person comes to in being transgender. I think there may be some hormone’s over or under production in the womb that may result in a person being transgender. It is truly my opinion. I do not make this comment to offend anyone. I just think it may be an explanation as to a person finding treatment and any other necessary help to feel as they should be in mind and body.
“Born to be” implies intent. Existence isn’t decided as valid or invalid on the basis of how well an individual adheres to a a specific “intent”. After all, if we all adhered to intent 75% of the population would be nothing but doctors and lawyers thanks to our parents intent.
Emojis in twitter bio = opinion invalid if not faded
I’m rather confused here. People are asking the paper to be retracted, but what are the actual issues with it? A statement like this by S. Maren:
“FWIW, as an NBR EB member I have sent an email to the EiC cc’ing publisher asking to retract. Perhaps others will do the same to elevate the issue. More voices the better.”
is rather meaningless if it doesn’t include the reason *why* it should be retracted.
I do not think there is anything wrong with research.If one doubts the findings can look into the gap that this findings create and carry out another research.
It is concerning that people are upset because they feel this kind of science does not “support their lifestyle”. This is so much bigger than that. There are more and more studies and papers coming out about toxic chemicals hidden in every corner or our daily lives – they aren’t just mucking up the environment. These things aren’t just changing our gut biome or disrupting our neurotransmitters. These chemicals, microplastics, etc. are killing us. I don’t care what gender you want to be or what gender you want to sleep with- we are ALL being poisoned and we all need to be pissed about it.
Chemicals being introduced to the environment as part of a long term plan to destabilize society. It’s called bio-warefare. Quite weapons for silent wars. It’s very real. What this paper acknowledges is very troubling. But hey, mire yourselves in LGBT issues and base level concerns. Ignorance, ignore, scream and cry. The liberal’s activism.
Wow, can you enlighten me on this topic? I am sure that you have reliable sources for such a bold assertion!