Snip from a New York Times piece by John Schwartz about blog controversy over a study that sought to determine why some sheep prefer to bonk others of their own gender:
Charles Roselli set out to discover what makes some sheep gay. Then the news media and the blogosphere got hold of the story.
Dr. Roselli, a researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University, has searched for the past five years for physiological factors that might explain why about 8 percent of rams seek sex exclusively with other rams instead of ewes. The goal, he says, is to understand the fundamental mechanisms of sexual orientation in sheep. Other researchers might some day build on his findings to seek ways to determine which rams are likeliest to breed, he said.
But since last fall, when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals started a campaign against the research, it has drawn a torrent of outrage from animal rights activists, gay advocates and ordinary citizens around the world – all of it based, Dr. Roselli and colleagues say, on a bizarre misinterpretation of what the work is about.
The story of the gay sheep became a textbook example of the distortion and vituperation that can result when science meets the global news cycle.
Link. Image: "Some sheep from a university study of homosexual behavior. About 8 percent of rams are said to seek sex with other rams instead of ewes." Lynn Ketchum/Oregon State University.
reader comment: Hugo says,
Ben Goldacre wrote a good article in the Guardian concerning this rather impressive misunderstanding. Link
Update: The British paper accused of inaccuracies in earlier reports on this story has issued an apology for its errors:
The Sunday Times January 28, 2007
CorrectionsThe report "Science told: hands off gay sheep" (News, December 31) contained several inaccuracies in its description of research into the brain's role in sheep's sexual partner preference being conducted at Oregon Health & Science University and Oregon State University. The research is aimed at understanding the role of the brain in sexual attraction. The researchers deny that they were trying to "cure" homosexuality in sheep, a statement that is backed up by their published studies. The research included a study that limited androgen in sheep to determine if this resulted in same partner preference. Our report misconstrued this experiment. The researchers also stress that contrary to our report they have had no success in altering the sexual preference of the animals. The research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and is not being conducted to improve farm productivity. The authors of our report were not science specialists and we should have ensured that the story was checked by the science editor before publication. We apologise for the errors and any subsequent confusion.
