Controversial study says saliva test can accurately predict whether you're gay
UCLA scientists think they've developed the first test that can accurately predict whether a man is gay based on his DNA, and all it takes is a swab of saliva, reports New Scientist.
The researchers examined 400,000 epigenetic tags—"chemicals that latch onto DNA and help turn genes on or off," explains BuzzFeed—and zeroed in on five that were notably different in gay and straight twins. A resulting algorithm correctly predicted the men's sexual orientation nearly 70% of the time. Researchers presented the controversial findings at the American Society of Human Genetics annual meeting in Baltimore this week, though they have yet to appear in a peer-reviewed journal.
"To our knowledge, this is the first example of a predictive model for sexual orientation based on molecular markers," says lead author Tuck Ngun in a press release.
A skeptical molecular geneticist said such tests are prone to false positives due to "spurious associations that are down to sheer chance," reports New Scientist. Another added that it needs to be replicated "on larger samples in order to know how good it is, but in theory it's quite interesting." The UCLA researchers used saliva samples from 47 pairs of identical male twins in which at least one of the two was gay.