Science told: hands off gay sheep. It's hard to think of a headline more joyous than this classic from the Sunday Times. Apparently Professor Charles Roselli is conducting gruesome experiments on sheep in the name of eradicating homosexuality. Unfortunately this story, co-written by Isabelle Oakeshott - deputy political editor no less - is little more than dystopian fantasy, conjured up by a pressure group to drive an agenda.

We'll open with its big hitter. "The animals' skulls are cut open and electronic sensors are attached to their brains." It sounds gruesome. But it's simply not true. There's no neurophysiology in these experiments at Oregon State University. They measure mate preference by watching the sheep choose a mate. Cilla Black does not open up Blind Date contestants' skulls to attach sensors to their brains (disappointingly in some respects) and they don't do it in these experiments either.

From this point the ST goes rapidly downhill. "By varying the hormone levels," it continues, "mainly by injecting hormones into the brain, they have had 'considerable success' in altering the rams' sexuality, with some previously gay animals becoming attracted to ewes." This is not just completely untrue, it is, in fact, the opposite of what the researchers did. The only similar work completed and published by them was about trying to make "straight" animals "gay" (they avoid those terms) and in any case, that experiment was negative: it failed to achieve this aim.

I could go on: even the details are wrong. "Initially, the publicly funded project aimed to improve the productivity of herds ..." Wrong. "The research is being peer-reviewed by a panel of scientists in America ..." Wrong.

But most bizarre is the suggestion that the research was somehow ultimately about making gay people straight. The assertion is at the top of the article: "Scientists are conducting experiments to change the sexuality of 'gay' sheep in a programme that critics fear could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans." Here's a news flash: we cleared up the question of Lamarckian inheritance of acquired traits 100 years ago. Even if you could intervene to make a gay human straight, you might reasonably expect this to make any inherited tendency towards homosexuality more prevalent, not less.

Almost all the misinformation and misunderstandings in this ST piece appeared first in a Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) campaign. The blogosphere has already run (six months ago) - and then subsequently retracted - Peta's Roselli story.

There are interesting discussions to have about theoretical research into sexual behaviour, but I'm not even going to start here because these are matters for us all, not just scientists or medics like me. It was a funny headline. But the biggest barrier to a sensible discussion is inaccurate prejudice, slander, and disinformation.

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