Quote Originally Posted by Aenlic
Here, psychologists are often therapists offering such scientific methodology as crystal and aroma therapy and aura healing. The 70's really had a bad effect on certain disciplines on this side of the pond. In many places, one can hang out a shingle as a "child psychologist" with nothing more than a 2-year associate degree from a junior college. It tends to color my sentiments. For that I apologize.
I always found it problematic that in the US practically everyone can call himself "psychologist". Here in Europe the trend is that you can't call yourself "crystal-juggling spirit-healer" unless you have the diploma of a crystal-juggling spirit-healer education that is approved by the crystal-juggling spirit-healer association. Though unfortunately the use of methods not approved by the APA is still not rooted out here among psychologist, so not all is well.
That said, I don't know how it is in the USA but here the title psychologist - for which you need a 4 to 5 year education at university - does not grant you the authority to do any therapy on your own. You need an additional education (1 to 2 years) which grants you the title "psychotherapist" that lets you practise on your own. What I want to stress also is that of all people who gain the title psychologist only a minority (though not a small minority) will have to do anything with therapy later in their life. The only "patients" I had to do with during my education got their brains cut to slices afterwards (said mGluR7-deficient mice).

He's the author of much of the literature. He's also a co-author on most of the literature with one of the authors of the above paper, R. Blanchard! This entire line of study seems to originate from a small group of 3-4 people, mostly centered around the Clarke Institute, which seems to have a bad reputation among the transgender community from what I can tell researching it online. It makes me suspicious. I get the impression that you think there is some distance of independent thought between the two researchers, implying a broader scope to the research. That just isn't the case. For example, before the Bogaert paper was published in PNAS, we have this paper in the AMJ:
Well yes, I noticed that. But that independent researchers did not investigate the hypothesis is not their fault. Also, the evidence on the H-Y antigen is not from them. I just wanted to refute the notion that he alone came up with a vague idea in the course of one study. He and colleages have laid out a clearly formulated hypothesis for which they have referred to pre-existing evidence (that is outside their own field) and gathered own evidence (in their own field). In my view that is pretty much the way science should work. Of course, it is up to them AND others to test their hypothesis further.

It is entirely in order to be suspicious. Up to now, not much evidence is on the table and the only ones advocating that hypothesis is one group of researchers, so I certainly don't want to make you believe this explanation (I am myself far from convinced). Being suspicious is good, but saying this study is bogus because the author is a psychologist is not good.

And finally, I submit that the hypothesis is exactly the focus of the study.
Hmm, this is conjecture, isn't it? I would say the focus of the study is to show that the number of biological older brothers correlates with the chance of being gay for males. That he mentions a possible explanation seems entirely reasonable to me.