By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
The old joke about male sopranos having feminine proclivities may be just another cultural myth. Researcher Leigh Simmons has developed data which strongly suggests that basses have decidedly lower sperm counts. Working with volunteers at the University of Western Australia, the evolutionary biologist tested 54 heterosexual men. He first asked 30 female volunteers to rate the men’s voices for sexual attractiveness and masculinity. Not surprisingly, men with deep voices were uniformly rated the highest in sexual allure.
Armed with that data, Simmons asked the male subjects to harvest an ejaculate sample “in the privacy of their own home.” The samples were introduced to a computer-assisted sperm analysis system that measured the number of sperm and their propensity to swim to eggs. The results were counter-intuitive and surprising. Deep-voiced men had less sperm than their higher timbre contemporaries but their sperm was just as motile. Simmons reasons that testosterone, which helps produce deeper sounding voices, may be the culprit.
Biologist have known for years that heterosexual women typically favor masculine features like deep voices, prominent jaws and high muscle mass. The thinking is that such features fulfill the desire of those females to find a dominant male – one who will offer the best protection for her and her family.
Simmons concludes ” that men who evolutionarily invest most of their energy into making themselves attractive to females may suffer deficiencies in other areas—in this case, sperm counts.” He also suggests that the study might support the notion that masculinity has other purposes besides sexual attractiveness. One theory is that masculinity may aid males in competing with other males. Evolutionary psychologist Laura Dane supports this theory, “It’s equally likely (if not more likely) that males, in general, have bigger and more muscular bodies as well as lower-pitched voices because they had to compete with other males for dominance and status.” Dr. Dane agrees that more research is needed on this topic and it’s coming. “If masculine traits lead to higher dominance/status positions—even at the expense of some level of sperm quality—then the trade-off between masculine traits and fertility makes more sense,” she said.
Interestingly, heterosexual men prefer women with higher pitched voices. Research seems to suggest that men view the higher pitched female voices as presenting traits of youthfulness and fertility.
So, the research may mean that the best way for single guys and gals to get more dates is not losing a few pounds but merely a few voice lessons.
Source: National Geographic; The Telegraph
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Wow, the guys get into it at the drop of a hat.
I will say, I didn’t post those first three articles to emphasize that Mespo is an ignoramus. I just thought more people should know about findings that sadly, much research is total bunk, and learn why and how to be a critical thinker.
I actually thought Mespo would appreciate that, since, unlike Gene H or Otteray Scribe, I can tell that Mespo does strive to do the right thing and it’s really unfortunate how many times he ends up screwing the pooch.
I hadn’t quite realized Mespo’s scientific ignorance would combine with his lawyerly arrogance and accuse me of anti-intellectualism for posting results a peer reviewed and highly respected paper discussing this.
Well there I go again, misunderestimating the heights of a lawyer’s arrogance.
See, the testosterone really gets used in lots of activities other than sperms finding eggs and that’s probably a part of the problem, if nature really DOES have a problem, with promoting more and more of it. If its job is to promote maleness through sperm and to further the reproductive activities of those sperm, it’s been knocking off a lot recently.
Whoever imagined that this article would lead to any active controversy? Wow, the guys get into it at the drop of a hat. Besides which, the rest of us don’t even know which of the players have high voices!
By the way, I liked that clip of “Amazing Grace.” I used to sing that as a lullabye. It has about a thousand verses.
Mark,
You do understand that this paper does not describe an experiment, but describes a correlation.
And the paper itself describes how weak the association they found was, and how the sperm of the deep voiced men fell within functional parameters.
All of this strengthens the probability this paper is meaningless.
Oh well. Continue to pound your lap.
According to http://www.plosone.org/article/metrics/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0029271
No other scientific papers have cited this paper Mespo, which since it has only been out six months or so may not mean much.
There are no comments attached to the paper, so it is hard to know what other researchers think about it.
Since there are no citations, it does not appear to have been replicated.
All of this are factors to consider in determining the importance, accuracy, validity of a paper. Counselor.
It has been mentioned at Improbable.com home of the Ig Nobels.
http://www.improbable.com/2011/12/27/the-semen-quality-of-deep-voiced-men-study/
None of this suggests this paper is false, but in light of how science actually progresses, in light of Ioannidis findings, it would seem you should be asking for a reproducibility study, pun very much intended.
Maybe those deep voices generate sound waves that scare the sperm off. Like thunder.
Anyway Mespo, I apologize for once more pointing out the huge stench that arises from your keyboard and pervades your efforts.
Wow! Anti-intellectualism from you?
How is that quote from an Atlantic article about John Ioannidis’ work an example of anti-intellectualism?
How is citing an Atlantic article describing the peer-reviewed and highly cited works of Ioannidis an example of anti-intellectualism?
I apologize for citing many peer reviewed works that suggest your deep voice lower sperm count study is probably bullshit, but I fail to see how this quote above is some example of anti-intellectualism.
More likely, it is an example of your inability to defend your study and so sling poorly misunderstood ad hominem my way. Counselor.
I bet that works in front of the judge and fellow lawyers, but on the Internet we expect more.
IT IS NOT SUFFICIENT FOR YOU TO MERELY POUND ON THE TABLE.
Perhaps you as a lawyer should learn what scientists have been discussing for most of a decade before telling other people what you as a lawyer want to think is happening.
Here’s John Ioannidis again,
An Epidemic of False Claims — Competition and conflicts of interest distort too many medical findings
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=an-epidemic-of-false-claims
False positives and exaggerated results in peer-reviewed scientific studies have reached epidemic proportions in recent years. The problem is rampant in economics, the social sciences and even the natural sciences, but it is particularly egregious in biomedicine. Many studies that claim some drug or treatment is beneficial have turned out not to be true. We need only look to conflicting findings about beta-carotene, vitamin E, hormone treatments, Vioxx and Avandia. Even when effects are genuine, their true magnitude is often smaller than originally claimed.
The problem begins with the public’s rising expectations of science. Being human, scientists are tempted to show that they know more than they do. The number of investigators—and the number of experiments, observations and analyses they produce—has also increased exponentially in many fields, but adequate safeguards against bias are lacking. Research is fragmented, competition is fierce and emphasis is often given to single studies instead of the big picture.
Much research is conducted for reasons other than the pursuit of truth. Conflicts of interest abound, and they influence outcomes. In health care, research is often performed at the behest of companies that have a large financial stake in the results. Even for academics, success often hinges on publishing positive findings. The oligopoly of high-impact journals also has a distorting effect on funding, academic careers and market shares. Industry tailors research agendas to suit its needs, which also shapes academic priorities, journal revenue and even public funding.
The crisis should not shake confidence in the scientific method. The ability to prove something false continues to be a hallmark of science. But scientists need to improve the way they do their research and how they disseminate evidence.
First, we must routinely demand robust and extensive external validation—in the form of additional studies—for any report that claims to have found something new. Many fields pay little attention to the need for replication or do it sparingly and haphazardly. Second, scientific reports should take into account the number of analyses that have been conducted, which would tend to downplay false positives. Of course, that would mean some valid claims might get overlooked.
Interesting that we don’t have more scientists…..
anon:
“If between a third and a half of the most acclaimed research in medicine was proving untrustworthy, the scope and impact of the problem were undeniable.”
*****************************
Wow! Anti-intellectualism from you? Imagine that. Any figures on the propriety of all that talking snake, Red Sea parting, dead man walking religious mumbo-jumbo those fundie conservatives always cite in reply?
I am excepting the studies that shows Computer Aided Automatic Scream Identification (CAASI)™ of course.
Is Psychology About to Come Undone?
http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/is-psychology-about-to-come-undone/29045
If you’re a psychologist, the news has to make you a little nervous—particularly if you’re a psychologist who published an article in 2008 in any of these three journals: Psychological Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, or the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
Because, if you did, someone is going to check your work. A group of researchers have already begun what they’ve dubbed the Reproducibility Project, which aims to replicate every study from those three journals for that one year. The project is part of Open Science Framework, a group interested in scientific values, and its stated mission is to “estimate the reproducibility of a sample of studies from the scientific literature.” This is a more polite way of saying “We want to see how much of what gets published turns out to be bunk.”
For decades, literally, there has been talk about whether what makes it into the pages of psychology journals—or the journals of other disciplines, for that matter—is actually, you know, true. Researchers anxious for novel, significant, career-making findings have an incentive to publish their successes while neglecting to mention their failures. It’s what the psychologist Robert Rosenthal named “the file drawer effect.” So if an experiment is run ten times but pans out only once you trumpet the exception rather than the rule. Or perhaps a researcher is unconsciously biasing a study somehow. Or maybe he or she is flat-out faking results, which is not unheard of. Diederik Stapel, we’re looking at you.
So why not check? Well, for a lot of reasons. It’s time-consuming and doesn’t do much for your career to replicate other researchers’ findings. Journal editors aren’t exactly jazzed about publishing replications. And potentially undermining someone else’s research is not a good way to make friends.
Brian Nosek knows all that and he’s doing it anyway. Nosek, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, is one of the coordinators of the project. He’s careful not to make it sound as if he’s attacking his own field. “The project does not aim to single out anybody,” he says. He notes that being unable to replicate a finding is not the same as discovering that the finding is false. It’s not always possible to match research methods precisely, and researchers performing replications can make mistakes, too.
But still. If it turns out that a sizable percentage (a quarter? half?) of the results published in these three top psychology journals can’t be replicated, it’s not going to reflect well on the field or on the researchers whose papers didn’t pass the test. In the long run, coming to grips with the scope of the problem is almost certainly beneficial for everyone. In the short run, it might get ugly.
Nosek told Science that a senior colleague warned him not to take this on “because psychology is under threat and this could make us look bad.”
Anyway, it’s not just Ioannidis finding this out, this result and similar has been found again and again in the last 1/2 decade or so.
Here’s another:
In cancer science, many “discoveries” don’t hold up
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/us-science-cancer-idUSBRE82R12P20120328
(Reuters) – A former researcher at Amgen Inc has found that many basic studies on cancer — a high proportion of them from university labs — are unreliable, with grim consequences for producing new medicines in the future.
A Researcher’s Claim: 90% of Medical Research Is Wrong
http://healthland.time.com/2010/10/20/a-researchers-claim-90-of-medical-research-is-wrong/
Are 90% of all medical studies wrong — including nearly half of those claimed to be the most reliable? That’s the provocative claim made by researcher John Ioannidis, profiled in this month’s issue of The Atlantic.
[Ioannidis] zoomed in on 49 of the most highly regarded research findings in medicine over the previous 13 years, as judged by the science community’s two standard measures: the papers had appeared in the journals most widely cited in research articles, and the 49 articles themselves were the most widely cited articles in these journals. These were articles that helped lead to the widespread popularity of treatments such as the use of hormone-replacement therapy for menopausal women, vitamin E to reduce the risk of heart disease, coronary stents to ward off heart attacks, and daily low-dose aspirin to control blood pressure and prevent heart attacks and strokes.
Ioannidis was putting his contentions to the test not against run-of-the-mill research, or even merely well-accepted research, but against the absolute tip of the research pyramid. Of the 49 articles, 45 claimed to have uncovered effective interventions. Thirty-four of these claims had been retested, and 14 of these, or 41 percent, had been convincingly shown to be wrong or significantly exaggerated. If between a third and a half of the most acclaimed research in medicine was proving untrustworthy, the scope and impact of the problem were undeniable. That article was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
John P. A. Ioannidis
Summary
There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research.
“Otteray Scribe – I wonder if Tim Storms was included in the study”?
I was thinking the same with regards to James Earl Jones.
Or perhaps nature is saying that the men with a bit less testosterone should be the ones having more kids nowadays, so nature can go forward with fewer of the testosterone-induced (or enhanced) problems over the long run. ?? I’m just sayin…
I wonder if Tim Storms was included in the study?
Maybe in evolutionary terms they come out on top:
More partners=More chance of pregnancy, even with lower sperm count.
raff,
If it’s any comfort, they don’t use a combine to harvest that particular crop.
Usually.
The use of the word, harvest in this situation is a little scary! I guess there is hope for us Irishmen after all!