February 1, 2009 6:13 PM GMT
Hi Josie,
Good luck with your essay, I’m afraid I have no sources of information to offer you at this time, but I noticed something in one of the links given here that related to a comment I just made on another thread regarding “lies, damned lies and statistics.”
There is a great example here of what that quote means, and what one should be wary of when drawing from such sources, though I’m sure you, Josie are intelligent enough to realise this:
“The longer AR gene was found in 55.4 percent of people in the transsexual group and 47.6 percent of the non-transsexual men…”
And yet the headline reads, “Experts identify gene linked to transsexuality”.
In actual fact it’s not far off being 50/50, and thus doesn’t really prove anything does it? If you toss a coin 369 times you are “just as likely” to get a similar result. Much as I’d like it to be true, but I can’t present a “non-believer” with such a theory based on such feeble statistics and not expect to be severely ridiculed.
However, I am TS, and I know that we are born with this condition and so there quite possibly could be a gene linked to transsexuality, but I’m not entirely convinced that we’ve found it yet. And if we have, we need more convincing proof for the doubters.
xx
