It's a Boy! Gender Expectations Intrude on the Study of Sex Determination

摘要

The practice of science can be distorted by bias atnmultiple levels. Bias can intrude at any point along thenprocess spanning the formulation of a hypothesis, design ofnexperiments testing that hypothesis, interpretation of the resultingndata, and development of broad explanatory models.nLess obvious, however, are the biases that limit which questionsnare asked in the first place. The absence of any researchnfocus on a problem can go unnoticed. But who does determinenwhich issues are interesting and which are not worthy ofnscientific investigation? The study of human sex determinationnoffers an example of this type of invisible bias. Whilenextensive research has focused on the developmental pathwaynleading to a male baby, surprisingly little effort has goneninto understanding how a human embryo becomes female.