Amidst the swirls of controversy that buffet other sexuality researchers, one man focuses, quietly, on swirls. In a monograph called Excess of Counterclockwise Scalp Hair-Whorl Rotation in Homosexual Men, Dr Amar J S Klar announces a subtle discovery. “This is the first study,” he writes, “that shows a highly significant association of biologically specified counterclockwise hair-whorl rotation and homosexuality in a considerable proportion of men in samples enriched in gays.”
Klar heads the developmental genetics section of the gene regulation and chromosome biology laboratory at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland. His hair-swirl study appears in a 2004 issue of the Journal of Genetics. [The image above is from the study.]
The phenomenon is easy to overlook. Klar explains:
“Since the hair whorl is found at the top (‘crown’) of the head and thereby it is difficult to observe one’s own whorl and the direction of orientation is seemingly an unimportant feature, most people are oblivious to the direction of their hair-whorl rotation….
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.
Posted by Marc Abrahams on
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 12:02 am
under Newspaper column.
