How Earnest Research Into Gay Genetics Went Wrong – Wired

When Vitti saw the app, he tweeted it out, tagging Neale and Ganna along with the Broad Institute. “I didn’t know whether to say it’s worse than we thought, or this is exactly what we told y’all was going to happen,” he says. He waited a few days, but Neale and Ganna didn’t respond. So Vitti, who by now had left the Broad and was working at genomics software company Seven Bridges, started an online petition to pressure GenePlaza to take down the app. Within a week, 1,400 people had signed it, as The New Scientist reported.

Neale says he and his coauthors were still discussing a course of action when Vitti launched his petition. He was tempted to ignore it, in the hopes it would go away. But as reporters began contacting Neale and his colleagues, they decided to write a letter to GenePlaza. Sent on October 14, it called the app a “gross and dangerous mischaracterization” of their work and urged the company to take it down.

At first, Coletta and Bellenson held firm. They informed Neale they had made some changes, including adding a second disclaimer that said “This app does NOT predict same sex attraction.” And they moved the majority of Bellenson’s essay behind the app’s paywall. But the app was still up a few days later, when Neale and Ganna flew to Houston for the 2019 meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics. On the opening day of the conference, news reports revealed that Ugandan politicians were moving to reintroduce a bill that would make gay sex punishable by death.