"In the late 1800s, French demographer Louis-Adolphe Bertillon compared death rates by marital status across Europe and triumphantly declared that married men live longer. His conclusion gave birth to the "marriage protection hypothesis" - the idea that marriage itself somehow lengthens your lifespan. It took decades to realize that the relationship was purely statistical. Marriage didn't cause longevity; it merely correlated with it. Healthier, wealthier, more stable men were simply more likely to get-and stay-married."
"In the early 1900s, American biologist Nettie Stevens was peering down her microscope at mealworms at Bryn Mawr College when she noticed something remarkable. Males had one tiny chromosome that females lacked. In her 1905 paper, she wrote: "Since the somatic cells of the female contain 20 large chromosomes, while those of the male contain 19 large ones and one small one, this seems to be a clear case of sex-determination" (Stevens, 1905)."
Early geneticists mistook correlation for causation when naming X and Y 'sex chromosomes.' Nettie Stevens's 1905 discovery showed that males had a small chromosome females lacked, linking those chromosomes to sex but not proving causation. Historical examples show correlation errors: ice cream sales and drownings rise together, and Louis-Adolphe Bertillon's marital-status comparison led to the 'marriage protection hypothesis' that misattributed causation. Contemporary genetics identifies more than fifty genes across many chromosomes that influence sex development, demonstrating that control of sexual development is polygenic. The phrase 'sex chromosome' therefore misrepresents biological complexity and should be retired in favor of more accurate terminology.
Read at Psychology Today
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