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>His research aligns with what professors Mark Hatzenbuehler and John Pachankis (of Harvard and Yale, respectively) called the "Best Little Boy in the World" hypothesis. Drawing from Andrew Tobias' memoir, "The Best Little Boy in the World," this hypothesis proposes that gay men respond to societal homophobia by overcompensating in achievement-related domains.

I always find it fascinating when extremely well-respected university folks make write-ups that confirm what is dead obvious to anyone who belongs to the group being studied.

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I'm only bi, but this isn't obvious at all to me. In fact it seems obviously wrong. Most marginalized groups don't "overcompensate in achievement-related domains", and I don't see what mechanism would make LGBT people be any different.

More plausible to me is that these studies can't capture the true concentration of gay people, only the concentration of out gay people. And it's easier to be out, to the rest of the world and to yourself, when you're in an environment that won't punish you for it. And richer environments tend to be less homophobic, so even if the concentration of gay people is the same, more will be out in the richer parts of society.

I grew up in an very homophobic, very poor rural community, and convinced myself I was straight. Then when I went to college I had basically my first exposure to openly gay people and eventually realized I had been deluding myself. That would probably never had happened if I stayed in my hometown.

> Most marginalized groups don't "overcompensate in achievement-related domains", and I don't see what mechanism would make LGBT people be any different.

A significant difference is that for the LGBT people, revealing their marginalized status is a choice. A Black kid can't pretend to be white, but a gay kid can pretend to be straight (or their birth gender). Adults can as well, but being able to get an education in the in group seems like a significant difference.

I doubt it's emotionally healthy to do so, but neither is getting discriminated against. Even having the option between a rock and a hard place might give people a sense of control over their lives that they lack if their only option is getting discriminated against.

Familial achievement might also be related. Many marginalized groups have highly heritable traits, like skin tone or facial features. Their families have been discriminated against for generations. Many LGBT people are born into non-marginalized families, so the median familial income might be higher. There might be data on this, but I couldn't find it easily, so I could be totally off base.

I'm not proposing that's the reasoning behind this effect, just pointing out there is a mechanism by which there would be a reasonable difference. Neither of those would account for the difference in college graduation rates for lesbians vs gay men, though.

I'm gay and I don't find it obvious or convincing that it's about societal homophobia. Moreover, that wouldn't explain the gap between straight and lesbian women, either.

> Moreover, that wouldn't explain the gap between straight and lesbian women, either.

I don't think the homophobia against lesbian women and the homophobia against gay men is the same.

I feel like sometimes scientists don't have enough respect or humilty. The human brain is a very complex thing, that we don't understand fully. But somehow, if something hasn't been proved through science, it has no value. I met a few people that have a very strong belief from anything that comes with "academic credentials" but reject/ask for proof for anything else. While I understand that academic credentials may have more value that just someone saying something, the experience of people actually living things can matter a lot.

Scientists as a group have so much humility that if they're not literally excited to be proven wrong, on their most deeply held understanding of the fundamentals of their field, then they're not considered to be scientists.

Ha ha, if only.

Some concrete exemples might help your case. Science wants to be humble. The people we hold as examples of very careful, meticulous scientists (like Cochrane) have very weak beliefs and a lot of quantified doubt about everything.

Science shouldn't be trusted blindly, because it's an incremental process not an Oracle of Truth.

But random people with opinions, in my experience, are even more likely to have strong beliefs and overconfidence in them.

It's bad when leaders make choices based on unproven ideas because of the impact that can have on people.

If I told all my friends that drinking hot sauce made me smarter, then yeah, drinking hot sauce has some value for me individually. If I told some scientists the same thing, they might think about it and analyze what the possible mechanism was, whether I actually became snarter, etc, but the idea of drinking hot sauce has absolutely no value to society until someone can prove it works. The value to science is in a possible research path, if it somewhat fits with what we know about reality.

That's why I ask and search for proof. I don't want to be tricked into drinking hot sauce for no reason.

> what is dead obvious to anyone who belongs to the group being studied.

I'm in the group and I don't think the specific explanation is obviously true. But I also think that any particular individual in the group may be part of a _particular_ gay community which isn't necessarily representative of all gay men.

I think one could even have reasonably guessed that the opposite effect would dominate; if gay men on average have somewhat less support from their families, both because of actual homophobia, and just because they on average have more older brothers, that it might be harder for them to get to college.

Aside from the "best little boy in the world" hypothesis of overcompensating achievement, I think another one which rings true anecdotally is gay men realizing that they have to find a way to move out of whatever community they were raised in to find an environment which is less repressive or confining.

> I always find it fascinating when extremely well-respected university folks make write-ups that confirm what is dead obvious to anyone who belongs to the group being studied.

Is it? I'm a member of said group, but I always kind of assumed (without thinking about it too much) that the effect came largely from the fact that college is one of the easier places and contexts to come out.

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