[konschubert]

Isn’t that just a correlation that they discovered? Aren’t there thousands of hidden variables that could explain this correlation without a causal relationship?

Isn’t that a pretty weak p Value ?

I just read the abstract and might have mis-interpreted it. But on a first glance this looks like an April fools joke.

[tomp]

Well this idea has been around for a while. I always foundit a bit iffy... like, human sperm is one of the most innocent things people get in their mouths/digestive tracts... so if that can influence your immune system (and making it less effective at that), what will eating some wild viruses-containing meat or bacteria-covered fruit do?!

[AstralStorm]

We typically try it to render it inert by cooking and cutting out glands.

See, sperm contains hormone-like peptides, evolved for humans to react to. You do not generally eat concentrated amounts thereof. (At least didn't...)

[the_fonz]

I wonder about the causal link/s. Speculating, maybe less stressed/anxious/depressed and healthier people have more fun, better genes or have more resources to have better healthcare? Also, less stressed mothers seem inherently more likely to bring a child to term than a stressed mom-to-be because IIRC stress induces both labor or spontaneous abortion. Maybe there's a MHC or other immune component that leads to stronger attraction and/or healthier babies? There was a dating startup in the late 90's that promised to match people on MHC, but I'm not sure how far they got on that.... maybe AI/deep learning trained on a big enough SNPs samples and qualitative mutual attractiveness rating could tackle it these days.

[Not_a_pizza]

There is some psychology to this. I mean someone that is already healthy is more likely to do a greater amount of sexual things. If you're sick you're not going to be as sexual. Also, being sickly more common or unwell should already put you on unsteady ground when carrying a baby.

Additionally, a woman who has had more intimate exposure to her husband is probably less likely to have negative reactions to a fetus which they have created, judging from basic adaptive immunology.