Hitler’s Ball(s)
Learnings from Hitler's DNA study: Penis is big business.
I didn’t want to talk about Hitler’s balls. But I have to talk about Hitler’s balls.
Last week, a salacious story blazed around the internet, one that was always going to attract a lot of attention: Hitler’s DNA had been tested and the results were SHOCKING.
Depending on which publications you frequent — and particularly if you are based in the UK — you would have discovered a list of maladies that befell the evil prick: Kallman Syndrome, microphallus1, cryptorchidism (undescended testes) and then a host of psychiatric conditions, too.
The provenance of all of these claims was science conducted for a UK Channel 4 documentary preposterously titled Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator.2 That show will have aired by the time you read this, but I, being Australian and presumably not on the Channel 4 media list, have not seen it (Though there’s plenty of clips online).
And it looks like the science in this doco is legit! It seems to be robust and rigorous — the sample used in the show was all-but-confirmed to belong to the evil prick and the analysis was shepherded by Turi King, a highly-regarded geneticist and one of the lead researchers of the DNA analysis of Richard III, and a handful of other smart geneticists and historians.
Which is great! In theory! It should mean we don’t get any overblown coverage that jumps to unnecessary conclusions, misinterprets the scientific findings or, in general, propagates misinformation, right?
Ah F**((&*&**((()*()*!!!!!!!!! The headline here!!!!!
Guys, please!!!!!! ADHD????
No! God no!!!! That’s not even really how cryptorchidism works!!!
But… your subhead contradicts your actual headline?!!! WTFFFFFFFFF
I’m not here to interrogate the science because that’s already been done quite well elsewhere. I recommend Adam Rutherford’s Bluesky posts or his Substack piece. The short of it is: There’s some interesting stuff going on in Hitler’s DNA. It’s very likely he had Kallman’s Syndrome and an undescended testicle3, but beyond this we really get into the realm of speculation because the DNA evidence cannot diagnose any of the conditions affecting Hitler’s mental health; those are multi-faceted, influenced by more than just the makeup of your double helix.
There’s has been some really thoughtful coverage on the topic, interrogating the documentary and asking questions about the ethics: The Guardian’s Philip Oltermann, a European culture correspondent, did a really neat job of unpacking some of the program’s decisions, while the Dutch publication NRC and science journalist Bart Funnekotter took a closer look at some of the claims, too. Good stuff.4
What interests me and, presumably, readers of this blog is the way that information moves from laboratory work to the public. This is a very curious case — a documentary TV revealing significant results outside the traditional publishing pathway! And the first people accessing these results are … culture journalists and generalists mostly writing about the documentary!
Fascinating.
First thing to say is that I jumped on the phone with Professor Turi King on Friday. She features prominently in the Channel 4 program, acting as a guide for viewers alongside historian Dr Alex Kay, as they unpack what the analysis of Hitler’s DNA reveals.
King told me, as she has told others, that there is a scientific paper in the works and it’s going through a review process right now (She didn’t tell me which journal but that information is floating around out there — “prominent medical journal”, …pretty easy to guess).
She also mentioned that she did not have “the power” to control when the documentary came out, but from the outset was determined that a scientific paper must be published alongside it and she really wanted to line the two of them up, so they would release at the same time.
This did not happen, sadly.
In our talk, Professor King touched on the idea of putting up the preprint on bioRxiv, where you can read manuscripts yet to be peer reviewed, but thought it would not be a wise move, feeling that it was critical the paper go through a peer review process.
I was at first a little skeptical that putting such a prominent piece of shit’s DNA on bioRxiv would be a good thing, and that it would be ripe for misinterpretation. But reflecting on how the story has been taken up by publications and writers online, I don’t see now that it would have been any worse tbh! The findings are now out there anyway… and they haven’t gone through a peer review process.
I’m really not sure science journalists or science journalism could have done a lot more to gird against the sensationalism, but I do worry about aspects of the communication here. For one, if you aren’t writing a review of the documentary and you’re discussing the science behind Hitler’s DNA, well, I’ve said it before but you should read the damn paper.
In this case, that’s impossible! Which kind of puts us on the back foot. But I would argue that if you’re going to write about this science, you should watch the damn documentary!
There was a four page document of “Scientific Results” from the show that I was able to get. I’m not sure all the journalists were privy to this document but multiple journalists have seen it. It seems to have come from Blink Films and showcases a few of the major findings.
The document states, of Hitler’s Kallman syndrome:
Hiter had a pathogenic mutation in his PROK2 gene on Chromosome 3. This mutation causes Kallman’s syndrome.
…
The phenotype found in [Hitler’s] genome is known to cause under developed penis and often undescended testes. In rare cases this is associated with mood disorders, due to sleep disruption.
It isn’t sensationalist, but it does point to the under developed penis as a finding worth digging into.
The documentary also takes a pretty strong line on the microphallus stuff. A clip, available on Instagram here, shows King discussing Kallman Syndrome with Prof Jorma Toppari from Turku University in Finland.
In it, we can see that Toppari mentions that “in 10% of the kids with this kind of mutation might have a small penis, micropenis” — that’s couched in language of “maybe”. Toppari himself says the severity of Kallman Syndrome is “very variable” but the show then goes down the micropenis pathway, suggesting that such a thing would be more psychological damaging for a young man than anything else.
However, given that we had Hitler’s medical record which lines up with cryptorchidism, the undescended testicle, but no mention of a micropenis, this feels more unlikely than likely and I struggle to see why the editors would frame it this way.
Given that there’s a low percentage of men with Kallman who present this way, it’s intriguing to see so many stories follow this particular storyline. Journalists could and probably should have left that discussion to a small part of the text, or at least contextualized that this is more unlikely than likely, at least according to the show.
A press release I obtained from the Blink comms guru also does a pretty good job of not sensationalising though I think some of the quotes could have been tempered a little: I’m not sure that it was really for the best to promote the idea “Hitler would have sent himself to the gas chambers”…5
Instead, penises. Penises everywhere!
I’m not surprised — god no! — the salaciousness is out of this world. Even the good and thorough articles had to run with the penis headline. Even I, right now, had to run with it. That’s simply too good an opportunity for journalists and editors to pass up.
But some articles also focused on the psychiatric conditions discussed in the documentary, including autism, ADHD and schizophrenia, even though this analysis was based on polygenic risk scores — ie. they’re not diagnostic of any condition. They can provide a relative risk6 and Hitler’s scores for some of these conditions are interesting on their own (without seeing the absolute data) he does fall into the 1% of the population at highest risk. But the DNA is not evidence Hitler had any of these conditions.
The press release (and documentary) blends the PRS with elements of historical descriptions and records about Hitler, which then goes onto strengthen the idea that these were conditions he suffered from. Particularly, the press release does give some space to discussing ADHD, right at the end of its PRS section. And there’s not a lot of caveats about what PRS can tell us and what it’s limitations are (New Scientist did a good job discussing this, too)
The researchers (and filmmakers, to some degree) seem to be at pains to suggest there can be stigmatization and negative impacts on these groups of people if we do not interpret the findings in the right way. And they were at pains to interpret them in the right way. There have been serious concerns — the BBC reported that Tim Nicholls, assistant director at the UK Autistic Society, said “Even worse than the shoddy science, we’re shocked at [the documentary’s] callous disregard for autistic people’s feelings.”
Simply by putting the information out into the world, the control is all gone.
Silly headlines shouldn’t prevent us from speaking about what the evidence says. No, no, no. But it’s clear we must at least consider how the communications will be used, caveats and all, and construct better ways to discuss these stories; ways that shield the vulnerable from the worst impacts. Are we really telling the whole story with the micropenis nonsense or are we just trying to generate attention?
Because equation has proven to be rather simple: Throw Hitler’s micropenis into a headline and you’ve got your fill of clicks for the day. Maybe the week. Maybe you can even follow up for the next two or three days with stories pulling apart every aspect of Hitler’s lopsided genitals and behaviour.
And that’s potentially good for the publications that live and die by Google’s algorithms and just need to fill a quota of stories and views each week. The content machine rolls on. By this time next week, these headlines will be forgotten and we’ll be onto the next science story, wildly misinterpreted, shockingly overblown, perhaps detrimental, maybe harmful.
But will the stigma, the negative impact, the hurt that some have felt from the way this story has been twisted live on? You don’t need a DNA test to answer that.7
Pronounced MY-CROF-ULUS, like the dinosaur, thanks Adam Rutherford.
The “blueprint” idea has copped some heat. This gets awfully close to genetic determinism, the idea that DNA makes you behave a certain way.
This is supported by medical records from his time in prison.
I am making a more conscious effort to celebrate the Good Stuff. Being frustrated all the time is unhealthy for all of us.
The sentiment is icky. There’s a better way to say this.
May I never write another newsletter about this. Bye!