Palmistry’s digital analogue Chris McManus considers claims that finger-length ratios point to individual and sex differences | | The Finger Book: Sex, Behaviour and) ‘To understand the new Disease Revealed in the Fingers chicomaney, hold up your right By Joh. Manning | hand, palm towaeds you and Faber and Faber, 1709p, £12.99 fingers together, and compare the {en 9780571215393 lengths of the second (index) and _ | Published 6 March 2008 | fur ing) gers Beverly use a ruler, measuring each finger Cx the notorious | from the tip to the crease where it | pseudoscience that Sir joins the palm. Dividing the ‘Walter Scott bracketed with | length of the second digit by the hysiognomy, astrology and length of the fourth digit gives “other fantastic arts of what in the jargon is known as prediction”, has for two decades | the 2D:4D ratio. Men generally been creeping back into scientific | have longer ring fingers, and thus favour, And John Manning is its | a lower 2D:4D ratio, high priest. In The Finger Book, Although Manning likes to hhe writes: “I believe thae the deseribe that difference as a pattern and nature of our decline | “sexual dimorphism” ~ two inmidale life andthe disease distinct forms that differentiate which wil eventually lead to our | the sexes, ina similar way to death, is dependent toa large | beards, breasts and baldness ~ extent on our experiences asa there isa large overlap between foetus", a phrase that could the sexes, such thar the sex. | almost have been written by | difference is found reliably and Cheiro, the early 20th-century | consistently only when studying a society palmist. For Manning, | hundred or more men and | foetal expecience is wri large in| women, The overlap is both the the relative lengths of our fingers. strength and the weakness of 46 Times Higher Education 17 April 2008, 2D:4D, for it means that some __| undoubtedly differs both betweer ‘men have a more feminine pattern | and within the sexes, but whethe and some women have a more | itis really a surrogate for foetal masculine pattern, | testosterone levels seems never to The simplicity of the measure | have been confirmed, for instance has inevitably launched a | by measuring testosterone levels thousand research papers on in amniotic fluid. hundreds of topics, finding Manning's theory generates cortations of 4D with to | astrong sense of de user Select jusethe terms used in | Somuch is eminscent ofthe Manning’ chapter les heart | rambling sprawling al attacks, breast cancer, infectious | encompasing theory of almost all diseases, skin colour, running things neuropsychological, and speed, football ability, sexual indeed much beyond, put forward attraction, homosexuality, and in the late 1980s by Norman schizophrenia. Just as the motto | Geschwind and Albert Galaburda, of the News of the World used to | at whose core were variations in be “all human life is there”, where | foetal testosterone. Once again, “all” was used in the peculiarly | explanation often seems to run far technical sense of referring ahead of both proper theorising entirely to sex, so the 2D:4D ratio | and careful data gathering, as seems to encompass all human | opposed to arm waving, life, bur with sex, sexual The Finger Book is Manning's development and sexual selection | second book on 2D:4D in six always nearby. years, Digit Ratio (2002) covered Central to Manning's theory is | much the same ground, with the belief that there is an chapter titles that are surprisingly underlying’connection between | similar to The Finger Book, but finger lengths and sexual to my mind was better and more development, mediated via the sex | clearly written. The snapper ttle, hormone testosterone, so that | along with its trade publication, whenever one sees a longer ring | presumably means The Finger finger one can infer the existence | Book is aimed at the general of higher testosterone levels early | reader, although I fear they may be in foetal development. Folk disappointed. Even ifthe blurb | mythology has long suggested that | writer found the book en with large hands or feee will | “provocative, arresting and be well endowed, but there seems | direct”, I confess I mainly found it to be biological truth in that arresting, at times being brought to adage, with biologists finding chat | a hale and finding it hard to restart. the same gene family, the Hox | A dreary style is emphasised by genes, underpins the development | forced attempts to involve the of “apical appendages” (fingers reader: “Now for your ratio” or and penises in other words). “Let us begin to look at what Nevertheless, there is a problem | science can tell us”. A few here. Just because differences photocopies of hands provide poor overall between men and women | illustrative fare, and the repetitive ccan be explained in terms of foetal_| scattergrams seem merely to testosterone, that does not also | emphasise that any individual ‘mean that differences between one | 2D:4D ratio has but minimal man and another man, or one predictive power. “Your ratio” is woman and another woman, ate | unlikely to predict much at al. also due to differential exposure to | Whether the new chiromancy foetal testosterone. After all, itis | will succeed is far from clear at because men have a Y present, The human hand, that chromosome and hence have “instrument of instruments” higher testosterone levels than without which our brain would be women that men on average are | unable to shape and manipulate also taller than women, the world, has inevitably been However, that doesn’t mean | developed and modified by thae tall men are taller than natural selection, and when men shorter men because they had and women's fingers differ in more foetal testosterone, but length there must surely be a rather height differences between | pattern that requires explanation, ‘men mainly result from myriad | Manning's question is therefore a polygenic and environmental good one, although I confess my factors unrelated to testosterone | doubts as to many of his answers, and the ¥ chromosome. Here — surely is the greatest weakness at McManus is professor of the heart of the science of 2D:4D. | psychology and medical education Something is being measured that | at University College London.