Turn Your Love Story Into a Glimpse of Tomorrow With Our AI Baby Generator
One-time payment, no subscription
No. The 97% accuracy figure traces to an analysis that was never peer reviewed or published in a journal, and the peer-reviewed work that has examined placental position has not reproduced it. Obstetricians who have been asked about it describe the method as a coin flip.
Ramzi theory holds that the side on which the placenta or chorionic villi develop, seen on a scan from about six weeks, indicates sex: right for a boy, left for a girl. Its appeal is timing. Six weeks is far earlier than any other method offers, and the scan is one many people have anyway.
The figure is attributed to Saam Ramzi Ismail, and the claim is that it comes from a large ultrasound study — the numbers usually quoted are 97.2% of male fetuses with a right-sided placenta and 97.5% of females on the left, from a sample where around 1,200 participants had both scans.
That analysis was never peer reviewed and never published in a journal. It first appeared online through a media company. This matters more than it might sound: peer review is the step where someone independent checks whether the method could have produced the result, and it never happened here.
A 2010 study published in a peer-reviewed journal disputes the idea that placental location correlates with fetal sex. A separate group examined 277 pregnant women in the first trimester using transabdominal ultrasound and reported poor correlation between placental location and sex.
Reviewing the method, Contemporary OB/GYN notes that it has not been confirmed in any additional studies. In the words of one obstetrician asked about it, there is a 50% chance with simple guessing that the sex is male or female — which is the benchmark Ramzi theory has not been shown to beat.
There is a practical difficulty on top of the evidence problem. Transabdominal and transvaginal scans are not oriented the same way, and guides to reading Ramzi theory tell you to flip the image depending on which kind of scan you had.
So the answer depends on correctly remembering, and correctly applying, a mirror step — on an image that was not taken for this purpose and is rarely labelled with it. The same placenta can be read as either answer if the scan type is misremembered, which quietly adds a second coin flip on top of the first.
The two methods that do give an answer are a non-invasive prenatal test, which reads placental DNA from a sample of the mother's blood from about nine or ten weeks, and the anatomy scan at eighteen to twenty-two weeks.
No. The research behind its accuracy claim was never peer reviewed or published in a journal, and the peer-reviewed studies that have looked at placental position and fetal sex did not find a usable relationship.
Because it is repeated, not because it is verified. The number comes from a single unpublished analysis, and sites citing it generally cite each other rather than any study that tested the claim independently.
Six weeks is early enough to see where the placenta is forming, so the observation is possible. What has not been shown is that the observation tells you anything about sex.
By the theory's own instructions, yes — the two scan types are mirrored, and you are told to flip the image for one of them. That makes the answer dependent on remembering which scan you had and applying the flip correctly.
A non-invasive prenatal test, which analyses placental DNA in the mother's blood and can be done from about nine or ten weeks. It is a few weeks later than Ramzi theory claims to work, and unlike Ramzi theory it has been validated.