The first scientific investigations of Guevedoces occurred in the 1970s, when Julianne Imperato-McGinley, an endocrinologist from Cornell University, traveled to the village of Las Salinas in the Dominican Republic to investigate reports of apparently female children becoming male children at the onset of puberty.[8] The cause was determined to be 5α-Reductase deficiency, and the results were published in the journal Science in 1974.