A new study debunks "the gaydar myth," or claims that one can have the intuitive ability to assess others' sexual orientations based on their appearance, Campus Reform reported.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison determined that gaydar is not only inaccurate, but a harmful and offensive.

"Most people think of stereotyping as inappropriate," William Cox, lead author of the study and an assistant scientist in the Department of Psychology, said in a statement. "But if you're not calling it 'stereotyping,' if you're giving it this other label and camouflaging it as 'gaydar,' it appears to be more socially and personally acceptable."

Cox's research challenges the validity of prior studies regarding gaydar. He said those studies are inaccurate because "he photos of people's faces used to determine their sexuality varied in quality. The gays' and lesbians' photos were higher quality than the straight individuals' used in the former studies," Campus Reform reported.

Cox said when researchers controlled for differences in photo quality, participants were unable to tell who was gay and straight.

He also mentioned that people's judgments of sexual orientation are often wrong because a small percentage of the population - 5 percent or less - is gay.

"Imagine that 100 percent of gay men wear pink shirts all the time, and 10 percent of straight men wear pink shirts all the time. Even though all gay men wear pink shirts, there would still be twice as many straight men wearing pink shirts. So, even in this extreme example, people who rely on pink shirts as a stereotypic cue to assume men are gay will be wrong two-thirds of the time," Cox said.

Based on their analysis, Cox determined that gaydar does not exist, The Wisconsin Watchdog reported. It is nothing more than a "stereotyping mechanism," Campus Reform reported.

The findings are detailed in the Journal of Sex Research.