Toronto — It's almost an irresistible story for journalists: the World Health Organization publishes a study predicting the gene responsible for natural blond hair will be extinct by the year 2202.

And a number of news organizations around the world took the bait late last week, including the extensive and respected BBC News Web site.

There was just one problem. The WHO neither commissioned nor published any research on the future of the blond gene. Nor can the organization find a shred of proof that anyone else did last week either.

"We really, really just do not know where it came from," WHO press officer Rebecca Harding explained in an interview from Geneva on Tuesday.

"We really are in the dark. But it does seem like a semi-hoax, or at least somebody making something up."

The WHO generally disseminates press releases on fighting AIDS in the developing world or vaccination programs aimed at eradicating diseases. On Tuesday, it put out a perplexing advisory to journalists on its e-mail list entitled "clarification of erroneous news reports indicating WHO genetic research on hair colour."

"In response to recent media reports citing an alleged World Health Organization (WHO) study predicting the extinction of the naturally blond hair gene, WHO wishes to clarify that it has never conducted research on this subject," the advisory said.

"Nor, to the best of its knowledge, has WHO issued a report predicting that 'natural blonds are likely to be extinct by 2202.' WHO has no knowledge of how these news reports originated but would like to stress that we have no opinion on the future existence of blonds."

So how did many of the London tabloids, the BBC, several NBC-TV affiliates and CTV end up reporting late last week on a new study predicting the demise of naturally blond hair?

As far as the WHO can tell, Ms. Harding said, last week's story originated with a report run by a German news agency. That report quoted from an article published in a German women's magazine in August of 2000. The magazine article predicted natural blonds were going to disappear, quoting as its source a WHO anthropologist, "which was odd in the first place," Ms. Harding said.

"We've run searches on this guy and he's never worked at the WHO. He's not on our list of experts. He's not affiliated with our collaborating centres. He's certainly not had a contract at WHO at any time."

Despite the fact hair colour is not exactly the WHO's type of issue, the British tabloids jumped all over the story. On Friday, the Geneva press office fielded nearly 40 calls asking for the alleged study, Ms. Harding said.

"We put out a press statement on the health situation in Palestine on the same day. And comparatively we had very few calls on that, which was quite pathetic, really," she added.

The BBC Web site article did not credit the study to the WHO, but to "experts in Germany." It did not name any experts, however, nor did it name a university or research institute with which they were affiliated. It also did not say if the research had been published in a peer reviewed journal.

The CTV didn't refer to the WHO either, attributing the prediction to a German study. A CTV news spokeswoman said Tuesday the network didn't have a comment to make on the matter at this time.

But a Canadian journalism professor called the whole affair "obviously worrisome."

"Clearly this is an example of major news organizations not checking their sources," said James Compton, who teaches in the faculty of information and media studies at the University of Western Ontario in London.

"I think you could make an argument that work routines are such that reporters are cutting corners — or feeling that they can get away with cutting corners."

For the record, some scientists have postulated that the gene responsible for blond hair may eventually die out.

Several years ago, a book called The Vogue Book of Blonds cited the work of geneticist Steve Jones of University College, London, to make that argument.

Jones said blondness is the result of a recessive gene. He predicted that changing migration patterns would eventually create a majority of brown-haired people even among the now blond populations of Scandinavia.

But not everyone agrees with the idea. Lucy Osborne, a molecular and medical geneticist at the University of Toronto, said Tuesday that natural blond hair might become less common than it is now but "I don't see that it would disappear.

"I can see the way they're thinking. But I don't think it's strictly going to work like that."