Full disclosure: I have attended multiple presentation on this paper by some of these authors, and I'm doing a PhD in quantitative Genetics. So I like to think

Full disclosure: I have attended multiple presentation on this paper by some of these authors, and I'm doing a PhD in quantitative Genetics. So I like to think I have something to add. But I'm not an expert on educational attainment, so correct me if I'm wrong. The 11% of variance that can be predicted using the current information of a fairly bad genetic predictor. The predictor is bad because many cohorts used in this study do not share all their information, but only share so called summary statistics. Which are combined into a prediction model. If all the individual level data is available, it becomes possible to get a much better prediction model. In addition there are ways to estimate how much can be predicted from genetic information, a term called heritability. Heritability can be estimated from so called twin studies. Where twins who are genetically identical (monozygotic) are compared to twins who are not genetically identical (dizygotic). In this way you can measure the environmental effect (the variation seen in the monozygotic twins) and the genetic effect (the variation that is seen in the dizygotic twins compared to the monozygotic twins). This is, of course, a gross oversimplification, but can provide reasonable measures of an upper bound of what can be explained genetically For most traits this upper bound is around 0.5 R^2, and I believe for educational attainment a bit higher, but I could not find it in the paper or a quick google search. Another factor in this case is that there are unmeasured genotypes which can explain some extra variation. There are also solutions for this. Which are able to explain the upper bound of what can be predicted from the data at hand. For instance meaning that you can find 80% of all the genetic variation using the genetic measurements that you have. But you often need individual level data for this. Something which cohorts are not often prepared to share. Another complicating factor is the heterogeneous nature of the phenotype: educational attainment is different per country. So it's hard to say what's really being measured. It's likely very different in France, compared to say The Netherlands. Due to the differing nature of their educational systems. Personally I'm morally conflicted by these studies which measure intelligence. It's very interesting to see the practical outcomes from the paper. I've seen an example where it's well powered to stratify high educational attainment and low educational attainment individuals for social science studies. But I'm of the opinion that this may be a slippery slope towards misinterpretation, as we currently see in the whole IQ business. As well as too strong an emphasis on being 'smart' in certain social groups. We know Intelligence (or whatever is being measured) is heritable. But I'm not fond of the implications which people attach to these studies. Even though I know people are going to act on it. For the earliest examples of this, I'm going to look at certain east Asian countries where ethics may be very different compared to the western views.