4 ms·

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3

ajross 7y ago
tl;dr for those who didn't read: they looked at genes (SNP's really) instead of "race" and found... a 7-10% correlation with cognitive performance (that is, 7-10% of the difference in individuals scores is determined by the differences in the genome subset studied). Yet you look at "race" (a social construct that itself correlates at best with about 50% actual genetics) and see a much larger effect. That by itself should immediately put this "black people are dumb" notion to bed (i.e. even if it's measuring something, it's clearly not measuring heritable diferences!). But instead everyone just doubles down on the nonsense, because the science is "polluted by cancel culture" or whatever. And that's what this opinion piece is. It's an attempt by the political right (the Journal's editorial page is increasingly skewed these days -- most papers at least pretend to have a diversity of viewpoints) to explain away the science they don't want to be true by attacking "science" as a field.
- rsj_hn 7y ago
  Wow, that's misleading. They found specific 10 SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) which they identified as relevant to intelligence and for these 10, a 7-10% effect. This type of research is very useful for trying to identify specific genes responsible for X but not for the effect of all genes on X. The generally accepted range for genetic influences is much higher -- say 50% to 2/3 although we know little as to which genes do what when it comes to something like intelligence.
  - ajross 7y ago
    They identified 10 specific related SNPs on the X chromosome as part of a side study. The study itself was of 1271 sites. That number is right there in the first sentence of the abstract! And the summary sentence is awfully clear: "A joint (multi-phenotype) analysis of educational attainment and three related cognitive phenotypes generates polygenic scores that explain 11–13% of the variance in educational attainment and 7–10% of the variance in cognitive performance". Who's being misleading here? That "generally accepted range" you're trying to invoke is precisely was is being studied here. And it was wrong, largely because the people generally accepting it were confusing social factors with genetic ones.
  - xyhopguy 7y ago
    all genes on X is a meaningless statement unless all genes are involved in X... if you read the paper the authors seemingly put quite a bit of effort into the rigor of their model. they used multiple validation cohorts, they controlled for environmental factors, they controlled for non-autosomal factors, applied multiple methods to boost the predictive performance of their model. adding more snps typically leads to an overfit and poor performing model on validation cohorts, which is why they use so much rigor and end up with usually 100-400 snps for each of the phenotypes. in anycase they found a lot more than 10 SNPs, and they did more than one analysis in the paper. Parent educational status is a significantly better predictor than the polygenic risk score for educational attainment. heritability (also known as r^2) for cognitive performance they estimated at an even lower ~7-10%.

tl;dr for those who didn't read: they looked at genes (SNP's really) instead of "race" and found... a 7-10% correlation with cognitive performance (that is, 7-10% of the difference in individuals scores is determined by the differences in the genome subset studied). Yet you look at "race" (a social construct that itself correlates at best with about 50% actual genetics) and see a much larger effect. That by itself should immediately put this "black people are dumb" notion to bed (i.e. even if it's measuring something, it's clearly not measuring heritable diferences!). But instead everyone just doubles down on the nonsense, because the science is "polluted by cancel culture" or whatever. And that's what this opinion piece is. It's an attempt by the political right (the Journal's editorial page is increasingly skewed these days -- most papers at least pretend to have a diversity of viewpoints) to explain away the science they don't want to be true by attacking "science" as a field.

rsj_hn 7y ago
Wow, that's misleading. They found specific 10 SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) which they identified as relevant to intelligence and for these 10, a 7-10% effect. This type of research is very useful for trying to identify specific genes responsible for X but not for the effect of all genes on X. The generally accepted range for genetic influences is much higher -- say 50% to 2/3 although we know little as to which genes do what when it comes to something like intelligence.
- ajross 7y ago
  They identified 10 specific related SNPs on the X chromosome as part of a side study. The study itself was of 1271 sites. That number is right there in the first sentence of the abstract! And the summary sentence is awfully clear: "A joint (multi-phenotype) analysis of educational attainment and three related cognitive phenotypes generates polygenic scores that explain 11–13% of the variance in educational attainment and 7–10% of the variance in cognitive performance". Who's being misleading here? That "generally accepted range" you're trying to invoke is precisely was is being studied here. And it was wrong, largely because the people generally accepting it were confusing social factors with genetic ones.
- xyhopguy 7y ago
  all genes on X is a meaningless statement unless all genes are involved in X... if you read the paper the authors seemingly put quite a bit of effort into the rigor of their model. they used multiple validation cohorts, they controlled for environmental factors, they controlled for non-autosomal factors, applied multiple methods to boost the predictive performance of their model. adding more snps typically leads to an overfit and poor performing model on validation cohorts, which is why they use so much rigor and end up with usually 100-400 snps for each of the phenotypes. in anycase they found a lot more than 10 SNPs, and they did more than one analysis in the paper. Parent educational status is a significantly better predictor than the polygenic risk score for educational attainment. heritability (also known as r^2) for cognitive performance they estimated at an even lower ~7-10%.