I recognize that your litmus test was rhetorical, but it's a question that does seem answerable, so I'll try to answer it. I would imagine there are a number o

I recognize that your litmus test was rhetorical, but it's a question that does seem answerable, so I'll try to answer it. I would imagine there are a number of genes that are associated with lowered intelligence. For example, one might start by looking at genes such as the Dopamine D4 receptor gene, for which the 7-repeat allele seems to be a pretty good indicator of ADHD [1][2], which in turn is associated with significantly lower IQ. Of course, chains of correlation don't always work, and that is why it would be important to have tens or preferably hundreds to thousand of things like that to look for. While it would be nice and easy to look for an "intelligence gene", that may not be feasible. However, my guess is that looking for "mild cognitive impairment" genes and then selecting the pair with the lowest number of those genes could give a rate of successful guessing well above random. So this study, alone, would not be likely to allow you to make a prediction that's much better than random, and resumes are going to be hard to beat period (though with the resumes and the genetic data, you might be able to make better predictions). And if Zhao and his team do find a gene that correlates with increased intelligence, that will be big news (though I would not give good odds on that actually happening). In any case, I agree that IQ is complex, but I don't think that either the "intelligence gene" hypothesis or Dickens and Flynn's hypothesis is the whole story, because identical twins raised apart still have a significant and fairly high correlation in IQ scores [2]. [1] http://duepublico.uni-duisburg-essen.de/servlets/DerivateServlet/Derivate-28058/Oades2005analysis.pdf http://duepublico.uni-duisburg-essen.de/servlets/DerivateSer... [2]http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1966.tb01014.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1966.... (unfortunately paywalled, though I'm sure someone will accidentally drop it if you need it).