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Genome Researchers Wants Your Genes
An anonymous reader writes "The Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) is looking for smart volunteers to donate their genes for analysis. They are seeking subjects with high intelligence; you can only qualify if you got a high score in SAT/ACT/GRE or got awards in competitions like Math/Physics Olympiads or TopCoder. They're also launching a drive to recruit US participants. Their first stop (PDF) appears to have been Google, which has run into trouble with the Chinese government. Also worth noting: BGI is registered in China as an 'Institutional Organization,' which by law requires it to report to a supervising governmental office or agency."
After World War 2 people were appalled to find out that the Nazi government were building up files of peoples measurements of faces and other such measurements to show / prove their master race theory. Isn't having DNA taken the exact same thing? There should be outrage over this kind of thing and where it could possibly lead mankind.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
It's got to be super-soldiers.
My great aunt has given her body to science so people will learn as to why she became that old. I would like to do the same thing, but be sure that not some Monsanto makes a shitload of money from it by patenting the shit out of my dead body.
I would realy like it to be some sort of GPL where findings are actually intended for the general public.
Does anybody have any experience with such a thing?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Lin Yutang once wrote that if you gave leaders a good meal and a comedy show, they wouldn't get into wars.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
All you people need to RTFM (and click the FAQ):
https://www.cog-genomics.org/faq/
What is intelligence?
No one knows precisely what intelligence is, and even experts disagree as to how it should be defined. However, it has been known for over a century that performance on different cognitive tests is positively correlated: for example, someone who is good at math puzzles is also more likely to have an above average vocabulary. Given a battery of tests and their correlation matrix, one can use probability theory to define a single parameter that, in a sense, optimally compresses the information from administering them all.
In practice, a wide range of intuitively sensible test batteries and functions of their score vectors yield very similar estimates of this parameter. As a result, psychologists consider these functions of test batteries to all be reasonable estimators of a parameter called the General Factor of Intelligence, or g for short.
From the use of phrases like "intuitively sensible", it should be clear that the definition of g is a little bit arbitrary. However, we believe that it's the most promising metric to base an intelligence GWAS on. The most important properties of g are:
stability (scores tend not to vary significantly after adolescence),
heritability (twin and adoption studies suggest that much of the variance in g is due to genetics), and
predictive power (g scores are correlated with academic and job performance, income, longevity, etc., even after controlling for other variables such as social class).
At least they know their results have limited scope.
Don't quote me on this.
No, the fact that they're limiting their selection means that they are looking for a specific link between high standardized test scores/academic achievement and the inability to recognize people by face. No one is apparently bothering to read the first paragraph on that web page.
We are recruiting subjects for a Genome Wide Association Study of intelligence. Our study of prosopagnosia has not yet begun; if you wish to learn more about this condition, please visit faceblind.org.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Of course, if it IS an attempt to get western-looking donors of high intelligence for a breeding program, they'll be disappointed - most of them will look asian :-)
Well, I'm a clod you insensitive barbarian. Intelligence is more than just puzzle solving and number crunching. Intelligence is not a continuum, it's a spectrum. This reductionism of intelligence to what basically amounts to math skills (let's face it, even the verbal GRE test is really a logic test) is limited. Useful in some dimensions, but limited.
I don't know any personally, but I'm willing to bet that most sports geniuses wouldn't score that well on an ACT or SAT. Nor would a lot of artists who are incredibly gifted.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
and I didn't speak out because I was not a genius.
This is contentious. Do they mean maths/science smart? Or like art/abstract smart. Because it seems you can have different kinds of intelligence. For instance, someone could be a mathematician and be terrible in other subjects that involve different kinds of thought. I think it would be more useful if they got people who were accomplished writers, artists, musicians etc. and mapped their DNA as well, rather than just focussing on one particular kind of intelligence (scientific/analytical intelligence).