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Researchers Find Dozens of Genes Associated With Measures of Intelligence (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: We don't know a lot about the biological basis of our mental abilities -- we can't even consistently agree on how best to test them -- but a few things seem clear. One is that performance on a number of standardized tests that purport to measure intelligence tends to correlate with outcomes we'd associate with intelligence, like educational achievement. A second is that this performance seems to have a large genetic component. But initial studies clearly indicated that the effect of any individual gene on intelligence is small. As a result, the first genetics studies found very little, since you needed to look at a large number of people in order to see these small effects. Now, a new study has combined much of the previous work and has turned up 40 new genetic regions associated with intelligence test scores. But again, the effect of any individual gene is pretty minor. The team behind the new work took advantage of open data to pull together information from 13 different studies, which cumulatively looked through the genomes of over 78,000 individuals. While those individuals had been given a variety of tests, the authors focused on measures of general intelligence or fluid intelligence (the two seem to measure similar things). The genomes of these individuals had been scanned for single base pair differences, allowing the authors to look for correlations between regions of the genome and test scores. Two separate analyses were done. The first simply looked at each base difference individually. That turned up 336 individual bases, which clustered into 22 different genes. Half of these had not been associated with intelligence previously. To provide a separate validation of these results, the authors did a similar analysis with educational achievement. They found that nearly all of the sites they identified also correlated with that. In a second analysis, the authors tracked base differences that cluster in a single gene. Since there are more markers for each gene, this tends to be a more sensitive way of looking for effects. And in fact, it produced 47 genes associated with the intelligence test scores. Seventeen of those had been identified in the earlier analysis, which brought the total genes identified to 52, only 12 of which had been previously associated with intelligence test scores.
These results are from using SNP chips. To make a SNP chip, a sample of individuals from a population (in this case, humans of European descent) are sequenced, then the sequences are compared to find SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphism: i.e. a place where some individuals have one DNA base and others have a different one.) Then some hundreds of thousands of those SNPs are selected (we want something like an even spread of SNPs over the genome, and we want to chose SNPs which have a fairly high degree of polymorphism - we'd rather something which was 50:50 rather than 99:1.) A SNP chip is designed which when exposed to DNA from an individual will say yes/no for each SNP. (Scanning the paper, I see two of the SNP chips they used were UK BiLEVE Axiom array and the UK Biobank Axiom array which have over 820,000 SNPs each.)
This has several consequences. One is that the SNP chip is of limited use for populations other than the one for which it was designed. Another is that seldom is the SNP on the chip directly related to the feature/quality (intelligence in this case) that we are trying to correlate with. Rather, the SNP which correlates positively with IQ is probably just nearby the genetic difference which matters. Because they are close, recombination (shuffling of the two genome copies you have, which happens in the production of gametes) is unlikely to separate them. Because they will occasionally get separated, the correlation of IQ with the SNP is going to be a little less strong than the correlation of IQ with the actual variant gene (allele). A SNP chip is less informative than a full genome sequence, but is much cheaper, and much easier to analyse.
A final point is that genome wide association studies like this have in the past been plagued with false positives. When there are so many variables being tested (hundreds of thousands of SNPs on the SNP chip) some will strongly associate with your measured quality (IQ) by chance. This is even more so if you use sophisticated analyses which look for combinations of SNPs as predictors. I will provisionally accept that they've accounted for this correctly, as I lack the expertise to judge for myself.
I work in a tangentially associated field (phylogenetics) so my knowledge has some professional basis, but is well short of that of an expert in the field.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
You're not allowed to talk about the possibility of there being a genetic basis for variations in intelligence.
The real problem here is that this is no absolute definition for intelligence because it's a quality. There is a lot of neuroscience that needs to be done before we should even broach the issue of genetic associations because "intelligence tests" are no more than crude attempts to quantify this quality that we cannot define.
And remember, correlation does not imply causation.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Charles Murray knows this all too well. He's been treated very poorly because of the controversial nature of his research. And from what I can tell he was meticulous in collecting and processing the data that lead him to the conclusion that intelligence has genetic factors. It would be a fluke for anything that has genetic factors to not express some divergence across populations. If your parents are tall there's a higher chance you will be tall. If your ethnicity is known for having dark hair the high chances are your hair will be dark. Similarly with IQ. Murray sought the data, came to this obvious conclusion and has been castigated for it for many years by SJWs who can't handle the truth.
It's very possible. The effect found by each of these genes was very small, a fraction of an IQ point. At that small size, I would doubt that I had accounted for all confounding variables. Something as simple as hair color might be a confounding factor, and height certainly would be.
However, if you really look at the study, you should see that it has NOTHING to do with the GP accusation. I have no idea why the GP is so negative on the study??? Also, how could the post be insightful??? Abstract below...
Intelligence is associated with important economic and health-related life outcomes. Despite intelligence having substantial heritability (0.54) and a confirmed polygenic nature, initial genetic studies were mostly underpowered. Here we report a meta-analysis for intelligence of 78,308 individuals. We identify 336 associated SNPs (METAL P < 5 × 10^-8) in 18 genomic loci, of which 15 are new. Around half of the SNPs are located inside a gene, implicating 22 genes, of which 11 are new findings. Gene-based analyses identified an additional 30 genes (MAGMA P < 2.73 × 10^-6), of which all but one had not been implicated previously. We show that the identified genes are predominantly expressed in brain tissue, and pathway analysis indicates the involvement of genes regulating cell development (MAGMA competitive P = 3.5 × 10^-6). Despite the well-known difference in twin-based heratiblity for intelligence in childhood (0.45) and adulthood (0.80), we show substantial genetic correlation (rg = 0.89, LD score regression P = 5.4 × 10^-29). These findings provide new insight into the genetic architecture of intelligence.
And the title of the study is "Genome-wide association meta-analysis of 78,308 individuals identifies new loci and genes influencing human intelligence" which has nothing to do with the GP accusation (again)...
Yes, it must be racism because blacks from european cultures and later immigrants from african countries do much better than descendents of blacks descended from slaves and blacks in southern states.
Think there might be some self-selection going on there? That is, only the wealthier, and therefore likely more intelligent blacks from Africa and Europe are able to immigrate to the US these days?
Your entire post just reeks of racism and begs exactly the point I was making above. Racists (as you appear to be) argue for changes RIGHT NOW cutting benefits for minorities based on an insufficient and biased set of data and on culturally biased and primitive "intelligence" tests.
Except the data is not insufficient, and the tests are not biased. You are not the first person to suggest this, so researchers have gone to great lengths to make and administer unbiased tests.
Science is a real thing. Genetics are real things. Evolutionary biology is a real thing.
Intelligence correlates with income. In the US, blacks have the lowest average IQ and median income, then hispanics, then whites, then asians, then Jews. If whites are practicing evil white supremacy, they're fucking awful it, because they forgot to oppress the asians and the Jews. Either that, or are the Jews oppressing everyone, but in unequal ways? Really, how do you explain how the Jews and asians are doing better than the whites?
What race pimps (as you appear to be) do is foment racial hatred for your own political power.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
If only we had some data on identical twins adopted into different families that would shed light on this mystery.
Oh, wait...
See that "Preview" button?