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More than 500 genes associated with intelligence have been identified in the largest study of its kind.
Researchers used data from the UK Biobank, comparing DNA variants from more than 240,000 people. Their analysis identified 538 genes linked to intellectual ability, and 187 regions of the human genome that are associated with thinking skills. Some of these genes are also linked to other biological processes, including living longer.
However, even with all these genes, it's still difficult to predict a person's intelligence from their genomes. When they analysed the DNA of a group of different people, the team were only able to predict 7 per cent of the intelligence differences between those people.
Source: Found: more than 500 genes that are linked to intelligence
A combined analysis of genetically correlated traits identifies 187 loci and a role for neurogenesis and myelination in intelligence (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41380-017-0001-5) (DX)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @05:32AM
Bad news for you guys..
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @05:38AM (3 children)
Ah, yes! Nazi science! Just like the good old days when scientists were not running down the Fatherland and saying bad things about the mental stability of Donald. But, then, empirical evidence, say, from trailer parks in Indiana, suggests that the results of these tests may not be what some people want them to be. Stupid white racists! SAT scores are why we cannot have White Supremacy. And now that we have a way to measure it, there will be calls for the white idiots genocide. Well, all I can say, is the brought it upon theirselfs, what with "Unity Marches" and whatnot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @06:35AM (2 children)
You can log in, aristarchus. We all know it's you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @07:04AM
What makes you think it is aristarchus, khallow? Other than he is one of the five remaining accounts that actually post comments?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday March 19 2018, @07:47PM
This doesn't sound exactly like Ari. It's not smug or high-handed enough, and there are odd spelling errors he's not usually prone to.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday March 19 2018, @05:39AM (6 children)
Come now!! really, do you expect anyone with even a lick of intelligence to buy this. Pferdmerde (gotta love that term)!
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 19 2018, @05:47AM (5 children)
Source replaced with one that actually loads. And a link to the paper has been added.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday March 19 2018, @05:59AM (2 children)
I don't think that was the problem.
Or even that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @07:52AM (1 child)
Paper to be retracted in ... 3..2..
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday March 19 2018, @09:47AM
It doesn't need to be retracted, it's obviously bollocks. Consider this alternative paper: "Scientists identify up to 10,000 factors that may make you more intelligent". All they've done is enumerated all the traits they can think of that someone defined to be intelligent has exhibited at some time. This gene thing is just another form of that.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday March 19 2018, @06:01AM (1 child)
Ok...now that makes some sense. Of course it doesn't make the claims that the NV somehow contrived.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @06:17AM
I may not be all that intelligent, but I am not surprised. Could we go back to the anti-rape panties? I think mine are getting broken down from overuse.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @05:47AM (25 children)
"DNA predicts intelligence." Now, you should have a definition of "intelligence", too bad, there ain't one. So what does "DNA predicts intelligence" even mean?
But what can you expect? You know social/psycho/newly-minted "neuro" BSers will do as they do, but even the supposedly hard-nosed physicists go yapping about ridonculous BS like multiverse and entropic principle, getting book deals and PBS shows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @05:49AM (18 children)
So did phrenology?
I think we are fishing around here, and the soup's not cooked yet.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @05:58AM (12 children)
"Intelligence" is one of those terms (some) people talk about as if they know what it means. It's one of those things that everyone thinks they know, but asked to define, or even just describe concretely, shit goes all over the place and nowhere.
I sure hope somebody can enlighten me what it actually means.
(Score: 4, Touché) by captain normal on Monday March 19 2018, @06:05AM (3 children)
I think that part of it is being able to construct a coherent sentence.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @06:11AM
Keep thinking. Reading is fundamental.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 19 2018, @06:28AM (1 child)
You've seen some of the things they can do with coherent light? The hell with coherent sentences, those could be DEADLY!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 19 2018, @06:39AM
Not if you eliminate the death sentence. I mean, the entire civilized wor(l)d can do without, why can't you?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @06:24AM (6 children)
No, it's not like Maxwell's equations, but it doesn't need to be. We're measuring humans.
We have tests that largely agree with human assessment of who is and isn't intelligent. This is strongly correlated with all sorts of things in life, which helps to make the measurement valuable. The measurement can be very effectively used to predict other things, and those things can be used to predict the measurement.
It all works fine.
Likewise, we can measure beauty. Oh sure, you may disagree with a specific assessment, but that doesn't mean we can't usefully assign numbers based on typical human response. We can even train a computer to evaluate beauty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @06:32AM
So, intelligence is like beauty. Ok.
"I
Like
Big Butt and can't deny
other fellas cannot lie..."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @09:22AM (2 children)
So rote memorizing information? Because to most people, that seems to qualify as "intelligent".
Oh, you must have been referring to some other assessment. So, we have tests that largely agree with a vague human assessment of who is and isn't intelligent. Wow. That might be impressive if the definition was even remotely clear.
Things like doing well in school systems and making money. You'll have to forgive me for not being impressed, since that too is arbitrary.
Come back when we have a concrete understanding of intelligence, and then we might be able to call it scientific. Until then, it's just social 'science' rubbish, just like most of the tripe that comes from those fields.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @09:40PM
I think there's probably a very large correlation between ability to memorize information and effective intelligence. Information needs context to be processed, and without knowledge, there is no context.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @01:57AM
Too bad the use of the term rote memorization sans irony correlates highly with low intelligence and poor academic performance.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 19 2018, @11:26AM (1 child)
It's pretty easy to make some vague, passing definition of "intelligence", so long as it is confined to people who have matured within your own culture, your own economic system, your own nation, your civilization. Consider, please, a shipwreck. A bunch of "successful" people are on the ship when it is wrecked, and they become castaways on some island. Maybe some island in the Sunda chain. They arrive on shore, to be met by some hungry komodo dragons. How will your "successful" Americans fare? There is a story of one who simply disappeared. Investigators found his high-dollar camera on it's tripod, with photos of komodo dragons - but he was gone, gone, gone. Sumbitch wasn't very smart after all! He either knowingly allowed the dragon to get within striking range, OR, he forgot to look over his shoulder now and then.
We can come up with all sorts of scenarios in which "intelligent", "successful" Americans will fail at alarmingly high rates.
Funny - when we read of someone being devoured by a grizzly bear, it's usually some attractive, successful city boy or girl. That stuff doesn't seem to happen very much to ignorant inbred hillbillies and plain old rednecks.
I don't think that you do have a decent definition for intelligence. And, if you did have one, it isn't certain that intelligence equates to survival. Wouldn't it be a helluva thing if all the most intelligent people died off because intelligence is one of the less important survival requirements?
Oh yeah. Low fertility rates and immigration - that kinda shit will get those smart sumbitches! Islam will rule Europe, and Aztlan will take over America. Think about it, LOL!!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 19 2018, @12:52PM
Its funny how if is an amateur sets up a scientific experiment designed to test trivia knowledge, experience, or wisdom, randomly testing something else won't correlate well with observed intelligence, but if scientific professionals run something like Raven's Progressive Matrices even though its "merely" pattern matching strange shaped graphs, it correlates ridiculously well with all kinds of OTHER intellectual skill (even seemingly weird stuff like abstract music skills) and positive life outcomes. Therefore if you test for X by testing for Y and it doesn't correlate, then the only possible interpretation allowed is X must not exist, but if you test for X by testing for X and it correlates extremely well thats just racism and must be ignored. Now if you'll excuse me while I return to my task of measuring the height of a building using a barometer...
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by VLM on Monday March 19 2018, @12:41PM
Its not very hard, LOL:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) [wikipedia.org]
"intelligence" means someone has enough scientific integrity to put science and statistics above personal political beliefs. Its utterly undeniable statistically and scientifically, and utterly unacceptable to political leftists.
Its interesting that very superficially both left and right are both creationists. The right generally speaking has a thing about religious/cultural systems where some magical being created everything (it had to come from somewhere, didn't it?) and the left has a thing about religious/cultural systems where magically genetics exist for every living thing but humans, every body organ except the brain is genetically determined, races don't exist especially whites unless we're talking about affirmative action or handout programs or anti-white immigration policies in which case races totally exist, all because something in the Talmud says it was created that way by a volcano god or something equally ridiculous to base a belief system on. Generally speaking right wing people should be laughed at when they talk about origins, and left wing people should be laughed at when they talk about biology, especially genetics or human anatomy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @06:31AM (2 children)
If you immediately know that candlelight is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @06:51AM (1 child)
Are you Oma or Replicarter?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @11:32PM
We are all embarked upon the same journey. We sometimes walk the same paths and sometimes not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @09:28AM
Repeat after me: "Correlation with skull shape is not causation!" Of course, it is still correlation, and is probably caused by some genes in the DNA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @09:29AM
Just an FYI - mixing metaphors is not a sign of intelligence.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by qzm on Monday March 19 2018, @06:47AM (2 children)
So let me get this straight..
You are claiming that the single most well established, researched, measurable and quantified feature of psychology doesn't exist?
I would say that tells us more about your intelligence than you may realise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @06:57AM (1 child)
"You are claiming that the single most well established, researched, measurable and quantified feature of psychology doesn't exist?"
Enlighten me. What is it, how is it established, how is it measure and quantized? Go on.
My bad, if you were being sarcastic. :)
(Score: 5, Funny) by aristarchus on Monday March 19 2018, @07:16AM
Once upon a time, psychology studied the Mind. But then it realized that, as a science, it had nothing to observe, quantify, and experiment upon. So the discipline shifted to "behavior", and inputs to behavior, and so reduced the entire field to "stimulus and response". In other words, psychology lost it's mind.
(Score: 4, Touché) by maxwell demon on Monday March 19 2018, @08:05AM (2 children)
Intelligence is the ability to solve IQ tests.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 19 2018, @12:59PM (1 child)
You're getting modded as touche but it should be funny, as the whole point of a century of g-factor research was, observably, like it or not, ability to geometrically reason topology problems, observed workplace performance, low accident proneness, learn foreign languages, admittedly ace IQ tests, and solve weird abstract musical puzzles all correlate ridiculously high, in the .8 to .9 range.
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Tuesday March 20 2018, @08:30AM
I guess you would also moderate as funny the definition "time is what is read off a clock"?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday March 19 2018, @08:23AM (9 children)
From the tag-line-didn't-pass-the-test dept.?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by aiwarrior on Monday March 19 2018, @09:38AM (8 children)
Please do not post these kinds of articles, they are click bait and even confusing:
Headline:
"DNA Tests Can Predict Intelligence, Scientists Show for First Time"
Text:
"[...] the team were only able to predict 7 per cent of the intelligence"
Wow, my coin can predict intelligence better than these genes.
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Monday March 19 2018, @01:54PM (7 children)
Yeah not so much.
Its a long statistically dense paper, but I did read the intro/conclusion.
Now I'll complain about the clickbaity summaries, by providing a detailed summary of the article's four main claims that is so long nobody could ever consider it a summary, although I think its interesting and any mistakes are my own because I type this shit at 100 WPM and generally don't edit errors:
1) They did the largest statistical analysis so far, and increase the number of known intelligence related genetic loci from 18 to 187, which is pretty impressive. This is comparable to that space telescope that increased the number of solar systems we know about from like 5 to 500. We don't know a hell of a lot about any of them, but there's a big difference between "we can count the ones we know exist on fingers and toes" vs "a list of all the ones we've discovered so far is a multi page report, at least". A crappy SN automobile analogy is imagine you are trying to reverse engineer a modern car, well, now we have 187 known verified to be automobiles to screw around with as compared to 18 in the bad old days.
2) In the course of massive handwaving and truly awful (on my part) summarizing, genetic code quality is variable and you can estimate evolutionary pressure on a sequence of code as compared to junk that is noise that has little evolutionary pressure, which is pretty cool and not controversial at all, what is relevant is they found the intelligence loci are located in chunks of code that indicate massive evolutionary pressure happened in the past. So you can mathematically prove that those intelligence related genetic codes were strongly evolved not some random thing that wasn't correlated with reproductive success. Sort of a "revenge of the nerds" Neanderthal style where for many millennia of evolution the smarter guys fucked all the chicks. Actually "chicks don't like smart guys" was never a popular cultural thing until a certain ethnic group of hollywood movie and TV execs weaponized the concept of "nerds" against white people in the 1970s, for all of human evolution before that recent date, smart guys got the chicks, and this can be scientifically and statistically proven. A standard crappy SN automobile analogy is we are very certain that these car-like objects we've found are highly engineered cars and not objects of welded art or crude blacksmithery because we ran detailed analysis of the alloys and bolt threads making up these car-like objects and clearly a ridiculous amount of labor was involved in "perfecting" these aspects of the cars, whereas something like food stains in the floor mats appear totally random but in location and content, so we're pretty sure if cars require engineering effort these car-like things we found clearly demonstrate a lot of engineering effort.
3) Previous smaller studies predicted about 5% of intelligence (using those 18 genetic loci) and now they're capable of predicting 7% of intelligence variation (using 187 genetic loci) so on one hand they're making considerable progress, on the other hand there doesn't seem to be one simple footprint. This is, I suppose, not entirely surprising since intelligence g-factor has been proven to be only 75% inheritable (aka 25% un-inheritable), so the theoretical maximum would be 75% not 100%. Note its 7% of variation thats predictable, not 7% of overall intelligence or whatever. So they're about a tenth of the way to mathematically perfect genetic-specific g-factor prediction, which actually isn't all that bad. We're a long way from sci fi dystopias, but we're getting closer to archeologically interesting analysis of which ancient genetic material was smarter than the other, or similar hand wavy stuff. A standard crappy SN automobile analogy is we think car-like objects should have common metric bolt pattern thread profiles, and at least 7% of the time (up from 5%) we can predict certain nuts are lug nuts vs certain nuts hold the car radio in place, which sounds like crappy odds but its a lot better than 0%. A more "mechanical work in general" analogy is I've improved when I reach into my bin of socket wrench parts that I pull out the required extension or u-joint or whatever from 5% to 7% of the time, but thats not strictly car or even a very good analogy to the paper claim.
4) The genetic loci of intelligence seem located in areas vaguely oriented around the nervous system and its parts, which is a really good signal because it makes sense assuming you believe in the politically incorrect theory that brains do thinking and brains genetically vary like everything else in a human body. If their loci of g-factor were found in known male-pattern-baldness genetic locations or female reproductive system genetic locations then the cause and effect would be a heck of a lot weaker. But "this general area controls brains, and this specific little spot inside seems to correlate really well with g-factor intelligence" sounds really positive and optimistic. I guess a crappy SN standard automobile analogy is they put at least some trust in the street address of the state capital when the street address has been verified to be located in the state, in some cases in the capital city of the state, whereas if you found a street address for the capital of Texas was located in the state of Minnesota you'd rightly disbelieve to whole research project.
So in summary of the summary, the number of genetic locations controlling g-factor have ten-tupled, g-factor genetic code is found in areas that have been highly evolved in the past and have something to do with brainz which makes it sound more likely to be true, and given the data so far, we can model estimated intelligence only poorly, but significantly better than in the past, now up to about one tenth of theoretical perfect accuracy. Or a summary of a summary of a summary, good progress, heck of a nice start.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @02:52PM (1 child)
Didn't read the TFA. Did they find the "vote for Hillary" locus?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 20 2018, @09:27PM
Don't think that part is located in the brain
(Score: 2) by BK on Monday March 19 2018, @03:28PM (4 children)
Just for reference, the Capitol is located in the Capital. The Capitol has a street address. The Capital may have one or more ZIP codes but generally doesn't have a street address.
Thanks for the analysis though.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @04:58PM (3 children)
Wow! You actually read that whole WOT? I got lost around the second paragraph.
(Score: 4, Funny) by maxwell demon on Tuesday March 20 2018, @08:42AM
I'm sorry to hear that your ability to read and understand texts is that bad.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 20 2018, @09:30PM (1 child)
LOL my summary is like "see spot run" compared to the zillion page paper, unfortunately complicated things can't be explained as simply as meme.jpg
(Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Wednesday March 21 2018, @09:32AM
I renewed Soylent News subscription because of your answer. Thank you.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday March 19 2018, @08:59AM (1 child)
click bait headline much?
I assume they didn't have any bonobo chimps in the control group?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 19 2018, @11:30AM
Who do you think planned and administered the test? The chimps, of course!