Genes Linked to Education? Researchers Say Take It with a Grain of Salt

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Genes Linked to Education? Researchers Say Take It with a Grain of Salt

May 13th, 2016

Awake Goy

Susanne.Posel-Headline.News.Official- children.intelligence.genetic.not_occupycorporatism Susanne Posel ,Chief Editor Occupy Corporatism | Media Spokesperson, HEALTH MAX Brands

Researchers from around the world have come together to figure out how certain people get more out of school than others and whether or not there is a correlation in our DNA with completing schooling.

And the answer is – take this study with a grain of salt.

While looking for why some are better at school than others, the researchers searched for variants to explain their hypothesis and found less than half of a percent of those variants were involved in educational attainment.

This means that “the strongest association found for a single genetic variant explained only 0.035 of 1% of the variation in educational attainment.

Or to put it in laymen’s terms: “the difference between people with zero and two copies of this genetic variant predicts, on average, about nine extra weeks of schooling.”

Daniel Benjamin, behavioral economist with the University of Southern California (USC) explained that “these variants don’t mean much when it comes to people’s schooling, and factors like poverty, geography, and nutrition probably have a much bigger combined impact” so this paper is simply an attempt to understand how genetics impact learning, although experts understand the outcome of the study is simply a factoid.

The researchers studied the genomes of 300,000 white, European individuals and then compared their educational competency with 111,000 individuals provided by the UK Biobank.

In the end, 74 genetic variants were cataloged which were combined to represent 0.43% of the variance in individuals. In other words, genes have “an extremely small effect”.

Benjamin emphasized that “these genes are not deterministic” because “nature and nurture are not opposed; they go hand in hand.”

However, blaming genetic propensities for poor performance in school is not accurate either because the variants have such a minuscule effect “equivalent to just 3 to 9 weeks of extra schooling.”

Not to mention that this study only explains “3% of the difference in education levels across the whole population.”

The researchers wrote: “For comparison, professional weather forecasts correctly predict about 95 percent of the variation in day-to-day temperatures. Weather forecasters are vastly more accurate forecasters than social science geneticists will ever be.”

And because of this, these new findings are “not a smart way” to determine a person’s dedication to education. Benjamin said: “The same applies to any unwarranted talk of eugenics—of selecting for embryos with particular genes, or even using gene-editing technologies to alter said genes. These would be dumb ways of ensuring smarts; if you’re really that concerned, you’re better off just dating someone clever.”

This study harkens to another preformed in 2013 at Kings College London which concluded that genetics are responsible for nearly 60% of variations in test scores analyzed from more than 11,000 high schools.

While identifying specific genes responsible for influencing the ability to score high on a test would be difficult, the researchers implied that “schools aim to give an equal education to all children, genetic differences impacting educational success are apparent.”

In compliment to these findings, another study was published that same year entitled, “Our Fragile Intellect” and concluded that human intelligence is on a downward spiral.

Genetic alterations have led to an obvious decline in our species intellectual capabilities.

The researchers wrote: “New developments in genetics, anthropology and neurobiology predict that a very large number of genes underlie our intellectual and emotional abilities, making these abilities genetically surprisingly fragile. Analysis of human mutation rates and the number of genes required for human intellectual and emotional fitness indicates that we are almost certainly losing these abilities.”

And the study goes on to point out: “if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas, and a clear-sighted view of important issues. Furthermore, [we] would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues. [We] would also make this wager for the ancient inhabitants of Africa, Asia, India or the Americas, of perhaps 2000–6000 years ago. The basis for [our] wager comes from new developments in genetics, anthropology, and neurobiology that make a clear prediction that our intellectual and emotional abilities are genetically surprisingly fragile.”