Researchers Try To Identify the Intelligence Gene 254
An anonymous reader writes "The world's largest brain study to date, with a team of more than 200 scientists from 100 institutions worldwide collaborated to map the human genes that boost or sabotage the brain's resistance to a variety of mental illnesses and Alzheimer's disease. The study also uncovered new genes that may explain individual differences in brain size and intelligence. From the article: 'Following a brain study on an unprecedented scale, an international collaboration has now managed to tease out a single gene that does have a measurable effect on intelligence. But the effect – although measurable – is small: the gene alters IQ by just 1.29 points. According to some researchers, that essentially proves that intelligence relies on the action of a multitude of genes after all.'"
The downside genetic engineering (Score:5, Interesting)
My intelligence is about all I have going for me. I know it's selfish, but I shudder to think of living in a world where *everyone* is smart by default. I didn't get kicked around all those years by the jocks just to settle for being an average intellect.
Of course, I guess genetic engineering will probably turn everyone into super athletes too. But athletic prowess is a short-term thing anyway. Intellect is supposed to be for the long-term. But when/if the engineering starts, intellects (like athletes) will always be looking over their shoulders at their better engineered youngers gaining on them.
Re:how can this be (Score:2, Interesting)
But but but, I've been told by my superiors that intelligence is a social construct devised by the white man to keep down the proletariat, and has no biological basis whatsoever.
Don't worry, they just won't be allowed to publish the correlation with racial groups. I think most researchers got the message after the DNA pioneer James Watson had to retire [nytimes.com] after suggesting a correlation . Of course even if there is a correlation that is no excuse to treat individuals differently because of their racial group, that would be like saying that a white guy could not play basketball because his race is not so good at it.
For the lucky few... (Score:3, Interesting)
I noticed that it gets even better, if you are a child of these lucky few:
On another note, I noticed the gene in question HMGA2 was previously linked to a person's height [newscientist.com]. I wonder if an extension of this study would consider any possible correlation between height and intelligence in regards to variations in this gene.
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MV
Re:1.29 plus or minus what? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, see Margin of error [wikipedia.org]
Repeat after me: only for Gaussian distributions, only for Gaussian distributions, only for Gaussian distributions. Any measurement can be assigned a standard deviation, but that doesn't make it Gaussian.
If the errors are not Gaussian, the situation is completely different. For example, if the variation in individual measurements follows a flat distribution instead of a Gaussian distribution, then averaging large numbers of measurements accomplishes exactly nothing. For any measurement, if your margin of error is small enough, the Gaussian approximation breaks down and your accuracy does not increase even if your nominal precision does. Mistaking precision for accuracy is a ubiquitous statistical fallacy.