An Enormous Study of the Genes Related to Staying in School

mentalisttraceur:

acemindbreaker:

earlgraytay:

dendritic-trees:

This is a really interesting commentary about how to use biology and social science results, I strongly recommend people read all the way to the end.

Oh wow. This is really neat- and not at all a ‘gotcha’ like I thought it might be.

I wonder how much this overlaps with genetic predisposition to learning disabilities and ADHD? A lot of the people I know who left school early are people who seem to have undiagnosed ADHD and specific learning disabilities.

I recommend giving it a read, as well as the linked FAQ from the study authors.

TL;DR: genes statistically account for about 11% of the variance in education level reached, but are seemingly never the sole determining factor for anyone. Typically studied factors, like family income and wealth, are often slightly less predictive, but in the same ballpark. More evidence that the combination of nature and nurture.

I want to see this compared against lead contamination in the environment – which has been found to correlate to variance in violent and criminal behavior far more than almost any other factor.

Also, the actual scientific paper published in Nature is pretty short (though dense, as to be expected) and currently available without a paywall through the link in the article too, which is nice.