DNA tests for IQ are coming, but it might not be smart to take oneby Antonio Regalado
MIT Technology Review
April 2, 2018
Robert Plomin, a behavioral geneticist, says that’s exactly what’s coming.
For decades genetic researchers have sought the hereditary factors behind intelligence, with little luck. But now gene studies have finally gotten big enough—and hence powerful enough—to zero in on genetic differences linked to IQ.
A year ago, no gene had ever been tied to performance on an IQ test. Since then, more than 500 have, thanks to gene studies involving more than 200,000 test takers. Results from an experiment correlating one million people’s DNA with their academic success are due at any time.
The discoveries mean we can now read the DNA of a young child and get a notion of how intelligent he or she will be, says Plomin, an American based at King’s College London, where he leads a long-term study of 13,000 pairs of British twins.
Plomin outlined the DNA IQ test scenario in January in a paper titled
The New Genetics of Intelligence, making a case that parents will use direct-to-consumer tests to predict kids’ mental abilities and make schooling choices, a concept he calls precision education.
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Here is an excerpt from the paper:
Understanding ourselves. IQ GPSs will be used to pre-dict individuals’ genetic propensity to learn, reason and solve problems, not only in research but also in society, as direct-to-consumer genomic services provide GPS information that goes beyond single-gene and ances-try information. We predict that IQ GPSs will become routinely available from direct-to-consumer companies along with hundreds of other medical and psycho-logical GPSs that can be extracted from genome-wide geno typing on SNP chips. The use of GPSs to predict individuals’ genetic propensities requires clear warnings about the probabilistic nature of these predictions and the limitations of their effect sizes (BOX7).
Although simple curiosity will drive consumers’ interests, GPSs for intelligence are more than idle fortune telling. Because intelligence is one of the best predictors of educational and occupational outcomes, IQ GPSs will be used for prediction from early in life before intelligence or educational achievement can be assessed. In the school years, IQ GPSs could be used to assess discrepancies between GPSs and educational achievement (that is, GPS-based overachievement and underachievement). The reliability, stability and lack of bias of GPSs make them ideal for prediction, which is essential for the prevention of problems before they occur. A ‘precision education’ based on GPSs could be used to customize education, analogous to ‘precision medicine'.
