
The promise and peril of the new science of social genomics - hunglee2
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03171-6
======
glofish
The fundamental problem with the interpretation of this study is the same as
with any study of big genomics data:

If your dataset it sufficiently large and the phenomena is sufficiently
complex you can find myriads of tiny, valid yet uninteresting and ultimately
irrelevant effects. It is simply about accuracy - take any genomic data and
any visible observable phenotype of the population for the genomic data, if
you don't find anything relevant it simply means your method is not yet
accurate enough.

Will people that like to play pokemon have a genetic marker compared to those
that do not? If you average it over hundred of millions of instances you might
see a difference. Does it mean anything with respect to one single individual
playing pokemon? No, many other factors will down out that contribution.

etc.

the same is with this study as well, of course every population will
eventually develop its own markers unless are being constantly mixing
randomly. Does it mean anything at all, beyond what we already know - that a
population develops its own markers ...

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gumby
This is indeed (as quoted up in the article) very exciting, but as well as
very frightening. I notice comments on this thread already ignore the causal
aspects (I presume Nature figures its readers will have that in mind).

The scary and lazy eugenics argument of course is that some people have an
inherent “inferiority” due to their genetic inheritance.

But evolutionary pressure at each step applies to local advantage only so the
causal chain more likely runs the other way: that 200 years of increasingly
centralized industrialization encouraged expression of genes that would favor
certain behavior. Plus the reduced cost of transportation would encourage
offspring for whom that was _not_ an advantage to move away.

Super fascinating. But if seized upon by the modern day phrenologists it could
be super dangerous.

Edit: a couple of typos

~~~
SamReidHughes
Expensive eugenics babies (maybe just embryo-selected) will get outbred by
traditionalists anyway. What will make things really weird is artificial womb
tech.

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buboard
"social genomics" seems to be the same as population genetics, which is not
"new science".

I don't see how their findings are surprising. There seems to be a lot of
mixing of cause and effect.

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readme
This kind of research does not have any practical application in a society
where we treat each other as equals. Further, it's statistics, so there are
outliers.

I am 100% certain that lots of the things that determine our lives are
heritable, but that doesn't mean I think this kind of research is beneficial.

Research should be aimed at improving the general state of humanity. We have
already seen what this does. Why would anyone even give this stuff a chance?

~~~
tehjoker
There is far too much friendliness to eugenics and phrenology, though usually
not termed as such, in the academy. I saw a presentation where a student was
using machine learning to predict intelligence from medical images AND a
variety of demographic attributes attributes _including sex_. I didn't blame
the student who seemed to just get assigned the project, but the professor who
assigned it and guided it should know better.

Scientists should avoid trying to "scientifically" ascertain peoples' place in
the world based on inborn traits. Instead, the focus should be on helping
people achieve what they want to achieve.

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Gatsky
Something like educational attainment is obviously embedded in a particular
cultural context. What they are actually saying is these SNPs explain X% of
the variation in attainment in a particular system where things are taught a
certain way and success is measured by exams, and you need to be good at
algebra and sitting still for long periods. You can’t treat it as a universal
feature of humanity. Also the education system will look very different in 30
years, who is to say your results are stable?

This issue of outcome measures in social genomics seems insurmountable to me.

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allovernow
Honest question. Should we have banned research in nuclear science because it
gave us the bomb? Is social science with two sided implications any different?
I feel like the only difference here is that the layman is more likely to
understand the implications of misuse of such research, which creates a far
stronger social pressure than there was associated with nuclear science in the
40s-50s. But this cat is already out of its bag, and this is research that IMO
needs to be done because there are enormous positive consequences for e.g.
disease management, human enhancement, and social policy driven by a more
complete picture of the origins of human behavior.

~~~
throwawaytkgll
Deriving social policy from popgen results is absolutely insane. Even putting
aside the weak correlations, uncertain results and total ignorance of
gene/environment interactions (it's not additive, it doesn't make sense to say
a trait is x% genetic, especially a behavioral one), it would require having
access to the genome of every single person you want to manage. It tantamounts
to advocating a totalitarian hierarchical caste system.

And no, obviously laymen are not more likely to understand the implication, as
evidenced by the "eugenics is good, actually" crowd in this thread.

~~~
fakegalitarian
Iceland has almost completely eliminated Down's Syndrome using genetic
screening, and that's wonderful. Their population will be happier and
healthier because of it. You're erecting a strawman by suggesting a policy
would be implemented based on weak correlations.

~~~
marchenko
Iceland has reduced the incidence of Down's syndrome by screening and
terminating Down's pregnancies, not by medically resolving the underlying
chromosomal nondisjunction. The role that social pressure plays in this
process in unclear: the founder of DeCODE genetics has speculated that "heavy-
handed genetic counseling" may be influencing decisions. This is precisely the
scenario that anti-eugenicists warn about, especially for more complex genetic
disorders with a spectrum of potential phenotypes and possible pleiotropic
effects. And for the community of non-terminated disorder carriers, who may
receive less social support - and less research into medical treatments for
their disorder - as a result.

Genetic screening has many great potential benefits, but the Iceland Down's
example is not their best showcase.

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DataWorker
Some hesitance on the behalf of some researchers shouldn’t be over-
interpreted. Any usable science in this domain will be exploited by
governments and businesses. Money and power will move on this while academics
dither.

------
allovernow
>they have been accused of “opening a new door to eugenics”, according to the
title of a 2018 MIT Technology Review article by science historian Nathaniel
Comfort.

I don't understand this position. Should we just ignore entire branches of
science just because their results are inconvenient for some
people/narratives? Meanwhile we allow sloppy, one sided science from the
socially acceptable camp to influence social policy in a potentially totally
broken way.

Agenda driven science is bad science. You cannot solve social issues if you
refuse to consider where the problems may actually come from. If there's any
validity to social genomics, then perhaps our approach of blanket solutions to
all groups in society will be shown to be ineffective, and this is a critical
avenue to explore because it would indicate that our current allocation of
resources is suboptimal.

~~~
vanderZwan
> _Agenda driven science is bad science. You cannot solve social issues if you
> refuse to consider where the problems may actually come from._

The problem is that genomics (and anything to do with heredity before it) has
been and still is abused in the opposite way: people pretending it to be an
inevitable predictor like the law of gravity is, while claiming to not have
any social agenda until they have had a glass of wine or two and you start
hearing absolutely disturbing things.

I've worked for molecular neurobiologists working on brains - the vast
majority of them are fine. They research schizophrenia and such that do have
genes associated with them, but also get that a lot of the genetics are about
incrasing risk factors, not determinism. But once you hit the sub-group that
researches the heritability of IQ... well, let's just say that there is a very
suspicious aspect to the self-selection bias in the people who decide to
research that topic.

~~~
deogeo
Yet most (western) countries immigration policy is set on the opposite
assumption - that personality traits (of which IQ is only one) are not
heritable.

The caution and "well it's complicated" shouldn't run in only one direction.

~~~
vanderZwan
> _Yet most (western) countries immigration policy is set on the opposite
> assumption - that personality traits (of which IQ is only one) are not
> heritable._

This is something often said by white people who never had to deal with the
many issues around migrating to Western countries, even though we have _the
entire history of eugenics and "scientific" racism_ proving the opposite.

> _The caution and "well it's complicated" shouldn't run in only one
> direction._

That would assume that there are two equally valid opposing views here, and
yet there is nothing here to back that up. Science doesn't run on "both
sides"-isms.

~~~
deogeo
> That would assume that there are two equally valid opposing views here, and
> yet there is nothing here to back that up.

So why does the opening of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ)
say "Twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between
57% and 73% with the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high
as 80% and 86%."?

Is the mountain of research on the heritability of psychological traits so
obviously 'nothing', you don't even have to bother giving a source for your
claim?

~~~
throwawaytkgll
Wikipedia isn't as authoritative a source as you think it is, especially for
subjects like this that are heavily gatekeeped by people with an ax to grin
(without necessarily having the actual credentials to back it up)

And heritability doesn't mean what you think it does

I'm choosing to believe you're arguing in good faith, so prepare to ingest a
decent amount of material if you want to understand why:
[http://bactra.org/weblog/520.html](http://bactra.org/weblog/520.html)

