Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

‘Geno-Economists’ say DNA can predict our chances of success

#1
C C Offline
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018...genes.html

EXCERPT: In 1999, a trio of economists emerged from a conference at the University of California [...] and began a slow walk through the hills overlooking the city. The three of them — a Harvard economist-in-training, Daniel Benjamin, and the Harvard economists Edward Glaeser and David Laibson — were reeling. They had just learned about a new field, neuroeconomics, which applies economic analysis to brain science in an effort to understand human choices. [...] The economists spent the walk discussing what else they could measure across such a wide variety of human beings. By the time the sun began to set, the conversation landed on the very building blocks of life. “If economists are studying the brain,” Laibson asked, “what about studying genes?”

[...] Today, Glaeser is best known for studying cities. Laibson’s work is focused largely on behavioral economics. But Benjamin has remained committed to genes, and in 2007, as genome data became cheaper and more plentiful, a new method for connecting genes to outcomes emerged: genome-wide association studies (G.W.A.S.). With the candidate-gene method, you had to essentially guess which genes might be involved, and usually got it wrong. “With G.W.A.S., you look at the whole genome and let the data tell you where there’s variation,” Benjamin says.

Once a G.W.A.S. shows genetic effects across a group, a “polygenic score” can be assigned to individuals, summarizing the genetic patterns that correlate to outcomes found in the group. Although no one genetic marker might predict anything, this combined score based on the entire genome can be a predictor of all sorts of things. And here’s why it’s so useful: People outside that sample can then have their DNA screened, and are assigned their own polygenic score, and the predictions tend to carry over. This, Benjamin realized, was the sort of statistical tool an economist could use.

The first scientists to combine G.W.A.S. and polygenic scores used them to find associations with health outcomes. A 2009 study used polygenic scoring to assess the genetic risks of schizophrenia. Further studies created polygenic scores for everything from multiple sclerosis to height. The scores aren’t individually predictive, and the associations are statistically small, but for geneticists, they’re a powerful tool for studying medical outcomes across large groups.

As an economist, however, Benjamin wasn’t interested in medical outcomes. He wanted to see if our genes predict social outcomes.

[...] with a data set this big, the patterns provide a lot of information. [...] For 19 years, Benjamin and his colleagues were looking for fundamentals. Now, they say, they’ve found them. The genes with which you are born travel during your life through a mediating layer of biology and social experience — racism, puberty, vacations, illness, industrial accidents, sexual harassment, poverty, divorce — that seems so complicated as to be unmeasurable. But their study, part of a field now called “geno-economics,” claims to measure, in part, the degree to which our genes determine who we become. How is that possible? And in an era of dramatic political divisions, predatory companies and systemic inequality, should we really be mapping genetics to social outcomes?

[...] Benjamin says he knows others will be tempted to try to use this method to compare genetic advantages between races, but “that would be a misuse of the data. You just can’t do that sort of comparison.” But the good intentions of Benjamin and others in his field depend on being able to use their method on everyone, or no one.

[...] Even now, as scientists debate the ethics of this early research, the free market is ready to sell whatever it can. The seeming precision of “genetics” is irresistible, especially for those of us facing the stomach-churning uncertainty of disease, aging or new parenthood. [...] The geno-economists seem confident that human genes have a measurable influence on human outcomes. But publicizing whatever predictive power does lie in our genes runs the risk of misleading the rest of us into believing that control of our genes is control of our future. They’re adamant that their motives are in forestalling the dystopian implications of the work, in fighting off misinformation and misguided policies. “The world in which we can predict all sorts of things about the future based on saliva samples — personality traits, cognitive abilities, life outcomes — is happening in the next five years,” Benjamin says. “Now is the time to prepare for that.”

MORE: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018...genes.html
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Economists find lockdowns reduced COVID-19 deaths by only 0.2% (data analysis) C C 0 88 Feb 3, 2022 11:24 PM
Last Post: C C
  Economists poll: Brexit to be put on ice, but only for a few months C C 0 402 Mar 6, 2019 03:56 AM
Last Post: C C
  Study Links Parental Support & Career Success of Children C C 1 454 May 4, 2018 10:09 PM
Last Post: Syne
  Statistics is dead - long live statistics + Is climate change too complex to predict? C C 0 600 Jul 29, 2016 06:00 AM
Last Post: C C
  Social priming + Marrying age + Leap Day babies -- what are the chances? C C 0 515 Mar 3, 2016 06:51 PM
Last Post: C C
  Numeric success: Colorado’s effort against teenage pregnancies C C 0 578 Jul 6, 2015 05:43 PM
Last Post: C C



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)