Do Wealthy People Have Better Genes Than the Rest of Us?
By Jay Joseph, Psy.D.
The critics of behavioral genetic research and theories do not earn high incomes for what we write. Most of us have “day jobs” (in my case, as a clinical psychologist), hold tenured academic positions based on other work, or are retired. We expect, at least for now, that much of what we write will be ignored, dismissed, or distorted in the mainstream media, in mainstream academics, and in the social media. Our books do produce periodic royalty checks, which at times might cover a full breakfast and a single-latte at the local diner. Notice I didn’t say double-latte. Yet according to the latest research that serves as the backdrop of this article, we critics may lack genes for intelligence and other positive attributes that high-income earners possess.
The critics of behavioral genetic research and theories do not earn high incomes for what we write. Most of us have “day jobs” (in my case, as a clinical psychologist), hold tenured academic positions based on other work, or are retired. We expect, at least for now, that much of what we write will be ignored, dismissed, or distorted in the mainstream media, in mainstream academics, and in the social media. Our books do produce periodic royalty checks, which at times might cover a full breakfast and a single-latte at the local diner. Notice I didn’t say double-latte. Yet according to the latest research that serves as the backdrop of this article, we critics may lack genes for intelligence and other positive attributes that high-income earners possess.
As has long been recognized, people can do different
things very well, or perform their jobs in a similarly excellent way, and yet
get paid very differently. At major U.S. universities the head football coach’s
salary, literally,
could be 100 times greater than that of a physics professor. These salaries are
based on the supply and demand of skills that produce high revenue-producing
activities. High school teachers
in Luxembourg are paid almost seven times more than high school
teachers are paid in Lithuania. Genes have nothing to do with it.
The
bogus “scientific” argument that the upper classes have better and smarter genes
than the rest of us goes all the way back to Francis Galton’s 1869 book Hereditary Genius, where Galton, the
founder of the eugenics movement, attributed to heredity his observation that
British judges, commanders, scientists, and the members of other highly
regarded professions tended to produce highly achieving offspring.
Fast
forward 150 years, where the authors of a molecular genetic study claimed to
have found genetic loci associated with income and “observed socioeconomic inequalities.”
In this study, which was published
in its final form on December 16th, 2019 in Nature
Communications (an earlier version had been
published online on 3/12/19), W. David Hill and colleagues claimed that they
had “discovered 149 genetic loci
associated with income.” They concluded, “These results indicate that, in
modern era Great Britain, genetic effects contribute towards some of the
observed socioeconomic inequalities.” I am not here to analyze this particular
study, but instead to use it as an example of the false genetic claims that produce
headlines helping to legitimize the power and profits of the rich and powerful.
“Association” is of course synonymous with
“correlation” in this context, and in genetic studies correlation does not
imply causation. Human possession of a Y chromosome has always been “associated
with” much higher income, privilege, and power compared with humans lacking a Y
chromosome. This doesn’t mean or even suggest that males are smarter, or
possess a superior income-producing genetic makeup, than females possess. The
association is due to political policies, social struggle or a lack thereof,
oppression, and other non-genetic factors.
The title of a 3/24/2019 article in Rupert Murdoch’s The Sunday Times about the Hill et al. study read, “Scientists
Find 24 ‘Golden’ Genes that Help You Get Rich.” The article speculated that
“Britain’s richest man [James Ratcliffe] could have some of the 24 key genes.”
(Undoubtedly, Murdoch himself possesses all of these “golden” genes.) Because
the general public is now less likely to accept that the world’s 2,153
billionaires, who at the beginning of 2020 owned as much wealth as the
poorest 4.6 billion people on Earth, obtained their wealth “by the grace of
God,” they must now try to sell us on the idea that they attained and deserve their
wealth and status “by the grace of the genes.”
Molecular Genetic Fool’s Gold
Hill and colleagues’ “genes for income” study must
be evaluated in the context of countless other “genes for behavior” claims that
have appeared since the 1960s—claims that have fallen by the wayside
because they almost always produce only false positive genetic fool’s gold.
The online journal Molecular Psychiatry has been around since 1997, and has been
publishing false-positive “findings” of genes associated with psychiatric
disorders ever since. For those who doubt this, the American Psychiatric
Association (APA), in a statement by David Kupfer in an official 2013 press
release, admitted that genes
for psychiatric disorders had not been found, and that “we’re still waiting”
for gene and biomarker discoveries. According to the APA, therefore, all
gene-discovery claims published in Molecular
Psychiatry and elsewhere, at least up to 2013, did not hold up. The
articles containing these false-positive claims published between 1997 and 2013
can be found in the Molecular Psychiatry
online archives. Although the titles of these articles sound
very scientific, what they found turned out to be genetic fool’s gold.
Turning to behavioral genetics, a field that focuses
more on cognitive ability (IQ), personality, and other areas of behavior, a
similar pattern emerges. In his 2018 book Blueprint:
How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, leading behavioral geneticist Robert Plomin admitted
that decades of studies up
to 2015-2016 had failed to produce the expected genes for behavior and IQ, and that
he was ready to throw in the towel and take up sailing in his retirement. In this case, we can
consult the archives of the
journal Genes, Brain, and Behavior (G2B). Because gene
discovery claims up to at least 2015 were false positives, as Plomin admitted, the
G2B online archives through at least 2014 provide another
treasure trove of false-positive behavioral gene discovery claims. Genetic
fool’s gold, once again.
Molecular genetic studies of behavior, then, have
been characterized by decades of false-positive non-replicated results. This
has been due largely to systematic error, the misguided acceptance of genetic
interpretations of previous twin studies, publication bias in favor of positive
findings, and a reliance on false assumptions and dubious “heritability
estimates.” This is the most
likely explanation for Hill and colleagues’ “genes for income” finding. As
science writer John Horgan wrote
in 2013, in words
that continue to ring true,
“Over the past 25 years or
so, [researchers] have discovered ‘genes for’ high IQ, gambling,
attention-deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder,
schizophrenia, autism, dyslexia, alcoholism, heroin addiction, extroversion,
introversion, anxiety, anorexia nervosa, seasonal affective disorder, violent
aggression—and so on. So far, not one of these claims has been consistently
confirmed by follow-up studies.”
“Follow-up studies that fail
to corroborate the initial claim,” Horgan wrote, “receive little or no
attention, leaving the public with the mistaken impression that the initial
report was accurate—and, more broadly, that genes determine who we are.”
Researchers develop new gene
discovery methods after the previous methods failed, but these newer methods
eventually produce similar negative results. The most recent claims are based
on the “polygenic score” (PGS) method, which Plomin championed in his book, but
this method is problematic for several reasons (critiques of the PGS method can
be found HERE, HERE, and HERE).
Erasing History
Based on a
half-century of false-positive behavioral gene discovery claims, the proper
reaction to new claims should be extreme skepticism and
caution—similar
to the “oh no, not again” skepticism and caution that Peanuts comic strip character Charlie Brown responded with whenever
Lucy van Pelt asked him to kick the football she was holding. History demands
that we must view all new behavioral gene
discovery claims, and polygenic scores, as false-positive findings until proven
otherwise.
The U.S. corporate media, on the other hand, usually
reports gene discovery claims as if this history does not exist, similar to the
way it reports on politics, foreign policy, and wars. Most people understand
that politicians frequently break campaign promises after taking office. Yet
the media typically describes politicians’ “plans,” promises, and “party
platforms” as if this long history of lies and broken promises did not exist.
Corporate media coverage of electoral campaigns, foreign policy, the drive to war, and gene discovery claims have in common that they are sold in part
by obscuring the history of such claims. Statements such as “Candidate X
promises not to raise taxes or cut Social Security,” “Pentagon sources tell
us…,” “Weapons of mass destruction,” and “Scientists have discovered genes for
schizophrenia” are sold by the corporate media as if there were no history of
previous unsubstantiated claims and outright lies.
Despite the decades-long failure to discover genes
that play a direct role in causing human behavioral differences, corporate
media writers often react to new behavioral gene discovery claims similarly to
the way a three-year-old child reacts on Christmas morning after being told
that Santa just came down the chimney. But even in the unlikely event that
predisposing or behavior-causing genes are eventually found, society and
science could still choose to focus attention and funding on reducing or
eliminating the numerous adverse conditions and experiences that cause human suffering
and psychological
dysfunction.
Although
technology has changed dramatically since Galton’s time, the needs of the
propertied classes to promote fake “science” in
support of their wealth, profits, privileges, and wars, and to claim that
social inequality in general is rooted in biology and nature, has not changed. The
current U.S. President and members of his Cabinet are wealthy high-income earners, who
supposedly possess an abundance of the coveted “golden genes.” Yet even with
ample warning, they committed the world-historic blunder of doing little to
stop a dangerous disease from spreading throughout the country and endangering
hundreds of millions of people, not to mention the possibility of triggering a
total economic collapse, with the President saying on February 26th,
2020 that “the risk to the American people remains very low”!
Given the dreadful track record of “genes for behavior”
claims dating back to the 1960s, Hill and colleagues could have framed their “genetic
loci associated with income” claims in the context of this dreadful track
record. Instead, they produced a study financed by government and corporate
industry grants that was published by a Nature
journal. They did discuss the “limitations” of their study, and added
additional cautions in a supplementary “FAQs” section, but researchers’ cautions usually
get lost in the hoopla, and the authors of subsequent review articles and
textbooks rarely mention them. In the “genes for income and socioeconomic
status” context, the goal of research funding sources and leading journals
seems to be the production of studies and headlines that help justify the status
and privileges of the wealthy, to help keep the rest of us passive and divided
so that they can become even wealthier.
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