Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Learning about the elitist opinions of a study's authors through their dubious study

This preprint of an alleged "study, " "GENETIC CONSEQUENCES OF SOCIAL STRATIFICATION IN GREAT BRITAIN", is the kind of filth that has only been suggested in previous studies, but apparently they are feeling puffed up enough to just go full-on eugenic.  I realize that they believe that what they are saying is backed up by genetic evidence, but that's what the phrenologists thought, as well.  Realistically, I can't fully dispute all of the claims, as I am not familiar enough with the geography of England and the socio-economic aspects of their society.  Nonetheless, it's not hard to see what is happening here, if one really wanted to see it, which is that their beliefs about the genetics of superior sorts (i.e.,  people more like them) are causing them to miss the forest through the trees in terms of stratification of a society.  I am quite confident that I can tell you the authors' politics, socioeconomic and geographic backgrounds and opinions about various mental illnesses, without having met any of them.  It is an elitist view of the world, written by elitists, for the pleasure of other elitists.  They should be ashamed.  So, let's go through this, shall we:

Let's start with this quote:
Regional differences in allele frequencies are driven by genetic drift (i.e., the random fluctuations of allele frequency each generation), natural selection pressures, migrations, or admixture (i.e., two previously isolated populations interbreeding). Out of these four mechanisms, genetic drift is the only mechanism not expected to disproportionately affect genetic variants that are associated with heritable human traits.
Well, I can think of a couple of more right off the top of my head.  First, is assortative mating frequncies.  In other words, the fact that like attracts like.  People tend to marry someone who is like them in higher frequency.  Tall people marry tall people, well educated people tend to marry well educated people, even schizophrenics marry other schizophrenics in higher frequency.  Thus, their allele frequencies in such situations are not going to be related to random genetic drift.  There will be some stratification right off the bat.  Moreover, individuals within the same geographical region, will stratify in many ways.  To give a simple example, the Presbyterian is far more likely to marry another Presbyterian in a particular geographic region than a Catholic from the same region.  This should be enough to give someone pause when assessing a study like this and one has to ask why it is not included as one of the four.  The reason that it is not, is that it confounds their premise.  One of the highest rates of assortative mating is for educational attainment, which they note is their highest rate of stratification.  Coincidence?
Secondly, in most societies, and I'll assume this is true in England, even within relatively isolated geographic regions, there are going to be stratifications related to things like social class.  For example, there might only be a short walk between a wealthy area and a poorer area of a community, but both are in the same geographical region.  However, those in a wealthier area are unlikely to marry someone from a poorer area, and vice versa.  Therefore, we already have several reasons to believe that a relatively small geographic area can have significant stratifications.  Moreover, individuals from a higher socioeconomic class are more likely to marry others in other geographic regions with that same socioeconomic status, much more so, in fact, than those from the same geographic region of a different socioeconomic status.
The point here is that if you take the region as a whole and compare specific genetic variants higher in one region than another region, you are ignoring localized stratification.  So if 5% of the people in one region are in the upper socioeconomic class,  and 20% are in another region, then you are not really getting the full picture when you try to compare their overall allele frequencies.  Additionally, one can see that a person in the 5% higher socioeconomic class of the one region, assuming it has limited educational employment opportunities, would be more likely and have easier means to move to the area with 20%, which would likely be a large city with universities and high-paying jobs.
Neither of these issues appear to be taken into consideration, thus rendering the study as little more than a projection of the authors' eugenic fantasies.
It's also worth pointing out that there is no attempt to distinguish what these genetic variants are or what they might do.  They are simply in higher frequencies in certain communities and geographic areas.  Of the thousands of genetic variants they correlate through polygenic scores to a trait like educational attainment, not a single one has been mapped out as causal.  There is little difference between what they have found and saying that someone is Italian based on genetic variants found amongst those from Italy.  None of those genetic variants is likely to be a gene for finding spaghetti to be tasty.  The variants are simply markers.   The same is probably true here, for most, if not all, of the variants they are looking at.
Now let's look at some of their exciting "findings":
These suggest that the election outcomes can be divided roughly into higher SES and lower SES regions, with Green Party, Liberal Democrats, and Conservative regions containing more alleles associated with higher SES trait values, and the Labour Party, UKIP, “Leave” votes for Brexit, and non-voters reflecting regions with more alleles associated with lower SES trait values. 
Gosh, can we guess which political parties the authors belong to and which they don't?  It's interesting that they don't stumble over their own contradictions here, since many of these parties (and pardon my minimal background in British politics) are on opposite ends of the spectrum, yet are suddenly aligned to make a point.  So it no longer matters what the shared ideas between parties are.  What they are saying is that UKIP, Labour and Brexit are for the genetic dumb dumbs.

Here's another "finding":
The genetic correlations between regional religiousness and the 1970 & 2015 election outcomes suggest that UKIP regions include former Labour Party regions with a more religious genetic profile (lower openness, higher conscientiousness), while the Green Party regions include former Conservative regions with a more non-religious genetic profile (higher openness, lower conscientiousness). 
So we now know the likely political parties of the authors and their opinion of religion, which obviously is not high.  So better genes make you less religious, while the dumb dumbs are religious.

And, of course, dumb dumb genes make you fat:
There are for example significantly more McDonald’s restaurants in lower SES neighborhoods in Great Britain. This may be part of the explanation for why four out of the top five geographically clustered polygenic scores are related to body weight.
One might ask why genetics is even mentioned here?

And, poignantly, there is this thoughtful suggestion:
Social policies that increase the quality of life in lower SES regions may also help to decrease migration out of the currently more economically deprived regions by people with genetic predispositions for higher SES outcomes, and thereby possibly result in a less geographically stratified society. 
Which is not to be read as, "Let's throw the dumb dumbs a few bones so they'll stay out of our high class areas."

Again, what you have here needs no genetic analysis.  They are simply highlighting differences among social classes, who tend to marry their own.  What is happening, is that genetic differences, which are going to occur in a stratified society are now being used to justify this stratification.  It is a cynical kind of circular reasoning and the people doing it are those who most benefit by it's continuation and who get the most self-aggrandizing reinforcement.  It's a bit unsettling, really, and I hope that this awful eugenic pseudoscience will all collapse before it is inappropriately used.

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