Articles & Essays

If Smart is the New Norm, Stupidity Gets More Interesting

2012-10-25T18:21:14Z

Here's the opener to my My Oct 22, 2012, column at at the New York Times:

If Smart is the New Norm, Stupidity Gets More Interesting

Few of us are as smart as we’d like to be. You’re sharper than Jim (maybe) but dull next to Jane. Human intelligence varies. And this matters, because smarter people generally earn more money, enjoy better health, raise smarter children, feel happier and, just to rub it in, live longer as well.

But where does intelligence come from? How is it built? Researchers have tried hard to find the answer in our genes. With the rise of inexpensive genome sequencing, they’ve analyzed the genomes of thousands of people, looking for gene variants that clearly affect intelligence, and have found a grand total of two.

One determines the risk of Alzheimer’s and affects I.Q. only late in life; the other seems to build a bigger brain, but on average it raises I.Q. by all of 1.29 points.

Other genetic factors may be at work: A report last year concluded that several hundred gene variants taken together seemed to account for 40 to 50 percent of the differences in intelligence among the 3,500 subjects in the study. But the authors couldn’t tell which of these genes created any significant effect. And when they tried to use the genes to predict differences in intelligence, they could account for only 1 percent of the differences in I.Q.

“If it’s this hard to find an effect of just 1 percent,” Robert Plomin, a professor of behavioral genetics at King’s College London, told New Scientist, “what you’re really showing is that the cup is 99 percent empty.”

But is the genetic cup really empty, or are we just looking for the wrong stuff? Kevin Mitchell, a developmental neurogeneticist at Trinity College Dublin, thinks the latter. In an essay he published in July on his blog, Wiring the Brain, Dr. Mitchell proposed that instead of thinking about the genetics of intelligence, we should be trying to parse “the genetics of stupidity,” as his title put it. We should look not for genetic dynamics that build intelligence but for those that erode it.

Read the whole thing at the Times.

Enough With the 'Slut Gene' Already: Behaviors Ain't Traits

2011-11-18T20:52:36Z

crossposted from Wired:

Earlier this week, WBUR's Here and Now ran a a taped interview with me about "Beautiful Brains," my recent National Geographic article on teen brain and behavior. (You can listen to the interview here.) It's only six minutes long, but nicely edited to highlight, from a high-altitude evolutionary point of view, what distinguishes adolescence, when we peak in our pursuits of risk, novelty, and same-age peers even as our brains consolidate gains while remaining especially plastic. Not, as researcher Jay Giedd likes to say, a defective adult brain, but a nicely tuned teen brain. The show also squeezes in some Shakespeare, some fast driving, and a bit of Steve Jobs. Not bad for six minutes.

A couple of the write-ups about the show, however, carry headlines that make a mistake too often made about behavioral genetics:

Reckless Teen Behavior May Be Evolutionary Advantage | Here & Now

Know a risky teenager? Evolutionarily speaking, that's good behavior | PRI.ORG

I don't want to beat up too badly on these press releases; doubtless they were written quickly, and in any case the headlines are the worst of it. But perhaps because they were written quickly, they offer a teachable moment by embedding a common misconception. They mistake behaviors for traits.

The Beautiful Teen Brain (National Geographic, cover story, Oct 2011)

2011-09-23T15:49:39Z

Beautiful Brains

Moody. Impulsive. Maddening. Why do teenagers act the way they do? Viewed through the eyes of evolution, their most exasperating traits may be the key to success as adults.

By David Dobbs

Photograph by Kitra Cahana

Although you know your teenager takes some chances, it can be a shock to hear about them.

One fine May morning not long ago my oldest son, 17 at the time, phoned to tell me that he had just spent a couple hours at the state police barracks. Apparently he had been driving "a little fast." What, I asked, was "a little fast"? Turns out this product of my genes and loving care, the boy-man I had swaddled, coddled, cooed at, and then pushed and pulled to the brink of manhood, had been flying down the highway at 113 miles an hour.

"That's more than a little fast," I said.

He agreed. In fact, he sounded somber and contrite. He did not object when I told him he'd have to pay the fines and probably for a lawyer. He did not argue when I pointed out that if anything happens at that speed—a dog in the road, a blown tire, a sneeze—he dies. He was in fact almost irritatingly reasonable. He even proffered that the cop did the right thing in stopping him, for, as he put it, "We can't all go around doing 113."

He did, however, object to one thing. He didn't like it that one of the several citations he received was for reckless driving.

"Well," I huffed, sensing an opportunity to finally yell at him, "what would you call it?"

"It's just not accurate," he said calmly. " 'Reckless' sounds like you're not paying attention. But I was. I made a deliberate point of doing this on an empty stretch of dry interstate, in broad daylight, with good sight lines and no traffic. I mean, I wasn't just gunning the thing. I was driving.

"I guess that's what I want you to know. If it makes you feel any better, I was really focused."

Actually, it did make me feel better. That bothered me, for I didn't understand why. Now I do.

Get the rest at National Geographic

Reader responses to "My Mother's Lover"

2011-07-14T07:38:08Z

A quick sampling:

from Beverly A, via email:

What a truly interesting story this was. I've been waffling for several weeks over whether or not to buy this--and then when I finally did get it and started reading I could not stop until I finished. The tone of the whole story is so right for the period. I was in high school when the war ended and so heard a few stories but none quite as compelling as this--plus in the old times no one would have dared be so open about the loves that could not be avoided. It is a wonderful tale and I completely enjoyed it.

several from the many at My Mother's Lover page at Amazon:

from FlowerDragon:

Memories came flooding back after reading this story: sitting in the attic with my mother and going through her "treasures". The pictures of planes and pilots from WWII, then the tears, then me begging to know more... Then the secrets from the past and the hints at even a greater story... What can I say? Many of us born during or just after WWII probably haven't a clue as to how our parents sacrificed and lost so much in their young lives. I am only thankful that I had a chance to share my mother's memories before she passed at a young age...

This was a wonderful story and for some of us, a jolt of memory and realization that we better tell our kids more about our growing up times before it is too late!!

from Patricia Churchland, 5 stars:

The first page grabs you, and the book never lets you go. This is a love story, a morality tale, and a chronicle of the comedies of life. Beautiful and brilliant.

MizLeta, 5 stars:

A true story, well written. Haunting story that really reminds us that, "War is Hell". Not a mushy romance story. More of an insight into history and human nature.

"My Mother's Lover" Tops the Charts at Kindle Single

2011-06-11T19:37:30Z

Last Tuesday The Atavist published My Mother’s Lover, my account of a World War II romance my mother had with a flight surgeon, and of my search for this man six decades after my mother lost him. It’s a war story and a love story — several love stories. I’ve been trying to fully excavate this story ever since my mother left us a riddle about it on her deathbed. The story has taken several distinct forms in my imagination, in notebooks, in drafts of various length and finish. It began to take this current, published form early this year, after conversations with the founders of The Atavist, Evan Ratliff and Nicholas Thompson, suggested this story was a good match for that venue. The stor has done well, with the Kindle version becoming the #1 bestseller among Kindle Singles its first day and selling well in the iPad version as well. Here's the write-up from Atavist; an excerpt that ran in The Atlantic is just below.

Free Science -- Resources & Reading

2011-05-12T09:03:12Z

This is a supplement to my article "Free Science, One Paper at a Time" (at my webpage; at my blog at Wired). Some of these links were suggested by others. Many came from a longer set of links on open science (saved under tag Mendeley; my own shorthand tag for the story) that I saved at Diigo.

Free Science, One Paper at a Time

2011-05-11T09:40:33Z

On Father's Day three years ago, biologist Jonathan Eisen decided he'd like to republish all his father's papers. His father, Howard Eisen, a biologist and a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, had published 40-some-odd papers by the time that he died by suicide at age 45. That had been in Febuary 1987, while Jonathan, a sophomore at college, was on the verge of discovering his own love of biology. At the time, virtually all scientific papers were just on paper. Now, of course, everything happens online, and Jonathan, who in addition to researching and teaching also serves as an editor at the online-only Public Library of Science (or PLoS), knows this well. So three years ago, Jonathan decided to reclaim his father's papers from print limbo and make them freely available online. He wanted to make them part of the scientific record. He also wanted, he says, "to leave a more positive presence" -- to ensure his father had a public legacy first and foremost as a scientist. How hard could it be?

Why Do Moms Kill Their Kids?

2011-03-19T01:17:12Z

On Neuron Culture, November 2010:

Why do mothers kill their children? Over at Scientific American, guest blogger Eric Michael Johnson, ofPrimate Diaries fame, has fashioned a nicely turned essay considering one answer to this question— or at least a partial answer — offered by researcher Dario Maestripieri: When mothers kill their children, they are reacting to a particularly toxic combination of stress, powerlessness, and social disadvantage.

The Bright Side of the “Depression-Risk Gene”

2011-03-19T01:16:04Z

On Neuron Culture, November 2010:

The reclamation of the “depression gene” proceeds apace: In a paper titled “Looking on the Bright Side of Serotonin Transporter Gene Variation,” two researchers who helped establish the “depression risk-gene” view of depression assert quite strongly that people with the gene variant in question — the s-allele of the serotonin transporter gene, HTTLPR — possess greater social sensitivity than do people without this variant, and hold certain cognitive advantages as well.

Schizophrenia - The making of a troubled mind

2011-03-19T01:08:27Z

In Nature, November 2009:

Rachel had just given birth to her third child when she became overwhelmed by the noise on the obstetrics ward, grew sharply paranoid about her sister, and in short order descended into her first schizophrenic episode. She was 28. Although it was only then that she started hearing voices — those of her family, distant screams, messages from spaceships — she and her psychiatrist came to see that there had been whisperings of this long before.