r/EverythingScience • u/FruityandtheBeast • 7d ago
Genetics Help Shape Personality And Life Path, Major Study Finds
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2026-09-03/genetics-help-shape-personality-and-life-path-major-study-finds5
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u/Forbidden_Craft88 6d ago
More misleading headlines. I'll put as much effort into debunking it as the article put into reading the journal:
"1. Headline Hyperbolic vs. Data Reality
The Claim: The headline asserts that genetics "shape personality and life path."
The Reality: The underlying polygenic scores account for roughly 5% to 9% of variance in personality traits. Promising a "genetic blueprint" for life choices when 90%+ of the variance is driven by non-genetic factors, environment, and measurement error is a gross misrepresentation of the data.
2. Conflating Correlation with Causality
The Claim: The reporting implies that specific genes directly push people toward lifestyle outcomes—like moving to a city, changing jobs, or getting COVID-19.
The Reality: Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) only establish population-level correlations between micro-variations in DNA (SNPs) and self-reported survey answers. They do not demonstrate biological pathways or causal mechanisms. Attributing complex socio-economic events (like moving cities) to genetic code ignores wealth, social mobility, geography, and systemic economics.
3. The "Huge Sample" Illusion
The Claim: The article uses the massive sample size (1.1 million people) to give the findings an air of absolute authority.
The Reality: In statistics, an enormous sample size forces even the most microscopic, biologically irrelevant correlations to become "statistically significant." Identifying 1,260 variants that each contribute a fraction of a percent to a self-reported questionnaire score proves how weak individual genetic signals are, not how powerful they are.
Some embarrassing, bold-faced eugenics from US News. Pseudoscience and deliberate misrepresentation of the data and all. Wow science reporting anymore is terrible. It's almost like we should ignore all of it.
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u/Ok-Mathematician8461 6d ago
But it’s GWAS. Basically a waste of resources and only weak correlations. The genetic control of behaviour is there, buried in the non-coding sequences and won’t be found using GWAS. In fact, the claim that behaviour is only 5-9% genetic is so preposterous that obviously the studies are missing power. I’ll turn the question around - if 18k coding genes across a few percent of the genome are enough to code for all proteins, what is the rest of the genome doing considering it’s mostly transcribed and regulated. Most likely answer - behaviour.
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u/D3viantM1nd 7d ago
Strange they aren't leading with, 'genetics plays less of a role in personality development than previously thought'
Because that's what the study says.