16 PINNING DOWN POTENTIALbodies like the National Institutes of Health in the United States, and the
U.K. Medical Research Council. Th e rationale is that, by identifying
the “true” causes of prob lems, it may be pos si ble to devise interventions
more fruitful than those used in the past.
Such genome- wide association studies, or GWASs, have been primar-
ily aimed at the ge ne tics of vari ous diseases and disorders. But the appeal,
and its simple logic, took an early hold on psychologists in the fi eld of
intelligence. Promises of a new dawn for the understanding of diff erences
in human potential were soon being issued. As early as 2000, Robert
Plomin was claiming that genes could be found in infancy to predict adult
cognitive ability, enabling parents to recognize ge ne tic limits to their
children’s ability. Th us primed for breathtaking discoveries, the BBC Ra-
dio 4 reported (August 8, 2000) that at least one research team is close to
identifying “genes for IQ,” and that “scientists could soon test the poten-
tial intelligence of new- born babies.” Th e report was duly echoed in the
Times and other newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic— even though
no such identifi cation has taken place either then or since!
A de cade and a half later, several hugely expensive screens for genes
for human potential continue, hunting for correlations between SNP
(or other ge ne tic) variants and IQ or school per for mance. A typical exam-
ple of the logic is in the research of the team assembled by Steve Hsu and
others in China, and involving Plomin’s group in Britain. Th ey are scan-
ning DNA from blood samples from the one in a thousand individuals
with the highest IQ scores. Th ey hope to fi nd the “special” genes prominent
in such individuals. Hsu has hinted that genes might then be engineered in
others to produce more superintelligent individuals (see chapter 10). It
has been suggested that such studies could one day help parents select
embryos with ge ne tic predispositions for high intelligence.^16
Another example is the Mind Genes proj ect at Imperial College, Lon-
don. Its website states that “Mind Genes is a research proj ect using next
generation genome sequencing technology to identify ge ne tic variants
associated with cognitive abilities.” It says further that “the reasons why
people diff er in their cognitive abilities are complicated,” but neverthe-
less suggests that “ge ne tic factors may account for 70% of the variation
in cognitive abilities.” “However,” it admits, “it has been very diffi cult to
identify these genes.”
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