Is academic achievement written into your DNA? It’s complicated

The largest study of its kind has found 74 genetic variants that influence how many years of school people finish, scientists reported on Wednesday, but their effect is relatively minor, underlining how a complex behavior like going to college is not written in our DNA.

Although such behavioral genetics studies might once have been trumpeted as “genes for going to college,” the international consortium of 253 researchers reached a more modest conclusion: Altogether, the 74 genes explain slightly less than one-half of 1 percent of the differences between people’s education levels.

Behavioral genetics has long been notorious for producing spurious findings. It has also been controversial, with critics calling it pointless (because environmental factors exert stronger effects on behavior) and even dangerous, misleading the public into thinking that complex behaviors such as getting divorced or committing crimes or being a political liberal are the inevitable product of inherited genes.

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Benjamin and his colleagues emphasized that social and environmental factors had a much stronger effect on educational attainment than the 0.43 percent accounted for by the 74 variants.

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The weak effect of...