ArticleMolecular psychiatry2017
Predicting educational achievement from DNA.
Article in Molecular psychiatry, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 80 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
80 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Cleft lip/palate and educational attainment: cause, consequence or correlation? A Mendelian randomization study.International journal of epidemiology · 2020Pooled it
- A Polygenic Score for Higher Educational Attainment is Associated with Larger Brains.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2019Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Developmental Correlates of Epigenetic and Polygenic Indices of Cognition and Educational Attainment from Birth to Young Adulthood.Research square · 2026Article
- Developmental Correlates of Epigenetic and Polygenic Indices of Cognition and Educational Attainment from Birth to Young Adulthood.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Parental income in childhood and health outcomes across age groups: a register-based study from Norway.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- Dyslexia Polygenic Index and Socio-Economic Status Interaction Effects on Reading Skills in Australia and the United Kingdom.Behavior genetics · 2025Article
- Large language models predict cognition and education close to or better than genomics or expert assessment.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Gestational Age and Cognitive Development in Childhood.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- The Geneticization of Education and Its Bioethical Implications.Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics : CQ : the international journal of healthcare ethics committees · 2024Article
- Exploring the genetic prediction of academic underachievement and overachievement.NPJ science of learning · 2024Article
- Infrastructuring Educational Genomics: Associations, Architectures, and Apparatuses.Postdigital science and education · 2024Article
- School performance and genetic propensities for educational attainment and depression in the etiology of self-harm: a Danish population-based study.Nordic journal of psychiatry · 2023Article
- Statistical Methods for Disease Risk Prediction with Genotype Data.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2023Article
- Attitudes towards genetic testing: The role of genetic literacy, motivated cognition, and socio-demographic characteristics.PloS one · 2023Article
- What is driving the relationship between height and cognition? Evidence from the Twins Early Development Study.Economics and human biology · 2022Article
- Educational attainment polygenic scores, socioeconomic factors, and cortical structure in children and adolescents.Human brain mapping · 2022Article
- A population-wide gene-environment interaction study on how genes, schools, and residential areas shape achievement.NPJ science of learning · 2022Article
- Polygenic Risk Scores for Blood Pressure to Assess the Risk of Severe Bevacizumab-Induced Hypertension in Cancer Patients (Alliance).Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics · 2022Article
- Three legs of the missing heritability problem.Studies in history and philosophy of science · 2022Article
20 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
A genome-wide polygenic score (GPS), derived from a 2013 genome-wide association study (N=127,000), explained 2% of the variance in total years of education (EduYears). In a follow-up study (N=329,000), a new EduYears GPS explains up to 4%. Here, we tested the association between this latest EduYears GPS and educational achievement scores at ages 7, 12 and 16 in an independent sample of 5825 UK individuals. We found that EduYears GPS explained greater amounts of variance in educational achievement over time, up to 9% at age 16, accounting for 15% of the heritable variance. This is the strongest GPS prediction to date for quantitative behavioral traits. Individuals in the highest and lowest GPS septiles differed by a whole school grade at age 16. Furthermore, EduYears GPS was associated with general cognitive ability (~3.5%) and family socioeconomic status (~7%). There was no evidence of an interaction between EduYears GPS and family socioeconomic status on educational achievement or on general cognitive ability. These results are a harbinger of future widespread use of GPS to predict genetic risk and resilience in the social and behavioral sciences.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.