Our team is excited to share our paper in Nature Human Behaviour. We investigated whether genetic predisposition (polygenic scores, or PGS) for 17 neuropsychiatric traits—ranging from mental health disorders like ADHD to personality traits such as agreeableness—might influence
membership in 22 broad professional categories (e.g., “Computers & Math”).
Key questions:
1. Does higher genetic load for any of these traits increase the likelihood of entering certain professions?
2. Do these findings still hold when excluding individuals with any neuropsychiatric disorder diagnosis?
Main Findings
1. Weak but Significant Associations: Despite significance across multiple trait-profession pairs, each neuropsychiatric trait’s PGS explained less than 0.4% of variation in individual professional membership.
2. Stronger Influence from Age and Sex: Age accounted for around 21% of variance, and sex 7%, overshadowing the influence of genetic predisposition.
3. No “GATTACA” Scenario: Our data suggest that neuropsychiatric trait PGS currently can’t predict career outcomes—nor is it likely to become a robust predictor in the future displacing traditional assessments.
Motivations & Broader Context
1. Reducing Mental Health Stigma: Neuropsychiatric disorders are common and often highly heritable. Some risk variants could persist because they carry potential benefits under certain contexts. Our aim was to explore these potential “trade-offs” and contribute to a deeper understanding of how these common genetic factors shape our societies. For instance, our findings showed a positive association of ASD PGS with both “Computers & Math” and “Arts & design”.
2. Scientific Curiosity: We wanted to test whether neuropsychiatric PGS could serve as a strong predictor of professional membership. Our conclusion: not really—these scores cannot reliably forecast someone’s career path.
Further Insights
1. ADHD & Education: ADHD-related associations were largely mediated through educational attainment, which influenced career pathways. Notably, the gatekeeping “Education” profession itself had a negative association with ADHD PGS and a positive one with (contrasting) OCD PGS. Unfortunately, systemic modifiable biases in education may affect individuals with ADHD.
2. ASD & Management: “Management” showed a negative association with ASD PGS but a positive one with extraversion PGS—an intriguing contrast to “Computers & Math”—a finding that may resonate with frequent discussions about the social and organizational demands of tech management roles at HN.
Limitations of interest
1.We deliberately excluded intelligence, cognitive performance, and educational attainment PGS from our analyeses.
2. We chose more interpretable statistical approaches rather than complex machine-learning algorithms, as the goal was interpretability over prediction performance.
3. Future studies might use multivariate multiple regression approaches to uncover even more nuanced interactions.
Conclusion
At the population level, there are small yet significant associations between neuropsychiatric trait PGS and professions. However, demographic factors—age, sex—and life circumstances dominate these outcomes. Genetic information alone won’t be a meaningful guide for career selection.
If you’d like to dive deeper please read the full article from the link shared at the top of the page.
PS1: We hope this research helps reduce stigma around neurodivergence and mental health and spark further discussion on the complex interplay between genetics and life outcomes.
PS2: Figure 2 in our published paper has an error where the “Legal” data point was inadvertently removed (should overlap with horizontal dotted line just above “ga”); we plan to correct this soon.
There is a joke among scientists that choosing the career path will cost you your firstborn. It would be nice to quantify this but it is hard to. Anecdotally, main issue is financial stability so people with wealthy backgrounds or supportive (by time investment) families have a much easier time navigating this.
I would be surprised if someone did the study and didn't find a delay till first-born child born when compared to similar people (SES background, abilities, etc) that went down the business/finance route.
Edit:typo
What tanepiper is saying is mostly correct, especially the part that late-onset ADHD is not really a thing. Genetic condition is kind of an inaccurate statement, though, in my experience as a psychiatrist-scientist. You can liberally say that ADHD is ~75% [1] heritable (based on twin studies) which is pretty high. However, data suggest that even though DSM requires a binary definition of the disorder, in truth it is more like a spectrum and less like e.g. bipolar disorder type I which you either have or you don't despite the fact that severity may vary. For example in a recent study, we found that among people, a high polygenic score (PGS; a kind of way to score individuals for genetic liability based on published studies that associate genetic variants with a disorder) is associated with typical deficits in cognitive functions found in ADHD even in the absence of a diagnosis [1]. I conceptualize it as another lever within the natural variation of how brains work and are tuned for different environments.
Now visiting the late-onset part, I have mostly seen it in clinical practice in individuals who had ADHD traits already (may not have met diagnostic criteria) that got really worse after traumatic brain injury and/or worsening of a comorbid mental health conditions e.g. their anxiety or their depression. The natural progression of ADHD for most is to get better over the years as they develop compensatory habits and/or choose lines of work that make ADHD traits less of an obstacle; some believe that also brain maturation kind of catches up at some point which is an incomplete cure. However, the effects on confidence and self-perception are long-lasting...
Another misconception is that high IQ corrects for ADHD traits, this has been mostly rebutted in both clinical literature and we have a genetic study under review that mostly replicates that. Finally, there is an overlap in signs when comparing "bored" gifted individuals and ADHD individuals which can be confusing... Unfortunately, smart individuals with ADHD (of the inattentive type) get enough performance to fly below the radar of diagnosis which ultimately hurts them or delays them from realize "their full potential".
Thank you for a very good answer and you are right, it's not clear cut - as I've got older I identify more AuDHD now, have a relatively higher IQ and if wasn't for my wife (also AuDHD) suggesting we get diagnosed years ago I would have continued the "fly below the radar" - which usually means jumping jobs every two years.
Knowing the diagnosis, with medication, I have much better coping strategies for life now - but at the moment my sink is still full of dishes and there's probably a load of laundry that finished washing 2 days ago still in the machine.
At least VirtualBox has stopped working properly for some time now in my distribution without any plans to fix it. Workaround is freerdp remoteapp but this also breaks sometime with overlay menus... It was about time someone took a shot at this. Also, MS hyperv has been doing a lot of improvements to improve desktop user experience (e.g. opengl) whereas VMWare and virtualbox are more geared towards enterprise I think.
Noticed that yesterday with Endeavour OS, I switched over to vmware player for now for windows. Everything just seems to work on qemu on linux though, but I never had much luck with it on windows.
Thucydides's trap, old as history itself.
From the wikipedia page of the Graham T. Allison who termed the coin:
Allison coined the phrase Thucydides's Trap to refer to the situation that when a rising power causes fear in an established power, it escalates toward war. Thucydides wrote: "What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta."
And a Ted talk from him explaining the matter: https://www.ted.com/talks/graham_allison_is_war_between_chin...
Several years ago, I had a Sony Vaio VGN-FS115M and it was in the waterproof laptop sleeve in my bag. I literally poured a whole hot latte with sugar in the sleeve and the laptop was swimming in coffee. I took it out, removed the battery, disassembled it, took away all visible stains carefully with a good quality paper towel and let it dry. A year later the only thing not working was the lan port and I blame the sugar for that... If the same thing happened today my laptop would be long dead before I could disconnect the battery...
- Nursing home (NH) is a much higher level of care and if you need it then living in a hotel is not an option. Medicare covers NH so it may be cheaper overall to go there than live in an apartment with your own nursing staff.
- Assisted living facilities are closer to living in a hotel and they get (partially?) covered by Medicaid in some states. Prices vary so I don't know how they would compare directly though.
One theme that I see more often lately is seniors transferring their assets to their (grand)kids so that they look poor on paper so that they qualify for low cost assisted living/ Medicare and then cost is not a consideration any more.
Medicaid is last resort, you can’t take care of yourself, nursing home where your social security payment is taken in full to offset the cost to the government.
Assisted living could be covered by Medicaid but there’s usually a waiting list of years for that. Also there is a limit to their care before they send you to a nursing home.
In either case Medicare won’t cover the cost of assisted living, but it will cover some of the cost for inhome care.
Your statement sounds pseudocorrect but the underlying assumptions are that: a) we are currently able to diagnose all nosological entities efficiently, b) we know which treatments are working for each of said entities and c) all people react the same to the same medications, d) all medications that are indicated to treat a disorder are equal. Oh boy, wouldn't that be nice...
In reality you have an army of paper pushers that are hired and have their salaries paid to restrict what can be prescribed. For patients that fit well in proper diagnoses and are otherwise typical it is sometimes annoying but for the 1-2% of patient that rules do not apply (for so many reasons that I cannot possibly enumerate here) it is detrimental. The people who are actually doing this job are not happy with it, the doctors are not happy with it. Every step of the prior authorization process is designed to irritate the doctor or provider (like saying all the patients information again when the representative changes or not accepting the case id to pull out the patient information or "sorry Dr. we only accept this application by fax, we don't do this online" or "this patient's plan does not support peer review") and discourage him from doing it. I know patients that were turned away because their doctors didn't want to handle specific prior auths for them.
"But doctor why don't you want to prescribe medication A that is as effective as medication B but it has more side effects?" As your advocate, I feel obliged to recommend the best medication, if your insurance does not want to cover it then they should take the risk and the legal responsibility of their policy not force me to change my recommendation based on price. Of course, I will not start with the bazooka antibiotic for your tonsillitis but there is a medical reason for not doing that (resistance development). Right now, I have to spend extra time to even justify why a patient should stay on a good medication yearly even if it works great for them. The doctor is your medical scientist consultant, he shouldn't be burdened with saving money from the system, he will tell you what is best, if you want them to give you a value-for-money determination they can do that as well. If two medications work exactly the same, I would happily give the older and cheaper one - it has been longer in the market so it has been more extensively tested.
it already exists: https://bnf.nice.org.uk/ There is a companion to the BNF that has the prices of all the brand/generic versions of the drug.
Doctors don't just randomly prescribe anything, they already _have_ guidelines. and based on actual patient information (like interactions or lack of improvement) they will change drug type based on the evidence. Again, look at the BNF for interactions and contra-indications
You are missing the point of how strongly people in US still believe that you can achieve the American Dream if you choose whatever field, just work hard and are good to your job. Most Americans are not consciously aware of the class system that exists in contrast to most Europeans and other foreigners. There is also a disproportionately higher percentage of people that seek true satisfaction from their jobs (live to work) than seeing it as a job (work to live). It is not even PC to say that your parents are working class or you are 1st generation immigrant so I advise you to become a nurse, doctor or a plumber.
In addition, as history has shown again and again people can and will do poor or risky financial decisions if given the opportunity across the whole spectrum (e.g. from payday loans to very expensive underperforming actively managed funds with huge fees). For a financial institution it may make sense to have 11% interest rate and a 20% chance that people will default before paying at least the principal but these interest rates make life unbearable for the people who have them and is detrimental for the society.
Finally people would probably make better decisions if they had an advisor like you but truth is that most people that come from low socioeconomic status either cannot imagine their selves being for example doctors (they even don't know anyone, an uncle or a family friend) and they have no access to advisors like you from their environment.
I agree - for profit colleges in particular seem to prey on this.
For example, we had like 3-4 chef schools nearby - 100K in tuition?!? That is a totally false dream, those "degrees" do not get you anywhere!
But my point though was - the article left out what HAD to have been some feedback from parents AND what her degree was. How we can read this whole article without some context about her degree.
It's not that someone else would say your first gen so do a practical degree, I'm saying that a first gen immigrant family - they are talking at the family level about this. And practical degree can mean doctor, it can mean computer programmer - so it's still shoot for the moon. But these are degrees with big and growing markets.
There has been a shift in conversation over the last years and at least in US they are claiming that the highest variance in student performance can be attributed to socioeconomic status and developmental environment. So it would seem like selecting based on school performance could make things worse. One could make the case that this would really hurt very smart/ high-performing individuals from low socio-economic status families but most people (and rational policy) care about helping/ making an impact at the population level.
That’s what people say, because it’s hard to say anything else without hitting narratives that will be interpreted as racist or insensitive for other reasons.
Household culture is a big predictor of outcome. Parental age is another. Asian/Indian kids buck the bigger trend, because those family cultures value education as the way to advance.
Usually these policy discussions get dumbed down into inner-city vs suburbia comparison. But I think we’re starting to see bigger cohorts of white kids from suburban professional backgrounds who are not doing better than their parents.
The shift has come, probably not coincidentally, at the same there has been ever more evidence (genetics in particular) that people are indeed inherently different. I think most people are just afraid of considering this possibility since if you apply it in any way whatsoever it leads to either suboptimal solutions or dystopic ones. For instance if you know somebody is unlikely to be able to achieve, do you allow them into e.g. top tier schools, or not? Brave New World or Gattica? Both answers suck.
Our team is excited to share our paper in Nature Human Behaviour. We investigated whether genetic predisposition (polygenic scores, or PGS) for 17 neuropsychiatric traits—ranging from mental health disorders like ADHD to personality traits such as agreeableness—might influence membership in 22 broad professional categories (e.g., “Computers & Math”).
Key questions: 1. Does higher genetic load for any of these traits increase the likelihood of entering certain professions? 2. Do these findings still hold when excluding individuals with any neuropsychiatric disorder diagnosis?
Main Findings 1. Weak but Significant Associations: Despite significance across multiple trait-profession pairs, each neuropsychiatric trait’s PGS explained less than 0.4% of variation in individual professional membership. 2. Stronger Influence from Age and Sex: Age accounted for around 21% of variance, and sex 7%, overshadowing the influence of genetic predisposition. 3. No “GATTACA” Scenario: Our data suggest that neuropsychiatric trait PGS currently can’t predict career outcomes—nor is it likely to become a robust predictor in the future displacing traditional assessments.
Motivations & Broader Context 1. Reducing Mental Health Stigma: Neuropsychiatric disorders are common and often highly heritable. Some risk variants could persist because they carry potential benefits under certain contexts. Our aim was to explore these potential “trade-offs” and contribute to a deeper understanding of how these common genetic factors shape our societies. For instance, our findings showed a positive association of ASD PGS with both “Computers & Math” and “Arts & design”. 2. Scientific Curiosity: We wanted to test whether neuropsychiatric PGS could serve as a strong predictor of professional membership. Our conclusion: not really—these scores cannot reliably forecast someone’s career path.
Further Insights 1. ADHD & Education: ADHD-related associations were largely mediated through educational attainment, which influenced career pathways. Notably, the gatekeeping “Education” profession itself had a negative association with ADHD PGS and a positive one with (contrasting) OCD PGS. Unfortunately, systemic modifiable biases in education may affect individuals with ADHD. 2. ASD & Management: “Management” showed a negative association with ASD PGS but a positive one with extraversion PGS—an intriguing contrast to “Computers & Math”—a finding that may resonate with frequent discussions about the social and organizational demands of tech management roles at HN.
Limitations of interest 1.We deliberately excluded intelligence, cognitive performance, and educational attainment PGS from our analyeses. 2. We chose more interpretable statistical approaches rather than complex machine-learning algorithms, as the goal was interpretability over prediction performance. 3. Future studies might use multivariate multiple regression approaches to uncover even more nuanced interactions.
Conclusion At the population level, there are small yet significant associations between neuropsychiatric trait PGS and professions. However, demographic factors—age, sex—and life circumstances dominate these outcomes. Genetic information alone won’t be a meaningful guide for career selection.
If you’d like to dive deeper please read the full article from the link shared at the top of the page.
Correspondence: georgios.voloudakis@mssm.edu (evoloution) panagiotis.roussos@mssm.edu
PS1: We hope this research helps reduce stigma around neurodivergence and mental health and spark further discussion on the complex interplay between genetics and life outcomes.
PS2: Figure 2 in our published paper has an error where the “Legal” data point was inadvertently removed (should overlap with horizontal dotted line just above “ga”); we plan to correct this soon.