Reading tea leaves? Polygenic scores and differences in traits among groups

Abstract

In the past decade, Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) have delivered an increasingly broad view of the genetic basis of human phenotypic variation. One of the major developments from GWAS is polygenic scores, a genetic predictor of an individual's genetic predisposition towards a trait constructed from GWAS. The success of GWAS and polygenic scores seems to suggest that we will soon be able to settle debates about whether phenotypic differences among groups are driven in part by genetics. However, answering these questions is more complicated than it seems at first glance and touches on many old issues about the interpretation of human genetic variation. In this perspective piece, I outline the ways in which issues of causality, stratification, gene-by-environment interactions, and divergence among groups all complicate the interpretation of among-population polygenic score differences.