The Genius Gene

Panel 3 of today's SMBC displays a caricature of Nicholas Wade:

(That's not really supposed to represent Mr. Wade, as far as I know — but for why you might think so, see the list of past posts below…)

Panel 4:

(See the whole thing for context…)

The mouseover title: "This is the best kind of fame, except for Japan-fame."

The aftercomic:

Some relevant past posts — especially these five:

"The hunt for the Hat Gene", 11/15/2009 "The business of newspapers is news", 12/10/2009 "Nicholas Wade: Genes, culture, and history", 5/20/2014 "Nicholas Wade's DNA decoded", 11/18/2015 "The life cycle of unicorns", 5/20/2019

Some others:

"Finch phrase structure?", 10/1/2007 "Mice with the 'language gene' stay mum", 6/4/2009 "More on FOXP2", 6/5/2009 "An invented statistic returns", 2/22/2013 "Sex and FOXP2: Preservation of endangered stereotypes", 2/28/2013

I'll repeat here a simile that I first heard many years ago from a geneticist: "Talking about the gene for intelligence (or language, or height) is like talking about the transistor for spreadsheets".