There's a piece in today's 'The Conversation' proposing that children should be DNA-tested at birth in order to:
"identify children at genetic risk for developing reading problems, and give them early intervention. As preventive interventions have greater chances of succeeding early in life, a great strength of polygenic scores is that they can predict at birth just as well as later in life, which could be of particular help for those children who are likely to struggle the most".
The piece is written by a psychologist and behavioural geneticist who doesn't seem to have checked out when children learn to read, nor know that teachers can see who's having 'trouble' and make their intervention at the earliest possible point in the child's reading life. It doesn't take an exhaustive search of the literature after all.
This business of scientists making non-expert proposals for education and social policy without troubling themselves with the relevant literature, all the while hoping their 'expert' status sort of quietly reads across: There's a lot of it about.
Next up, geologists, who know a thing or two about the earth and all that's in/on it, making proposals for foreign policy.
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