People With "Warrior Gene" Better at Risky Decisions

Yet another sensationalist headline.

Actual content - The gene MAOA-L has to do with neurotransmitters and there is a correlation between presence of the gene and the risk-aversion of 83 men in the study.

Indeed. And the bit about making "better decisions" is particularly rubbish; they make the more rational decision in one artificial situation which has been engineered (would you like $2 or a fifty fifty chance of winning $10 or losing $5?) so that the risky option is the more rational one.

And the difference is very small. The risky option was chosen by 41% of MAOA-L carriers, and 36% of MAOA-H carriers.

In other words, knowing which version of the gene someone had would tell you absolutely nothing about them.

It's not as though you'd expect anything better from New Scientist.

This reminds me: did we ever get to see results from that "Are Entrepreneurs pirates?" test that ran on HN a while back?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1898317

Neat, I wonder how long before it shows up in 23andMe tests.