Multi-Trait Analysis of GWAS and Biological Insights Into Cognition: A Response to Hill (2018)

Hill (Twin Research and Human Genetics, Vol. 21, 2018, 84-88) presented a critique of our recently published paper in Cell Reports entitled Large-Scale Cognitive GWAS Meta-Analysis Reveals Tissue-Specific Neural Expression and Potential Nootropic Drug Targets' (Lam et al., Cell Reports, Vol. 21, 2017, 2597-2613). Specifically, Hill offered several interrelated comments suggesting potential problems with our use of a new analytic method called Multi-Trait Analysis of GWAS (MTAG) (Turley et al., Nature Genetics, Vol. 50, 2018, 229-237). In this brief article, we respond to each of these concerns. Using empirical data, we conclude that our MTAG results do not suffer from inflation in the FDR [false discovery rate]', as suggested by Hill (Twin Research and Human Genetics, Vol. 21, 2018, 84-88), and are not more relevant to the genetic contributions to education than they are to the genetic contributions to intelligence'.