A Further Comment on ‘Large-Scale Cognitive GWAS Meta-Analysis Reveals Tissue-Specific Neural Expression and Potential Nootropic Drug Targets’ by Lam et al.

Lam et al. (2018) respond to a commentary of their paper entitled ‘Large-Scale Cognitive GWAS Meta-Analysis Reveals Tissue-Specific Neural Expression and Potential Nootropic Drug Targets’ Lam et al. (2017). While Lam et al. (2018) have now provided the recommended quality control metrics for their paper, problems remain. Specifically, Lam et al. (2018) do not dispute that the results of their multi-trait analysis of genome-wide association study (MTAG) analysis has produced a phenotype with a genetic correlation of one with three measures of education, but do claim the associations found are specific to the trait of cognitive ability. In this brief paper, it is empirically demonstrated that the phenotype derived by Lam et al. (2017) is more genetically similar to education than cognitive ability. In addition, it is shown that of the genome-wide significant loci identified by Lam et al. (2017) are loci that are associated with education rather than with cognitive ability.