Behavior genetics research on schizophrenia has been going on since I was born, in other words since long before most Hacker News participants were born. The crucial issue in the research, mentioned in the article kindly submitted here, is that any one gene only has a small effect on risk for schizophrenia. "Dr. Lander cautioned that each variant accounts for only a tiny portion of the risk of developing schizophrenia. 'It shouldn’t be used for a risk predictor,' he said." Behavior geneticists, such as those I know locally,[1] and the pioneer of behavior genetic research on schizophrenia[2] hope that large-scale genomic studies of the kind that are now possible will help tease out how gene differences between one individual and another interact with environmental influences to increase or decrease risk for schizophrenia, which should lead eventually to better treatments and better prevention strategies, through deeper fundamental understanding of the disease. It is plain that environmental factors matter too, because sometimes identical ("monozygotic") twins are discordant for schizophrenia.[3] This research path will be slow and frustrating, precisely because it is well known already that no one gene has strong effect, and no particular gene acts without interaction with the environment, but this kind of fundamental research is indeed necessary to refine the diathesis-stress model[4] of the development of schizophrenia.
AFTER EDIT: I'm still learning the rules about informed, thoughtful discussion here after 2073 days of participation as a registered user on Hacker News, so I'd be glad to understand what someone considered objectionable about this comment. I was just surfing by this comment to add a link emailed to me by Irving Gottesman, the prominent schizophrenia researcher who was mentioned in the acknowledgements of the book A Beautiful Mind. That link discusses the study in the journal Nature published today.
[1] http://www.psych.umn.edu/research/areas/pib/
[2] http://www.psych.umn.edu/people/facultyprofile.php?UID=gotte...
[3] http://www.virginia.edu/uvanewsmakers/newsmakers/spiro.html
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01564274#page-1
[4] http://college.cengage.com/psychology/bernstein/psychology/6...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2632355/
AFTER EDIT: I'm still learning the rules about informed, thoughtful discussion here after 2073 days of participation as a registered user on Hacker News, so I'd be glad to understand what someone considered objectionable about this comment. I was just surfing by this comment to add a link emailed to me by Irving Gottesman, the prominent schizophrenia researcher who was mentioned in the acknowledgements of the book A Beautiful Mind. That link discusses the study in the journal Nature published today.
http://www.schizophreniaforum.org/new/detail.asp?id=2068