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An article in the May 2004 issue of Natural History illustrates beautifully the limitations of laboratory findings. The author, Robert M. Sapolsky, a professor of biological sciences and neurology, reported on what he identified as a landmark paper published in the journal Science. The investigators followed a population of over a thousand New Zealand children from age three into young adulthood, identifying the incidence of depression, and noting that a proportion of the group being studied also possessed a serotonin-regulating gene known as 5-HTT. The role of serotonin in depression is well known due to widely used drugs like Prozac. The investigators correlated the incidence of two variants of the 5-HTT gene and depression and found that inheriting the genes only increased the risk of depression in people. The "bad" gene did not produce depression in those who had not suffered major stresses.