It looks like Genomes Unzipped has their own Mortimer Adler, with an excellent posting, How to read a genome-wide association study. For those outside the biz I suspect that #4, replication, is going to be the easiest. In the early 2000s a biologist who’d been in the business for a while cautioned about reading too much into early association results which were sexy, as the same had occurred when linkage studies were all the vogue, but replication was not to be. Goes to show that history of science can be useful on a very pragmatic level. It can give you a sense of perspective on the evanescent impact of some techniques over the long run.
Genome-wide association for newbies