I just received an email entitled "Why are Jews So Smart". You can read an article here.
I also found a similar article in New York Magazine.
Did Jewish intelligence evolve in tandem with Jewish diseases as a result of discrimination in the ghettos of medieval Europe? That’s the premise of a controversial new study that has some preening and others plotzing.
Is this claim supported by scientific research?
From your question it's unclear whether you want to know whether ethnic Jews are smarter for genetic reasons or simply smarter as a group. A commenter cites the article Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence, which makes a more specific claim.
An article critical of the genetic explanation by Prof. Brian Ferguson at Rutgers provides a useful counterperspective. It didn't appear in a peer-reviewed journal, but it did receive peer review and the author simply tells us why the editor rejected it, so it probably gives a good perspective on the debate.
He also cites one of the original authors with a revision to their theory, which may or may not be a bit more plausible.
Taking all the information together, it is fair to say that most, though not all, studies give Ashkenazi descendants a higher IQ than non-Jewish whites. How much? Take your pick.
Contrast his quote of the criticised paper:
Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group for which there are reliable data. They score 0.75 to 1.0 standard deviations above the general European average, corresponding to an IQ of 112-115 ... although a recent review concludes that the advantage is slightly less-only half a standard deviation (Cochran et al. 2006, 3)
His view (shortened): The "recent review" they mention conveys a very different impression from that forceful assertion (Lynn 2004).
It has often been asserted that Jews have a higher average level of intelligence than non-Jewish whites of European origin ... Despite these assertions, the purported high IQ of the Jews has never been systematically reviewed... Despite the widespread consensus on the high Jewish verbal ability, not all studies have shown that Jews have a higher verbal IQ than gentiles. Furthermore, virtually all the existing studies are unsatisfactory because the samples have been unrepresentative, very small or for other reasons (pgs. 201-202) ... There is only one study of the intelligence of American Jews in the last century which appears to be representative and had a reasonable sample size. This is Backman's (1972) analysis... The mean IQs of the Jew in relation to gentile white means of 100 and standard deviations of 15 were as follows: verbal knowledge (described as "a general factor, but primarily a measure of general information" ... )--107.8, English language 99.5; mathematics-1 09.7; visual reasoning ("a measure of reasoning with visual forms")-91.3; perceptual speed and accuracy - 102.2; memory (short term recall of verbal symbols)-95.1 (pg.203).
On exceptional ability (i.e. a fat tail at the upper end of the bell curve) he says:
NHAI also focuses on the high end of the curve, how many very, very gifted there are among Ashkenazim (Cochran et al. 2006, 661). In this they follow Patai (1977, 321-342) and others who tallied the disproportionate number of Jews winning Nobel Prizes. Cochran et al. add world chess champions, and winners of ACM Turing awards. This clear over-representation is cited frequently in print and internet discussions of NHAI, as clear demonstration of the power of Jewish genes. But these impressive totals provide no evidence in favor of the NHAI hypothesis. They would only support that conjecture if it were shown that a disproportionate number of those winners were heterozygote carriers of one of the supposed IQ-booster genes, as compared to the normal distribution of these alleles among the Ashkenazi.
TL:DR: Almost certainly. From Charles Murray, the leading social science researcher for IQ and intelligence. As you will see below, Jews' IQ is a standard deviation greater on average than other whites, and they are exceptionally over-represented at the higher end deviations. And for those that hold that IQ does not correlate to anything meaningful, the first paragraph gives a glimpse into the real world effects that correlate to IQ. To the question of disease, Murray offers a few explanations and theories, the science is unsettled. But to the science of whether the measurement of Jewish IQ reveal Jewish genius, that is settled. Jews are indeed smarter.
Disproportionate Jewish accomplishment in the arts and sciences continues to this day. My inventories end with 1950, but many other measures are available, of which the best known is the Nobel Prize. In the first half of the 20th century, despite pervasive and continuing social discrimination against Jews throughout the Western world, despite the retraction of legal rights, and despite the Holocaust, Jews won 14 percent of Nobel Prizes in literature, chemistry, physics, and medicine/physiology. In the second half of the 20th century, when Nobel Prizes began to be awarded to people from all over the world, that figure rose to 29 percent. So far, in the 21st century, it has been 32 percent. Jews constitute about two-tenths of one percent of the world’s population. You do the math.
What accounts for this remarkable record? A full answer must call on many characteristics of Jewish culture, but intelligence has to be at the center of the answer. Jews have been found to have an unusually high mean intelligence as measured by IQ tests since the first Jewish samples were tested. (The widely repeated story that Jewish immigrants to this country in the early 20th century tested low on IQ is a canard.) Exactly how high has been difficult to pin down, because Jewish sub-samples in the available surveys are seldom perfectly representative. But it is currently accepted that the mean is somewhere in the range of 107 to 115, with 110 being a plausible compromise.
A group’s mean intelligence is important in explaining outcomes such as mean educational attainment or mean income. The key indicator for predicting exceptional accomplishment (like winning a Nobel Prize) is the incidence of exceptional intelligence. Consider an IQ score of 140 or higher, denoting the level of intelligence that can permit people to excel in fields like theoretical physics and pure mathematics. If the mean Jewish IQ is 110 and the standard deviation is 15, then the proportion of Jews with IQ’s of 140 or higher is somewhere around six times the proportion of everyone else.
The imbalance continues to increase for still higher IQ’s. New York City’s public-school system used to administer a pencil-and-paper IQ test to its entire school population. In 1954, a psychologist used those test results to identify all 28 children in the New York public-school system with measured IQ’s of 170 or higher. Of those 28, 24 were Jews.
Some are making ad hominem attacks against Charles Murray. Yes, he's controversial. His impact on Social Science however has been substantial. Contemporary Thinkers describe his thusly:
Charles Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. One of America’s leading social scientists, Murray has made major intellectual contributions on a range of subjects including welfare, happiness, IQ, the American regulatory system, crime, and class. He has written twenty books and dozens of scholarly articles. His 1984 book, Losing Ground, helped inspire the movement for welfare reform in America. His 1994 book, The Bell Curve, co-written with the late Harvard psychology professor Richard J. Herrnstein, was an international bestseller. His awards include the American Enterprise Institute’s Irving Kristol Award and the Bradley Prize.
