As someone who has had a fair grounding in the principles of genetics, statistics, and mathematical modelling, I was intrigued to hear about a study with a novel hypothesis regarding the mechanism for both Jewish intellectual performance and Jewish hereditary / genetic diseases.

And I was equally irked when this study was recklessly quoted and reasoned about by people who didn't even bother to read even just the abstract of the scientific article, but just "secondary" reporting by the main stream press, such as with the popular Economist report. Most people who responded to this news failed to even address the main point of their study, which was the proposed mechanism for the correlation between Jewish intellectual performance and Jewish hereditary / genetic diseases. Instead they resorted to knee-jerk reactions, denouncing racism, eugenics, and racial stereotyping.

Read on to see my response to a posting regarding this so-called controversy over at Jewschool.

The Double-Edged Sword of Jewish Genes

This post is heavy on controversy, and light on facts. I question how you could post an article on this study, yet fail to even post a link to the relevant scientific paper! Are we to rely on the mainstream media to understand theoretical genetics correctly? Primary sources, please:

Natural
History of Ashkenazi Intelligence
or
http://tinyurl.com/cmh3g

Furthermore, what is the relevance of Sander Gilman disapproval? Is she also a professor of population genetics? Are you referring to a published paper, or just more media sound-bites? I'd respond more thoroughly to the Jennifer Senior article, but it's not loading as of yet...

If you even read the paper that I linked above, you would understand that this study doesn't point to Jewish chauvinism, as everyone jumps to assume, but rather points to counter-balance this talent with a plague: the possibility that Jewish mental ability might be correlated to Jewish hereditary/genetic diseases.

The genetic diseases in question are all highly-related to neuron growth and plasticity. In excess, it can lead to disease (in the homozygous case). In the heterozygous state, with only one copy of the recessive gene present, it might be too weak of an effect to create the disease state, but significant enough to give the neurons a greater range of plasticity and re-growth characteristics.

That's pretty much it. That's their hypothesis.

Now, can you please give me a rational argument about this instead of more philosophizing about everything *but* the substance of the original scientific paper?