‘Faulty’ genes that render Jews vulnerable to deadly diseases make them smarter, argues Gregory Cochran
Gregory Cochran has always been drawn to puzzles. This one had been gnawing at him for several years: Why are European Jews prone to so many deadly genetic diseases? Tay-Sachs disease. Canavan disease. A dozen more.

At 3:17 one morning, in his home office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Cochran fired off an e-mail to his collaborator Henry Harpending, a distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and a member of America’s National Academy of Sciences. “I’ve figured it out, I think,” Cochran typed. “Pardon my crazed excitement.” The “faulty” genes, Cochran concluded, make Jews smarter. That provocative hypothesis has landed Cochran and Harpending in the middle of a charged debate about the link between IQ and DNA.

They have been sneered at by colleagues and excoriated on Internet forums. They have been welcomed to speak at a synagogue and a Jewish medical society. They were asked to write a book. The 10,000 Year Explosion was published in February.
Cochran, 55, and Harpending, 65, say there’s no question that, as a whole, Ashkenazi Jews—those of European descent—have an abundance of brain power. Psychologists and educational researchers have pegged their average IQ at between 107.5 and 115. When a group’s average IQ is 100, the percentage of people above 140 is 0.4 per cent; when the average is 110, the genius rate is 2.3 per cent. “People are perfectly willing to admit that some people are taller or some people are shorter,” Cochran said. “But no one wants to say, ‘This group is smarter.’ ”

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