Comparision of Arab and Jewish Nobel Prize Winners

jewishmag.com ^

[grundle]

Comparision of Arab and Jewish Nobel Prize Winners

Arab/Islamic Nobel Prize Winners

From a pool of 1.4 BILLION Muslims which are 20% of the world's population (2 out of every 10 people)

Literature

1988 - Najib Mahfooz

Peace

1978 - Anwar El-Sadat

1994 - Yasser Arafat *

2003 - Shirin Ebadi

Chemistry

1999 - Ahmed Zewail

Physics

Abdus Salam

* NOTE: Norwegian, Kaare Kristiansen, was a member of the Nobel Committee. He resigned in 1994 to protest the awarding of a Nobel "Peace Prize" to Yasser Arafat, whom he correctly labeled a "terrorist."

Jewish Nobel Prize Winners

From a pool of 12 million Jews which are 0.2% of the World's Population (2 out of every 1,000 people)

Literature

1910 - Paul Heyse

1927 - Henri Bergson

1958 - Boris Pasternak

1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon

1966 - Nelly Sachs

1976 - Saul Bellow

1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer

1981 - Elias Canetti

1987 - Joseph Brodsky

1991 - Nadine Gordimer

2002 - Imre Kertesz

World Peace

1911 - Alfred Fried

1911 - Tobias Asser

1968 - Rene Cassin

1973 - Henry Kissinger

1978 - Menachem Begin

1986 - Elie Wiesel

1994 - Shimon Peres

1994 - Yitzhak Rabin

1995 - Joseph Rotblat

Chemistry

1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer

1906 - Henri Moissan

1910 - Otto Wallach

1915 - Richard Willstaetter

1918 - Fritz Haber

1943 - George Charles de Hevesy

1961 - Melvin Calvin

1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz

1972 - William Howard Stein

1972 - C.B. Anfinsen

1977 - Ilya Prigogine

1979 - Herbert Charles Brown

1980 - Paul Berg

1980 - Walter Gilbert

1981 - Ronald Hoffmann

1982 - Aaron Klug

1985 - Herbert A. Hauptman

1985 - Jerome Karle

1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach

1988 - Robert Huber

1989 - Sidney Altman

1992 - Rudolph Marcus

1998 - Walter Kohn

2000 - Alan J. Heeger

2004 - Irwin Rose

2004 - Avram Hershko

2004 - Aaron Ciechanover

Economics

1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson

1971 - Simon Kuznets

1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow

1973 - Wassily Leontief

1975 - Leonid Kantorovich

1976 - Milton Friedman

1978 - Herbert A. Simon

1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein

1985 - Franco Modigliani

1987 - Robert M. Solow

1990 - Harry Markowitz

1990 - Merton Miller

1992 - Gary Becker

1993 - Rober Fogel

1994 - John Harsanyi

1994 - Reinhard Selten

1997 - Robert Merton

1997 - Myron Scholes

2001 - George Akerlof

2001 - Joseph Stiglitz

2002 - Daniel Kahneman

2005 - Robert (Israel) Aumann

Medicine

1908 - Elie Metchnikoff

1908 - Paul Erlich

1914 - Robert Barany

1922 - Otto Meyerhof

1930 - Karl Landsteiner

1931 - Otto Warburg

1936 - Otto Loewi

1944 - Joseph Erlanger

1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser

1945 - Ernst Boris Chain

1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller

1950 - Tadeus Reichstein

1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman

1953 - Hans Krebs

1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann

1958 - Joshua Lederberg

1959 - Arthur Kornberg

1964 - Konrad Bloch

1965 - Francois Jacob

1965 - Andre Lwoff

1967 - George Wald

1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg

1969 - Salvador Luria

1970 - Julius Axelrod

1970 - Sir Bernard Katz

1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman

1975 - David Baltimore

1975 - Howard Martin Temin

1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg

1977 - Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

1977 - Andrew V. Schally

1978 - Daniel Nathans

1980 - Baruj Benacerraf

1984 - Cesar Milstein

1985 - Michael Stuart Brown

1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein

1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]

1988 - Gertrude Elion

1989 - Harold Varmus

1991 - Erwin Neher

1991 - Bert Sakmann

1993 - Richard J. Roberts

1993 - Phillip Sharp

1994 - Alfred Gilman

1994 - Martin Rodbell

1995 - Edward B. Lewis

1997 - Stanley B. Prusiner

1998 - Robert F. Furchgott

2000 - Eric R. Kandel

2002 - Sydney Brenner

2002 - Robert H. Horvitz

Physics

1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson

1908 - Gabriel Lippmann

1921 - Albert Einstein

1922 - Niels Bohr

1925 - James Franck

1925 - Gustav Hertz

1943 - Gustav Stern

1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi

1945 - Wolfgang Pauli

1952 - Felix Bloch

1954 - Max Born

1958 - Igor Tamm

1958 - Il'ja Mikhailovich

1958 - Igor Yevgenyevich

1959 - Emilio Segre

1960 - Donald A. Glaser

1961 - Robert Hofstadter

1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau

1963 - Eugene P. Wigner

1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman

1965 - Julian Schwinger

1967 - Hans Albrecht Bethe

1969 - Murray Gell-Mann

1971 - Dennis Gabor

1972 - Leon N. Cooper

1973 - Brian David Josephson

1975 - Benjamin Mottleson

1976 - Burton Richter

1978 - Arno Allan Penzias

1978 - Peter L Kapitza

1979 - Stephen Weinberg

1979 - Sheldon Glashow

1988 - Leon Lederman

1988 - Melvin Schwartz

1988 - Jack Steinberger

1990 - Jerome Friedman

1992 - Georges Charpak

1995 - Martin Perl

1995 - Frederick Reines

1996 - David M. Lee

1996 - Douglas D. Osheroff

1997 - Claude Cohen-Tannoudji

2000 - Zhores I. Alferov

2003 - Vitaly Ginsburg

2003 - Alexei Abrikosov

After reviewing this list, can you supply a reason for the large discrepancy between the Arab/Islamic population's contribution to the world body and that of the Jew? There are 165 Jews listed as opposed to 6 from the Arab side.

[Mr. Mojo]

* NOTE: Norwegian, Kaare Kristiansen, was a member of the Nobel Committee. He resigned in 1994 to protest the awarding of a Nobel "Peace Prize" to Yasser Arafat, whom he correctly labeled a "terrorist."

Kudos to Kaare. Good to see a Euro step up to the plate and do the right thing.

[Enchante]

This only shows that the Nobel Prizes are yet another Zionist conspiracy......

Everyone knows that Muslims secretly invented just about everything of importance and are denied credit by the world at large........

[Bon mots]

IQ and the Wealth of Nations

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Country	IQ (2002)	IQ (2006)	PPP-GNI per capita 2002	QHC
Hong Kong	107	108	27,490	60.8
Singapore	103	108	23,730	60.7
North Korea	105*	106*	1,000	38
South Korea	106	106	16,960	75.4
Japan	105	105	27,380	71.4
People's Republic of China	100	105	4,520	39.7
Republic of China	104	105	23,400	79.4
Italy	102	102	26,170	78.9
Iceland	98*	101	29,240	80
Mongolia	98*	101*	1,710	48.1
Switzerland	101	101	31,840	82.2
Austria	102	100	28,910	80.7
Luxembourg	101*	100*	53,230	76.4
Netherlands	102	100	28,350	82.8
Norway	98	100	36,690	89
United Kingdom	100	100	26,580	76.7
Belgium	100	99	28,130	84.1
Canada	97	99	28,930	77.8
Estonia	97*	99	11,630	64.5
Finland	97	99	26,160	85.1
Germany	102	99	26,980	78
New Zealand	100	99	20,550	76.2
Poland	99	99	10,450	62.7
Sweden	101	99	25,820	82.9
Andorra	N/A	98*	19,000	58.7
Australia	98	98	27,440	82.8
Czech Republic	97	98	14,920	64.5
Denmark	98	98	30,600	85.4
France	98	98	27,040	78.1
Hungary	99	98	13,070	64.1
Latvia	97*	98*	9,190	65.5
Spain	99	98	21,910	75.8
United States	98	98	36,120	86.6
Belarus	96*	97*	5,500	57.2
Malta	95*	97	17,710	66.4
Russia	96	97	8,080	64.5
Ukraine	96*	97*	4,800	61.8
Moldova	95*	96*	1,600	46.2
Slovakia	96	96	12,590	63.2
Slovenia	95	96	18,480	72.4
Uruguay	96	96	7,710	64
Israel	94	95	19,000	75.3
Portugal	95	95	17,820	67
Armenia	93*	94*	3,230	50.2
Georgia	93*	94*	2,270	51.2
Kazakhstan	93*	94*	5,630	49
Romania	94	94	6,490	53
Vietnam	96*	94	2,300	39.5
Argentina	96	93	10,190	64.7
Bulgaria	93	93	7,030	59.1
Greece	92	92	18,770	76.1
Malaysia	92	92	29,570	78.5
Republic of Ireland	93	92	8,500	52.1
Brunei	92*	91*	19,210	50.8
Cambodia	89*	91*	1,970	28.6
Cyprus	92*	91*	18,650	67.6
Lithuania	97*	91	10,190	65.4
Republic of Macedonia	93*	91*	6,420	54.4
Thailand	91	91	6,890	50.3
Albania	90*	90*	4,960	51.2
Bermuda	N/A	90	36,000	75.8
Bosnia and Herzegovina	N/A	90*	5,800	51.4
Chile	93*	90	9,420	59.5
Croatia	90	90	10,000	61.7
Kyrgyzstan	87*	90*	1,560	48.1
Turkey	90	90	6,300	50.2
Cook Islands	N/A	89	5,000	45.7
Costa Rica	91*	89*	8,650	53.7
Laos	89*	89	1,660	24.9
Mauritius	81*	89	10,820	52.2
Serbia	93*	89	2,300	53.8
Suriname	89	89	6,590	50.6
Ecuador	80	88	3,340	47.4
Mexico	87	88	8,800	52.9
Samoa	87	88	5,570	49.7
Azerbaijan	87*	87*	3,010	47.2
Bolivia	85*	87	2,390	49.7
Brazil	87	87	7,450	51.1
East Timor	N/A	87*	3,940	46.7
Guyana	84*	87*	3,070	40.2
Indonesia	89	87	1,600	28.1
Iraq	87	87	1,027	30.7
Myanmar	86*	87*	930	42.4
Tajikistan	87*	87*	1,640	27.5
Turkmenistan	87*	87*	4,780	41.7
Uzbekistan	87*	87*	1,640	39.4
Kuwait	83*	86	17,780	49.9
Philippines	86	86	4,450	51.6
Seychelles	81*	86*	18,232	60.6
Tonga	87	86	6,820	40.5
Cuba	85	85	5,259	46.2
Fiji	84	85	5,330	51.9
Kiribati	84*	85*	800	37.1
New Caledonia	N/A	85	21,960	54.9
Peru	90	85	4,880	49.2
Trinidad and Tobago	80*	85*	9,000	52
Yemen	83*	85	800	24.5
Afghanistan	83*	84*	700	13.2
Belize	83*	84*	15,960	56.1
Colombia	88	84	5,490	44.2
Federated States of Micronesia	84*	84*	6,150	48.4
Iran	84	84	6,690	40.2
Jordan	87*	84	4,180	43.4
Marshall Islands	84	84	1,600	44.2
Morocco	85	84	2,000	39.9
Pakistan	81*	84	3,730	31.7
Panama	84*	84*	1,960	26.2
Paraguay	85*	84	6,060	56.6
Puerto Rico	84	84	4,590	45.2
Saudi Arabia	83*	84*	15,800	63.6
Solomon Islands	84*	84*	12,660	44.1
The Bahamas	78*	84*	1,590	41.5
United Arab Emirates	83*	84*	24,030	48.8
Vanuatu	84*	84*	2,850	31.4
Venezuela	88*	84	5,220	47.4
Algeria	84*	83*	5,530	39.9
Bahrain	83*	83*	16,190	49.3
Libya	84*	83*	7,570	49.3
Oman	83*	83*	13,000	40.6
Papua New Guinea	84*	83	2,180	38.4
Syria	87*	83	34,700	38.9
Tunisia	84*	83*	6,440	40.6
Bangladesh	81*	82*	1,720	29.8
Dominican Republic	84*	82	6,270	46.8
India	81	82	2,650	36.3
Lebanon	86	82	4,600	55.8
Madagascar	79*	82	730	28.6
Egypt	83	81	3,810	37.3
Honduras	84*	81	2,540	41.9
Maldives	81*	81*	4,798	38.5
Nicaragua	84*	81*	2,350	41.3
Northern Mariana Islands	N/A	81	12,500	51.3
Barbados	78	80	14,660	60.9
Bhutan	78*	80*	1,969	24.1
El Salvador	84*	80*	4,790	42.6
Guatemala	79	79	4,040	34.6
Sri Lanka	81*	79	3,510	47.7
Nepal	78	78	1,370	26.9
Qatar	78	78	19,844	45.6
Comoros	79*	77*	1,640	24.6
Cape Verde	78*	76*	4,920	40.5
Mauritania	73*	76*	1,790	20.5
Uganda	73	73	1,360	25.4
Kenya	72	72	1,010	27.3
South Africa	72	72	9,810	38.3
Tanzania	72	72	580	23.2
Ghana	71	71	2,080	33.7
Grenada	75*	71*	6,600	45.3
Jamaica	72	71	3,680	46.5
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	75*	71	5,190	48.4
Sudan	72	71	1,740	24.6
Zambia	77	71	800	21.8
Antigua and Barbuda	75*	70*	10,390	53.2
Benin	69*	70*	1,060	20.5
Botswana	72*	70*	7,740	29.4
Namibia	72*	70*	6,880	31.1
Rwanda	70*	70*	1,260	18.5
Togo	69*	70*	1,450	26
Burundi	70*	69*	630	15.2
Côte d'Ivoire	71*	69*	1,450	18.1
Malawi	71*	69*	570	24.3
Mali	68*	69*	840	13.4
Niger	67*	69*	800	13.5
Nigeria	67	69	800	27.3
Angola	69*	68*	1,840	13.7
Burkina Faso	66*	68*	1,090	10.7
Chad	72*	68*	1,010	20.4
Djibouti	68*	68*	2,040	22
Eritrea	68*	68*	1,040	21.4
Somalia	68*	68*	500	15.2
Swaziland	72*	68*	4,730	22.2
Dominica	75*	67	4,960	48.8
Guinea	63	67	2,060	22.5
Guinea-Bissau	63*	67*	680	20.3
Haiti	72*	67*	1,610	20.4
Lesotho	72*	67*	2,970	24.3
Liberia	64*	67*	1,000	21.2
Saint Kitts and Nevis	75*	67*	10,750	45.5
São Tomé and Príncipe	59*	67*	1,317	37.9
Senegal	64*	66*	1,660	20.7
Gambia	64*	66*	1,540	21.3
Zimbabwe	66	66	2,180	25.2
Republic of the Congo	73	65	630	17.9
Cameroon	70*	64	1,910	23.1
Central African Republic	68*	64	1,170	19.1
Democratic Republic of the Congo	65	64	700	26.9
Ethiopia	63	64	780	16.7
Gabon	66*	64*	5,530	32.2
Mozambique	72*	64	990	18
Sierra Leone	64	64	500	13.8
Saint Lucia	75*	62	4,950	51.1
Equatorial Guinea	59	59	9,100	30.4

[Publius6961]

The one factor often ignored and most important is that, aside from the political Nobel Prizes which have become a joke, the country where these substantive muslim Nobel prizes were earned is never mentioned!

Uniformly, they did not do their research and useful work in a muslim country.

[omega4412]

Or to put it another way, which is more valuable, the contributions of the Jews to civilization over the last 50 years or the contributions of the Moslems over the last 500?

[shrinkermd]

Easily explained. Ashkenazic Jews have an average IQ of one standard deviation above the mean or an average IQ of 115. This shift to the right results in more very bright people in the 160+ range.

[Uncle Miltie]

A bit of quick math shows that:

Jews are 3,208 times more likely to win a Nobel Prize than Muslims.

Allah ain’t doin’ so good for them.

[Bogey78O]

Amaing how communist dictatorships have the highest IQ’s.

[Uncle Miltie]

Group: Jews / Muslims
Population: 12,000,000 / 1,400,000,000
Nobel Winners: 165 / 6
Winner / Population: 0.00137500% / 0.00000043%
Jews’ Advantage: 3,208

[Alter Kaker]

Easily explained. Ashkenazic Jews have an average IQ of one standard deviation above the mean or an average IQ of 115.

I'm Ashkenazi, and I say that's bunkum. I am very suspicious of racialized claims of intelligence. For one, IQs are not fixed -- despite the claim by many that IQs measure some kind of innate ability, people with better educations regularly do better on intelligence tests than people with less education.

You can make a very solid argument that there are cultural factors that cause Ashkenazim to value education more than some other groups -- and that may well translate into higher IQ scores. But I don't think that's the same as intelligence.

[Andrew Byler]

Easily explained. Ashkenazic Jews have an average IQ of one standard deviation above the mean or an average IQ of 115.

That is not born out by the statistics above, which show Israel having a lower average IQ than the US or European countries.

This shift to the right results in more very bright people in the 160+ range.

Also not true. A shift to the right in the mean does not also translate to more bright people unless the band of the standard deviation holds. Asian countires tend to be 1/2 a standard deviation above the European/American median of 100, but their overall standard deviation is about half as small. This means that America and Europe have more bright people per 1000 people as measured by IQ than the Asian countries, but the average Asian has a slightly higher IQ than the average European. This is why top business managers from America and Europe are brought in as behind-the-scenes managers of Japanese enterprises, but the converse does not hold. It also means there are far more low IQ people in European societies and America than Asian ones.

[Uncle Miltie]

“Jewish Genius”

Charles Murray

Commentary Magazine, April 2007

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.aip?id=10855

[Alter Kaker]

Additionally, I'd add that comparing Jews to Muslims is largely irrelevant, because the Jews who have been awarded Nobel prizes live in the former Soviet Union and the developed nations of the West, whereas the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims live in the developing world.

Clearly Germany, Britain, Russia, Israel, France and the United States have more and better educational facilities than other places, and are going to produce more Nobel prize winners as a result.

[shrinkermd]

I don't know about Israel. 20% of the population is Arab and another per centage is Shepardic Jews.

If you question the Ashkenazic Jewish IQ findings, then go to: HERE

As far as I know the standard deviation for European Jews and European Whites is exactly the same--about 15 IQ points.

[pabianice]

Yeah, well it’s only because the Jews stole the Muslims’ work!

[Aikonaa]

Gabon, the richest country in West Africa with a GDP per capita of 5000 USD (higher than China), has an average IQ of 66? This is simply not possible or even remotely believable. An average IQ of 66 would mean that half of the population has at least mild mental disability. Where are these numbers coming from?

[shrinkermd]

Yup, it is possible. It has been known for at least 100 years the average IQ below the Sudan is 70 or less. We can argue why but not what.

[Uncle Miltie]

Size of the brain case?

[shrinkermd]

I don't know but if one worries about the White, Black educational gap one should first read THIS in respect how to artificially close the gap by changing the cutting score on tests. Then read THIS on a sophisticated discussion of IQ racial and sexual differences.

None of what this author (an academic who uses an AKA for political reasons)or Hernstein and Murray's Bell Curve are new or iconoclastic findings. They have been discussed in obscure academic journals for decades. Political correctness and the Marxists in Academe'have prohibited their wide, public dissemination.

Someone posted on FR Murray's recent article on "Jewish Exceptionalism" in Commentary.

[Bon mots]

If you Google “IQ and The Wealth of Nations” you will find the book by Professor Lynn and the Finnish guy - who’s name I’ve forgotten, but who is the father of the Finnish Prime Minister.

There is quite a lot of material on this subject at places like Le Griffe du Lion, etc.

[woofer]

Gee, all this talk about IQ’s and here I just finished working with a guy named MENSA, grandson of the founder of the Mensa Society. His IQ was not any more impressive than mine (135).

[docbnj]

People who go for more education are generally higher in IQ in the first place. You can’t raise IQ effectively just by educating people!

Anyway, even if you are not convinced that there is such a thing as native intelligence, then let’s consider culture. The Moslem culture must be pretty terrible to come up with results like these. I think that is the case.

I have met some rather intelligent Moslems. One, in particular, was also a very likeable and tolerant person. Some of the others were paranoid creeps. People differ.

[docbnj]

135 is very high. You can look up what percentile that is, and you will be impressed.

Remember, you are working with a bell curve. As you get toward the tails of the curve, the numbers of individuals are small.

[Verginius Rufus]

One thing the Arabs did not invent was "Arabic numerals" (which they got from India).

It isn't right to equate Arabs with Muslims. Not only are there some Arab Christians, but the vast majority of Muslims in the world are not Arab.

There are more Muslims in the countries of the Indian subcontinent (about 425 million) than there are in the Arab world. The country with the largest number of Muslims is Indonesia (about 213 million).

If you take the core Arab area (the countries of the Arabian peninsula, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Libya, and include the Arabs of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, the total is about 198 million. If you add the Maghreb (Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco), that's another 75 million, and the "Arab" parts of the population of the Sudan and Mauretania, that's about 17 million more, making a grand total of about 290 million.

The World Almanac's list of speakers of major languages divides Arabic into its dialects--if you take the 13 most-widely-spoken forms, the total number of speakers of Arabic is 181 million.

That's still a lot more than the number of Jews in the world, but a far cry from 1.4 billion.

[brotherWesUpNorth]

congrats Judah - Now just think if they added in the accomplishments of Ephraim / the northern tribes.

[Alter Kaker]

It has been known for at least 100 years the average IQ below the Sudan is 70 or less.

Sounds like pseudoscience to me. There are virtually no schools anywhere in Sudan outside Khartoum -- I don't know, but I suspect that might have something to do with recorded IQ scores.

I hope I'm wrong, Shrinker, but your posts strike me as yet another hopeless attempt to legitimize racial hierarchies.

[Alter Kaker]

You can’t raise IQ effectively just by educating people!

That's just not true. In fact, you can raise your IQ dramatically just by taking a lot of IQ tests. IQ is a notoriously poor measure of intelligence, not that the idea of innate intelligence has much validity to begin with.

The Moslem culture must be pretty terrible to come up with results like these.

I don't think that there is a "Muslim culture" -- how can you possibly compare places as disparate as Nigeria and Indonesia? I do think that most countries in the Islamic world have insufficient education systems, insufficiently diversified economies, and I'd agree with you that some Islamic cultures place too little emphasis on secular education. There are also places like Pakistan, where a relatively small elite places an enormous value on education, but where formalized education of any kind is essentially unavailable to a majority of the population.

[BroJoeK]

I notice you had some trouble above spelling the word “comparision.” Is that a sign of your own rapidly failing IQ?

As a certified doctor of IQ, might I suggest you eat a smarter pill? You remember those I’m sure, from the old joke? They taste really bad, but they make you a lot smarter real quick.

I have to eat them myself regularly — otherwise, I’d forget which way is up! (it’s a joke!)

[Joe 6-pack]

"Additionally...Jews who have been awarded Nobel prizes live in the former Soviet Union and the developed nations of the West, whereas the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims live in the developing world."

Now there's a real chicken and the egg conundrum for ya'....

[ozzymandus]

A lot of the Jewish prize winners were German citizens or German-born. Does that figure into your calculations?

[Alter Kaker]

Now there's a real chicken and the egg conundrum for ya'....

Not really. Countries are rich or poor for a variety of reasons, having to do with culture, geography, access to resources, and even random dumb luck (in the sense that a great man can make or destroy a country).

I don't think that South Korea was desperately poor 50 years ago because Koreans were innately stupid, any more than South Korea is wealthy these days because Koreans are innately intelligent.

[mjolnir]

Sounds like pseudoscience to me. There are virtually no schools (in Sub-Saharan Africa)... I don't know, but I suspect that might have something to do with recorded IQ scores.

I agree, Alter Kaker. Having dealt with many of below 70 IQ, as well as with people of "sub-Sudanese" ancestry as well as people native to it, experience simply doesn't bear out such claims; pretty much anyone who's taught children or young adults this side of Michael Levin will agree. How to weigh the impact of culture and other "nurture" externals is basically a guessing game. In "Jewish Genius", the markers Murray chooses are far too blunt to achieve the subtlety of perception that is needed for his conclusion: "In the last two decades, it has also been established that obvious environmental factors such as high income, books in the house, and parental reading to children are not as potent as one might expect."

I should go without saying that reading to children is not the same as teaching children to read. In point of fact, Chinese and Japanese (and Jewish)parents prize and therefore inculcate intellectual virtues in their children which are accessible to all of us and make a far larger difference than "a few points". In fact, given the gap in devotion to intellectual virtue, as someone who has taught children of virtually all races, I'm surprised the gaps in performance aren't larger.

[Beckwith]

You’re arguing against yourself — most amazing circular logic I've ever seen.

[dead]

In your face, Islam!

[Alter Kaker]

You’re arguing against yourself — most amazing circular logic I've ever seen.

How's that?

[Joe 6-pack]

"Not really. Countries are rich or poor for a variety of reasons, having to do with culture, geography, access to resources, and even random dumb luck (in the sense that a great man can make or destroy a country).

I don't think that South Korea was desperately poor 50 years ago because Koreans were innately stupid, any more than South Korea is wealthy these days because Koreans are innately intelligent."

Countries are rich or poor based primarily, if not exclusively on the relative amount of freedom their peoples enjoy. The two Koreas are a perfect case in point, as were East and West Germany.

Many nations in Africa are riddled with valuable natural resources yet can not feed their own people. My own state of Louisiana was far and away the wealthiest state of the antebellum south. It's endemic corruption and cultivation of dependency in the post-reconstruction era has left it amongst the poorest states in the entire US.

[Alter Kaker]

Countries are rich or poor based primarily, if not exclusively on the relative amount of freedom their peoples enjoy.

I think that's part of the story, but it's not anything close to the whole story. Just for starters, look at Equatorial Guinea and India. India has been a multi-party parliamentary democracy for 60 years, whereas Equatorial Guinea is one of the least free, most repressive countries on earth.

Yet Equatorial Guinea is the world's wealthiest country, measured in terms of per capita GNP, and India is, despite recent growth, still very poor. In this situation, the difference is natural resources, but there can be any number of things at play.

[beeber]

[dead]

LOL! That’s just bizarre looking.

[Joe 6-pack]

"Yet Equatorial Guinea is the world's wealthiest country, measured in terms of per capita GNP, and India is, despite recent growth, still very poor. In this situation, the difference is natural resources, but there can be any number of things at play."

Indian citizens have also had the freedom to move abroad and seek their fortunes elsewhere...add those incomes into the equation and it will not seem so skewed. Furthermore, whereas Indians have been generally politically free, there are religio-cultural issues that have repressed people's civil rights beyond the government's ability to protect them (i.e. the caste system.)...a similar argument could be made about the Jim Crow south in the US.

And yes, while the per capita income of Equat. Guinea may be higher, that's more the result of a low overall population. If you look at the disparity between wealthy and poor, I'd be willing to wager you'd also find one of the biggest gaps of any nation in the world....

...bottom line, the backwardness of most islamic nations is a result primarily of...well, their being islamic nations.

[mjolnir]

(Joe Sixpack)Countries are rich or poor based primarily, if not exclusively on the relative amount of freedom their peoples enjoy.

(Alter Kaker)I think that's part of the story, but it's not anything close to the whole story. Just for starters, look at Equatorial Guinea and India. India has been a multi-party parliamentary democracy for 60 years, whereas Equatorial Guinea is one of the least free, most repressive countries on earth. Yet Equatorial Guinea is the world's wealthiest country, measured in terms of per capita GNP, and India is, despite recent growth, still very poor. In this situation, the difference is natural resources, but there can be any number of things at play.

I have to disagree--- India has had a degree of political freedom, but only just now has been moving out from under the Nehru/Gandhi socialism to economic freedom--- and just look at the difference that has made already!

[grundle]

I didn’t write this, so the spelling mistakes aren’t mine.

[grundle]

A country will be rich or poor depending on how much it does or doesn’t respect property rights. Just compare South Korea to North Korea, or Botswana to Ethiopia, or the U.S. to Cuba.

[grundle]

Inida is poor because it has not had much economic freedom. Recently, some parts of India have adopted more economic freedom, so its economy has been growing. At this link, John Stossel explains how India's government bureacracy strangles the private sector and prevents people from starting businesses, creating jobs, and creating wealth:

http://pages.towson.edu/trhoads/AmericaOne.html

[Andrew Byler]

I don't know about Israel. 20% of the population is Arab and another per centage is Shepardic Jews.

30% of the US population is black and hispanic, yet the average US IQ is higher than Israel's in that list. That only makes sense mathematically if the typical white America has a higher IQ than the typical Israeli Jew. Given that the Ashkenazi are something like 60% or more of Israel's population, if they really averaged a 115 IQ, the average IQ of Israel would be among the highest in the world.

.6*115+.2*85+.2*85=103

The actual score of 94 implies an Ashkenazi IQ of 100.

[Andrew Byler]

Population: 12,000,000

The number of Jews is the US plus Israel is more than 12 million.

Lets work with real statistics, shall we?

[Andrew Byler]

Commentary Magazine, April 2007

It doesn't take much thought to start rejecting some of the points in this article.

"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."

And ALSO at the time, NYC had a huge Jewish population in comparison to today, and much of the non-Jewish white population was in private or parochial schools, especially the portion of the population we would expect to have a higher IQ (children of the wealthy and successful). Why WOULDN'T we expect overwhelming Jewish dominance of a public school test from 1950's NYC?

About 1 million Jews were killed in the revolts against the Romans in Judea and Egypt.

During the Jewish revolt Vespasian only had four legions XII Fulminata, XV Apollinaris, X Fretensis and V Macedonica to do the killing. It seems quite unlikely that 4 legions of 6200 (even with the back-up of additional auxilliaries) could slaughter 1 million or even 500,000 at arms or in revolt. This questionable figure comes from Josephus, who claims 1 million dead just in Jerusalem. Herodian Jerusalem was, as can be seen by the lines of the walls, a tiny place of 220 acres adequate for about 15,000 or so people both in size and in water resources (even today, modern Jerusalem on a vastly expanded footprint only has 725,000 people). Murray's lack of credulity with such numbers bespeaks to his general use of them in the article.

In general, taking IQ findings among a small self-selected sample of 100 or so in the US (as Murray and Herrnstein did), and then pretending that extrapolates to a population at large does not seem credible. It seems far more reasonable to point to the overall lower IQ score in Israel than European countires as proof that Ashkenazi Jews dont' have any special IQ advantage.

[Uncle Miltie]

"It seems far more reasonable to point to the overall lower IQ score in Israel than European countires as proof that Ashkenazi Jews dont' have any special IQ advantage."

Are you willing or able to tease out the Arab and Sephardic populations?