In 2010 Thomas Sowell blasted The Smartest People in the World with his book, Intellectuals and Society, delving deep into the question of just how stupid these people are. I reviewed the book for Chalcedon.
https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/a-review-of-intellectuals-and-society
As you will have seen from my review (if you’ve read it), Dr. Sowell didn’t devote any effort to discovering why intellectuals have such asinine beliefs. I would have liked to have asked him why he didn’t get into that, but he wasn’t available at the time. I admire Dr. Sowell and I would love to have interviewed him.
The question not having been addressed by the author, it remained for the reviewer to do his best with it.