Friday, January 19, 2007
I got an interesting comment on post 1076 Presidential IQs. (Love it when a post pulls lurkers out!) I'm posting the comment here so that anyone who read the original post will be sure to get the other half of the story.
As I had said, reading the article made my nose wrinkle - it just plain smelled bad. And the obvious bias of the web site for the institute made it even more suspect. But I'm embarrassed because I'm always telling people to please check Snopes before they send me sensational stuff, and, oops, I didn't check Snopes. I was fooled by the existence of the web site.
But even if it had looked like a legitimate attempt, I didn't buy any of it, as my comment about an ivy league MBA being in the low 90s showed. The last paragraph's "world-renowned sociologist" and "world-respected psychiatrist" were the final kickers. Oh, come on!
So, here are the references, courtesy of "Anonymous". By the way, I went to the "ACTUAL study" pointed to by Anonymous, and although it seems more rigorous (and makes a lot more sense), there are still some holes, which the author of the study admits, in that they are not comparing apples with apples. And as soon as you do that, you allow conscious or unconscious bias to creep in.
Anonymous said...
/* Start of Comment */
Lovenstein is a hoax.
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/lovenstein.html
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/presiq.htm
Claim: According to a study by the Lovenstein Institute, President Bush has the lowest IQ of all presidents of past 50 years.
Status: False.
Origins: No, this isn't a real news report, nor does it describe a real study. There isn't a "Lovenstein Institute" in Scranton, Pennsylvania (or anywhere else in the USA), nor do any of the people quoted in the story exist, because this is just another spoof that was taken too seriously.
The article quoted above began circulating on the Internet during the summer of 2001. In furtherance of the hoax, later that year pranksters thought to register www.lovenstein.org and erect a web site around it in an attempt to fool people into thinking there really was such an institute.
-snip
Speaking of IQ's, an ACTUAL study shows that Bush's IQ is higher than John Kerry's:
http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/kerry_iq_lower.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/politics/campaign
/24points.html?ex=1256356800&en=50a1bcbb16e7cf21&ei=
5090&partner=rssuserland
/* End of Comment */
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