XUXAW Posted November 12, 2004 Share Posted November 12, 2004 http://chrisevans3d.com/files/iq.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest_ikonboard Posted November 12, 2004 Share Posted November 12, 2004 Typical of the left. No need to find out the facts as long as the statement agrees with their view. Hoax Bush-Voter-IQ Hoax Rears Its Head Again?I thought we had all seen the last of that 'states that voted for Bush have lower IQs' hoax. The American Assembler ended up with some egg on its face for publishing that chart in a form that made it seem as if it were fact. But now I've received a number of emails telling me that the same chart makes an appearance in this week's edition of The Economist. Apparently they even list IQ and the Wealth of Nations as the source for the data, even though that book is definitely not the source (I emailed the author of that book to confirm that the data doesn't appear in his book). I haven't had a chance to see this week's edition yet, but if this is true, all I can say is, 'What was The Economist thinking?' Update (May 20): And now the St. Petersburg Times has written an editorial based on The Economist's erroneous data, proving that the tradition of fact-checking is as strong as ever in the media. (Thanks to Steve for catching this) Bush-Voters-Have-Lower-IQs Hoax Runs its CourseThe Bush-voters-have-lower-IQs hoax appears to have run its course. The editor at American Assembler who posted the table that got the whole firestorm going has posted an abject apology. Meanwhile I've still been trying to contact Robert Calvert, the guy who originally posted the IQ/election data two years ago on rec.org.mensa, to see if he would admit that he made it up. But no luck. He doesn't reply to email. So the possibility hangs out there that he got the info from some obscure source that no one else has been able to find. But this possibility seems vanishingly small to me, especially when you consider the character of Calvert's other Usenet postings, many of which relate to the topic of IQ (it seems to be a pet subject of his). For instance, in this post he muses on the possibility that blondes really do have lower IQs than brunettes. At the end of this post he makes some offhand remarks suggesting that blacks "are substantially less intelligent than average." And in this post he expresses his belief that multiculturalism is all a Jewish plot to lower the average IQ of Americans. So he seems like a really charming and credible guy (not!... I get a creepy feeling just reading through his rantings). But if you think about it, it's amazing how this (presumably fake) election/IQ data, originating from a wildly eccentric source, managed to lie dormant for a year and a half and then sweep suddenly through the blogosphere. Bush Voters Have Lower IQs, Update The Bush Voters have Lower IQ's data, which I posted about a few days ago, is getting a lot of attention now that it's been printed by the American Assembler. Their reprint of it is #3 on Blogdex. But while they're now aware that the source of the info is not IQ and the Wealth of Nations, as they originally claimed, they don't seem aware that the true source of the info appears to be a student at UMass. Scratch that. The student at UMass definitely helped disseminate the chart by posting it on his website, but he seems to have simply picked it up off the web, specifically from a guy named Robert Calvert who posted the data to a usenet group for members of Mensa back in 2002. Where Robert Calvert got the data is a mystery. Presumably he made it up, since I haven't been able to find figures for average IQ by state anywhere. Bush Voters Have Lower IQs A table that breaks down states by income, average IQ, and whether they voted for Bush or Gore has been making the rounds. It appears to show, pretty dramatically, that the states with higher average incomes, and higher average IQs, voted for Gore. Whereas the lower income, lower IQ states went for Bush. The comment accompanying this table is usually 'Come to your own conclusions," or something like that. My first thought, on seeing this, was that it's awfully similar to the Lovenstein Institute IQ Report. But I suspect that the figures, in this case, might be correct... in the sense that they were produced by actual research, not just invented out of whole cloth. They appear to derive from a book published in 2002 titled IQ and the Wealth of Nations by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen. I haven't actually seen a copy of this book (and since it costs $81.95 I'm probably not going to either unless I find it at the library). But the real question here seems to be whether, even if 'actual' research produced these IQ figures, do they mean anything? I've always been skeptical about IQ tests, so I would say 'No, they don't.' And I'm saying this even though I'm a Democrat. Update: The IQ figures do not come from IQ and the Wealth of Nations, as confirmed by Richard Lynn, the book's author, whom I emailed to inquire about this. Therefore, it seems right now that the figures have actually been pulled out of thin air. In other words, it's a hoax. But it looks like The American Assembler fell for it, among others. Update 2: The person responsible for the hoax appears to be a guy named Robert Calvert who posted the data to a Mensa newsgroup back in 2002. Presumably he did make the data up, since I haven't been able to find any info anywhere that would corroborate it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whadayawant Posted November 12, 2004 Share Posted November 12, 2004 Damned if ya do, damned if ya don't. I'm an idiot for being a liberal, now I'm an idiot because I voted for Bush 43. You fuckers are more wishy/washy than John Kerry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porkchop Posted November 12, 2004 Share Posted November 12, 2004 Hoax = Consider the source. XUXAW Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest_ikonboard Posted November 12, 2004 Share Posted November 12, 2004 Im not sure I follow the whole argument , I mean didnt GW go to Yale and get his degree ? Granted having family money helps getting into an Ivy league school , but at some point you have to do the work yourself ! So as the liberals will tell you , he was helped all the way through , with that said , Al Gore and John Kerry were helped through as well , both of whom had very wealthy families supporting them ! I think John Kerry is a smart man , I dont however believe him to be smarter than GW, I think they are at the same wavelenght . Now I would give John Kerry the edge as a "Used Car Salesmen" , or in other words a "bullshit artist" , he seems a little more eloquent with his wit! Bottom line is its all bullshit , and the iq thing has no merit , because a fucking monkey has taken the mensa test and passed over several celebrities , I was in mensa for 12 years , the only thing I learned from that group is that they are on average a bunch of snobs , they gloated at every chance they could at how many degrees they had , how many certifications they could get , they couldnt believe that when I left , I told them I hadnt even graduated college and yet my IQ (on there scale) was above there half mark (look it up) , its pretty funny! Get over the IQ thing , its kinda like the "Im bigger than you and can kick your ass" thing, who gives a shit! Just quit whining, its over , you lost! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest_ikonboard Posted November 12, 2004 Share Posted November 12, 2004 BreakTheChain.org Stop junk e-mail and misinformation. (7/26/2001) One of the biggest issues during last year's hotly contested presidential election was the apparent lack of intelligence exhibited by Texas republican George W. Bush. Now, here's a "scientific" study that confirms what we knew all along. SAMPLE CHAIN LETTER TEXT The Pennsylvania Court Observer 7-10-01 12:32 PM CST University Notes Contributors: Cristina L. Borenstein, Lana Taamar Report: President Bush Has Lowest IQ of all Presidents of past 50 Years If late night TV comedy is an indicator, then there has never been as widespread a perception that a president is not intellectually qualified for the position he holds as there is with President GW Bush. In a report published Monday, the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania detailed its findings of a four month study of the intelligence quotient of President George W. Bush. Since 1973, the Lovenstein Institute has published its research to the education community on each new president, which includes the famous "IQ" report among others. According to statements in the report, there have been twelve presidents over the past 50 years, from F. D. Roosevelt to G. W. Bush who were all rated based on scholarly achievements, writings that they alone produced without aid of staff, their ability to speak with clarity, and several other psychological factors which were then scored in the Swanson/Crain system of intelligence ranking. The study determined the following IQs of each president as accurate to within five percentage points: 147 Franklin D. Roosevelt (D) 132 Harry Truman (D) 122 Dwight D. Eisenhower ® 174 John F. Kennedy (D) 126 Lyndon B. Johnson (D) 155 Richard M. Nixon ® 121 Gerald Ford ® 175 James E. Carter (D) 105 Ronald Reagan ® 098 George HW Bush ® 182 William J. Clinton (D) 091 George W. Bush ® The six Republican presidents of the past 50 years had an average IQ of 115.5, with President Nixon having the highest IQ, at 155. President G. W. Bush was rated the lowest of all the Republicans with an IQ of 91. The six Democrat presidents had IQs with an average of 156, with President Clinton having the highest IQ, at 182. President Lyndon B. Johnson was rated the lowest of all the Democrats with an IQ of 126. No president other than Carter (D) has released his actual IQ, 176. Among comments made concerning the specific testing of President GW Bush, his low ratings were due to his apparent difficulty to command the English language in public statements, his limited use of vocabulary (6,500 words for Bush versus an average of 11,000 words for other presidents), his lack of scholarly achievements other than a basic MBA, and an absence of any body of work which could be studied on an intellectual basis. The complete report documents the methods and procedures used to arrive at these ratings, including depth of sentence structure and voice stress confidence analysis. "All the Presidents prior to George W. Bush had a least one book under their belt, and most had written several white papers during their education or early careers. Not so with President Bush," Dr. Lovenstein said. "He has no published works or writings, so in many ways that made it more difficult to arrive at an assessment. We had to rely more heavily on transcripts of his unscripted public speaking." The Lovenstein Institute of Scranton Pennsylvania think tank includes high caliber historians, psychiatrists, sociologists, scientists in human behavior, and psychologists. Among their ranks are Dr. Werner R. Lovenstein, world-renowned sociologist, and Professor Patricia F. Dilliams, a world-respected psychiatrist. This study was commissioned on February 13, 2001 and released on July 9, 2001 to subscribing member universities and organizations within the education community. Perhaps the main reason most people don't get this joke is that we want it to be true. American radio personality Howard Stern even mentioned this "study" on his nationally syndicated radio show on July 25, 2001. The so-called "King of All Media" also wanted this to be true so much that he missed the joke. But in Mr. Stern's - and everybody else's - defense, the chain is being transformed as it circulates to distance it as much as possible from the humor its authors intended. Break the Chain was lucky enough to get a copy of this chain early on, when it still had a few cues in it that revealed it as a joke. Particularly, the website listed features the exact same article, reproduced with a Pennsylvania Court Observer banner. So, you can see right away that the e-mail version dropped the author credits: SAMPLE CHAIN LETTER TEXT About the authors: Cristina L. Borenstein and Lana Taamar are both recently off the campaign trail where they served as receptionists for the Pennsylvania chapter of Gore For President, Inc., and have co-written the eBook Gore Got Gored. Together they publish the The Pennsylvania Court Observer which has a circulation of 5. Dr. Lovenstein lives in a mobile home in Scranton, Pennsylvania with his long time companion Patricia F. Dilliams. When the two are not publishing reports for their Lovenstein Institute, they run an internet business: www.collegedegreesforsale.com The collegedegreesforsale link, and all other links on the website are actually linked to LinkyDinky.com, a collection of humor links. Subsequent versions of the "report" get shorter and shorter. Here is a version I got the other day that removes practically all references to anything that would expose this as the joke it is: SAMPLE CHAIN LETTER TEXT According to a report by the Lovenstein Institute, George Bush has the lowest IQ of all presidents in the last 50 years. Here are the results from the study: The study determined the following IQs of each president as accurate to within five percentage points: 182 William J. Clinton (D) 175 James E. Carter (D) 174 John F. Kennedy (D) 155 Richard M. Nixon ® 147 Franklin D. Roosevelt (D) 132 Harry Truman (D) 126 Lyndon B. Johnson (D) 122 Dwight D. Eisenhower ® 121 Gerald Ford ® 105 Ronald Reagan ® 098 George HW Bush ® 091 George W. Bush ® Notice that all the Republicans (save for that genius, Richard Nixon) are ranked at the bottom. Never mind that Roosevelt died in office in 1945, so he hardly belongs in a list of "all presidents in the last 50 years." Also, there is no such thing as a "Swanson/Crain" intelligence test, and an accurate IQ score is hard to get even with structured test, let alone a study of books and speeches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porkchop Posted November 12, 2004 Share Posted November 12, 2004 Tell me about the rabbits George. Please tell me about the rabbits Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fat Charlie Posted November 13, 2004 Share Posted November 13, 2004 I don't get this. If you are in a higher than average tax bracket & you try to vote someone into office that wants to raise taxes on the above average wage earner, you have a higher IQ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XUXAW Posted November 13, 2004 Author Share Posted November 13, 2004 Typical of the left. No need to find out the facts as long as the statement agrees with their view. This mean "I" can't go to ya BBQ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest_ikonboard Posted November 13, 2004 Share Posted November 13, 2004 Is that a picture of Martin Sheen on your avatar Xuxu! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whadayawant Posted November 14, 2004 Share Posted November 14, 2004 Im not sure I follow the whole argument , I mean didnt GW go to Yale and get his degree ? Granted having family money helps getting into an Ivy league school , but at some point you have to do the work yourself ! So as the liberals will tell you , he was helped all the way through , with that said , Al Gore and John Kerry were helped through as well , both of whom had very wealthy families supporting them ! I think John Kerry is a smart man , I dont however believe him to be smarter than GW, I think they are at the same wavelenght . Now I would give John Kerry the edge as a "Used Car Salesmen" , or in other words a "bullshit artist" , he seems a little more eloquent with his wit! Bottom line is its all bullshit , and the iq thing has no merit , because a fucking monkey has taken the mensa test and passed over several celebrities , I was in mensa for 12 years , the only thing I learned from that group is that they are on average a bunch of snobs , they gloated at every chance they could at how many degrees they had , how many certifications they could get , they couldnt believe that when I left , I told them I hadnt even graduated college and yet my IQ (on there scale) was above there half mark (look it up) , its pretty funny! Get over the IQ thing , its kinda like the "Im bigger than you and can kick your ass" thing, who gives a shit! Just quit whining, its over , you lost! My ol lady mensaed up until she was 48 and she was'nt a damn bit smarter than anybody except me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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