Forum | Register | Login | About the Curator | Contact
Hoax Photo Tests | Gullibility Tests
Random hoax | Twitter

Web Hoax Museum
Funny T-Shirts

exploding golf ball
Pranks, t-shirts, practical jokes, and gag gifts
prankplace.com

fart detector
Pranks, t-shirts, practical jokes, and gag gifts
prankplace.com
Old Forum

This page has been viewed 32442744 times.
Page rendered in 0.6259 seconds with 53 queries executed

REMOTE CONTROL FART MACHINE
Embarrass your boss, friends, and family! Press the remote button and set off one of 15 different fart sounds!
THE TOILET MONSTER
As the unsuspecting victim goes to use the bathroom, they'll scream as they lift the lid and are greeted by the Toilet Monster!

FM
The Hoax Museum Blog
Examining dubious claims and mischief of all kinds.
RSS Feed | Recent Comments | Submit a Link
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.
Posted By: Alex | Date: Tue May 04, 2004 | Permalink | Comments (54)
Category: Politics

Page 1 of 1 pages