The U.S. Presidential IQ hoax was a mid-2001 e-mail and internet hoax that purported to provide a list of estimated IQs of the U.S. Presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush.[1]
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The hoax email showed Bill Clinton having the highest IQ (182) and George W. Bush the lowest (91). However, the numbers claimed in the email were fabricated, and the sociologists and institutions (e.g., the "Lovenstein Institute") quoted in the article do not exist (a "Lovenstein Institute" website displays the "report", but it was created after the report's release).[2] The techniques purportedly used to measure IQ of the presidents are not recognized means of measuring IQs. The hoax also contains other factual errors.[1] When the hoax was debunked, it appeared to be a personal attack on Bush because of its timing and its listing Bush's IQ as exactly half that of Clinton's.
Perhaps because the perception of George W. Bush having low intelligence is common and had been cited by the media[3] as well as by politicians, including a spokesperson for Tony Blair,[4] the hoax report was widely taken to be true. The British newspaper The Guardian, for example, quoted the report in its diary section of July 19, 2001 and used it to belittle Bush, although the paper published a retraction two days after the Associated Press drew attention to the error.[5][6] Other mainstream media news outlets to fall for the hoax included Bild (Germany), Pravda (Russia), and the Southland Times (New Zealand) as well as a few small U.S. newspapers. The hoax came back to life in March 2007 in Spanish-language media when the Press Agency EFE distributed a piece referring to it. Dozens of media (primarily in their online versions) reproduced EFE's text. Among newspapers publishing the hoax were El País (Spain's leading newspaper),[7] ABC and La Vanguardia.
About.com reports that linkydinky.com was the original source of the spoof.[8] Indeed, linkydinky's page on the hoax calls the report "our hoax".[9] A copy of the spoof in full can be found there.
In 2001 political psychologist Aubrey Immelman made an IQ estimation of G. W. Bush based on the SAT Reasoning Test results of Bush (1206) and Al Gore, who achieved IQ scores of 133 and 134 in his school years: "It's tempting to employ Al Gore's IQ:SAT ratio of 134:1355 as a formula for estimating Bush's probable intelligence quotient — an exercise in fuzzy statistics that predicts a score of 119."[10]
A 2006 study analyzing presidential IQs by Dean Keith Simonton of U.C. Davis appeared in the journal Political Psychology. Simonton's study analyzed the results of varied and often subjective historical material using the tools of historiometry. It estimated IQs for all US presidents, and validated the headline of the hoax, which stated Bush's was the lowest of any president in the last 50 years, though it estimates his IQ considerably higher (by more than two standard deviations) than the 91 suggested in the hoax report. It rated G.W. Bush second to last since 1900, with an estimated IQ of 125 (the estimates ranged from 111 to 139). Bush's estimated IQ was only higher than those estimated for Grant (120), Monroe (124), and Harding (124). The same study estimated president Bill Clinton's IQ at 149, behind only those of Kennedy (151), Jefferson (154) and J. Quincy Adams (169).[11]
The methodology of Simonton's study was questioned by Thomas C. Reeves who refers to an actual IQ test by Kennedy with a score of 119.[12]