Talk:U.S. presidential IQ hoax/Archive 1

I mean, seriously.
1206 is not a real SAT score. I believe the scores are all multiples of ten. Also, you cannot predict IQ based on a scholastic, acquired knowledge-centric test. This is absurd.


 * Agreed. This portion of the article has been removed. atakdoug (talk) 07:40, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

http://www.therationalradical.com/morons/george-bush.htm

http://axisoflogic.com/cgi-bin/exec/view.pl?archive=153&num=24155 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.34.87.50 (talk) 11:47, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
 * 1206 was the score at the top of Bush's transcripts according to one site I saw which offered a link to the actual documents (which i didn't really care to follow. Bush's scoring was done under a different system than the one used today, and I think that might account for the fact it is not in a multiple of ten. Mrathel (talk) 18:43, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

POV?
See talk:List of US Presidents by estimated IQ/Delete to discuss deletion of this article

snopes says it's a hoax Quincy 07:54, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * and it seem awfully POV. All democrats beat all republicans except Richard Nixon? Gentgeen 08:09, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Went to the "non partizan" think tank's website, and found this report, that starts as follows,
 * "Bush rests comfortably after surgery to implant pacemaker in brain


 * "Thanks to a device similar to the one in Vice President Dick Cheney's heart, the nation has healthy, clear-thinking, plain-speaking leaders again.


 * "WASHINGTON -- In the second White House health scare in little more than a month, doctors Wednesday night implanted a sophisticated pacemaker in President Bush's brain."


 * I'm now going to list this on VfD

Oh, how I wish I could change "a partisan attack" to "an admittedly plausible partisan attack" :) Tualha 01:56, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Off topic
I see that some cleanup has been done on the article after I added a short note about the non-hoax 2006 study. But I feel that the amount of detail and "see also" links to nucular and stateregy are not really appropriate for an article about this topic. The non-hoax is already discussed in Public perception and assessments of George W. Bush. Han-Kwang 15:35, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Is there real or at least estimated IQ for Clinton?
This wiki article starts out as a hoax on U.S. Presidents but from then on talks only about George W. Bush. What about Bill Clinton’s 182 IQ was this also faked or where is a legitimate source for it? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.211.48.218 (talk) 05:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC).
 * That was also fake. The IQ of Clinton according to the real study was (on average) 149. I added the info to the article. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:36, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

removed misleading line/notes
"'Still, the author concluded that Bush “is definitely intelligent … certainly smart enough to be president of the United States”.'"

Given context, this line implied something that neither the report, not the article said. This line is quoting an article (that's the reference used here) that's quoting the actual report, but both the article and the report and very harsh in terms of Bush's intelligence, and the way we're quoting this implies that the article and/or the study is much kinder to Bush than it actually is.

"'Bush’s score, he says, is comparable to “extremist Islamic fundamentalists in the Taliban and Al-Qaeda leadership — with the notable exception of Osama Bin Laden, who is lower still”.'"

The article is good though, especially for people who can't access the report online. So I'm changing the bottom to Notes and References--most of what's there are footnotes, and I'll leave this article as an additional reference. Miss Mondegreen | Talk  09:28, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

'
Shouldn't this be U.S. Presidents' IQ hoax? --justme 00:12, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Concur. It is the possessive form of a plural noun. I'll perform a move by 12. Nov, unless I see a rebuttal. samwaltz 03:43, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Hrmm... Well, no comment. I'm bumping it to U.S. Presidential IQ hoax, so we can avoid the whole apostrophe issue. samwaltz 22:45, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Biased?
Bill Clinton probably has an IQ of 149 or more. He graduated from Georgetown University, got a Rhodes Scholar fellowship to go to Oxford and a legal degree from Georgetown. He is known to be incredibly intelligent.

This entire entry is biased. It is written defensively in order to protect G.W. Bush. We know that the man is not smart and that everything that he has has been a result of it being handed to him. He was kicked off of a job his dad gave him. Carlton Group, (Dad's cronies who are gobbling up worldwide territory and creating an enormous military for-profit business,) put him on the board of one of their subsidiaries. It was an airline catering business. He was asked to leave because he was adding nothing to the board. This business that Dad is involved in includes many conservative people, such as John Majors P.M., of England.

There is nothing to indicate that G.W. took school seriously. He was more prone to drinking and spent his time on social things, such as his cheerleading.

When he was in college, he quite resented the protestors of Viet Nam. He was conservative and supported the war.

Until he was president, he had not visited any other countries, though he had the money to travel the world. He did not have the curiosity He lost a few businesses. Outside of supporting his father in his political endeavors, no business or job success is known. He became governor of Texas. What was behind his governorship, I don't know. Karl Rove met him as a big kid in trouble and decided to turn him into a politician. So, he became a governor. Around 1998 he stated that he had no interest in politics and would never think of presidency.

G.W.'s IQ? Listening to him, hearing his understanding of his position of leader of the most powerful country in the world, it is impossible for this reader to believe that he has an IQ as high as 125. My guess is that it is somewhere around 100....just a guess. I have wondered seriously, if he could pass the constitution test.

The entry on this issue is a defensive, false statement. Mine is biased, too, but I am not an entry in Wikipedia. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.224.204.61 (talk • contribs).

Should not be on Wikipedia
I read a few articles about this "hoax". I am not sure if this page wasn't manipulated by the government. It is not good ifsomeone reads about a stupid president. I also do not think that this thing is worth an article in Wikipedia especially as it is not proven that this is really a hoax. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikiwitti (talk • contribs) 21:37, 5 September 2011 (UTC) This article should not bo on wikipedia. It is a biased and non educational article. Please remove this article. I an very new here so I do not know how to remove this article. Please give ypur thoughts and opinions on my talkpage. User:70.238.241.249 (User talk:70.238.241.249)  —The preceding  signed but undated.
 * This article is very old, and well referenced, although there are a lot of articles thaqt should not be on Wikipedia, I do not feel that this is one of them. aliasd·U·T 06:35, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I am not a fan of george bush, but his SAT was 1206, to score that it would be almost impossible to have an IQ lower then say 120 by most estimates. He may well be stupid intellically for a president, doesnt mean he has the IQ of someone working at McDonalds, and i feel most of the people who say this shouldnt be on Wikipedia are just upset that it doesnt say that george bush is mentally retarded —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.255.7.143 (talk) 07:33, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I placed a notablity template. I agree. 71.161.84.26 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 05:20, 4 January 2008 (UTC)


 * From WP:Notability: A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. Such sources, including the various international newspapers and about.com, are cited in the article. Was the coverage significant? We could argue, but given the number of times this came up and the number of sources, I think most Wikipedians would say yes.  The presumption isn't absolute, but I don't think anyone has made a case for a non-notability argument here.  I am removing the tag; please don't restore it without citing a specific problem with the notability.


 * The original claim, that the article is biased and uneducational, has nothing to do with notability, so, having dealt with the spurious issue, let's get to the real one. The article, as it was written a while ago, was not good.  It was, among other things, pretty badly slanted in Bush's direction.  I and others have removed some of the POV; if you can improve the article further, please feel free to do so.


 * To sum up: the article is pretty clearly notable; it ain't going anywhere on that ground unless you can show a consensus to delete it. It certainly could be improved; as always, everyone is welcome to help with that. atakdoug (talk) 07:34, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Notability should'nt be an issue
Notability is no more than a false issue when it comes to virtual encyclopedia with virtually endless capacity to hold informations. I believe notability is unwikipedia-like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules

By all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliberately and well. That is one of the ends for which they exist. —Robert Bringhurst,

If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.

--Z E U S (talk) 21:16, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Real Studies Section POV
The "Real Studies" entry in this article does not give a NPOV as it cites three sources but mentions only one newspaper article about a psychologist at the University of California and gives almost no information about the study he conducted beyond the fact that Bush's score suffered due to his unwilliness to try new things. Either the section must give more sources on real studies or it needs to bow out all together; but a "Real Studies" section can't discuss only one study. Mrathel (talk) 18:39, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Fixed section title to reflect the singular known study: "Legitimate Presidential IQ study". Added a link to the real study's abstract in Histori c al Psychology journal under External Links. The journal's abstract page offers a PDF format copy of the Simonton's paper; I did not add this link separately. The Legit Study section reads much more NPOV than its original version, but still emphasizes the extent to which this study supports the hoax conclusion; I added the clause noting its estimate of Bush IQ is somewhat higher than the hoax.Bookerj (talk) 18:30, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Highly controversial article
I move to delete some of the entry relating to the re-estimation of George W. Bush's I.Q. The references cited for this entry do not make any difference since the authors of the said references were not privy to any actual information about his I.Q. I move to delete the statement a cognitive proclivity that encompasses unusual receptiveness to fantasy... Is that a reference to his religious background? As stated in the article Religiosity and intelligence, a low I.Q. is not a given when it comes to strong religious leanings. 3 references do not change the fact that it is a highly biased statement. As mentioned by me and the article above there is no strong correlation. I personally know. How? My I.Q. is 162, and I identify as highly religious. Strong delete of above stated entry. If no one opposes in approx. one week, I will delete it and replace it with 3 full stop (or period) marks.  Lighthead  þ 20:40, 14 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I will actually delete the whole part after openness to experience, if nobody objects. That whole part is highly controversial. Aesthetics doesn't make you stupider. I mean, that gets to be beyond just personal political attacks.  Lighthead  þ 21:07, 19 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Early Delete. One link isn't valid. The other two don't mention the comment at all. I should've looked at the links early on. My bad.  Lighthead  þ 21:18, 19 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Deleted statement supposedly backed up by references; and tagged section appropriately. That should do it.  Lighthead  þ 21:38, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Just for future reference; the reason I tagged the section is because anybody conscious knows that the only way to verify someone's IQ is if the person actually, physically, took the test. Any other way is completely biased and subjective as the section actually points out. We can say that Kennedy's IQ is here and Clinton and Bush's IQ is over there; but ultimately the physical data speaks for itself. No matter what scientist came up with the data! That's actually pseudoscience if you really want to define it. So, that's that.  Lighthead  þ 21:46, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

→ Lighthead: Yep, any "estimate" of IQ is by definition subjective, regardless whose estimate it is. But not necessarily biased - that would depend on the subjective NPOV of the estimator's judgment. In fact, while actual IQ test scores may be less subjective, they remain just a uni-dimensional estimate of a very complex network of human genetic (and possibly environmental) characteristics. "Subjective": That's exactly how UC scientist Simonton's study identifies itself.

I'm not familiar with the historiometric techniques Simonton used. The WP entry on that topic identifies historiometry as the psychological study of genius. It asserts that "Historiometry was the first field studying genius by using scientific methods" (though it cites a later 2008 paper by Simonton for that definition). And keep in mind, this article is not trying to report on GW Bush's intelligence (nor that of all the presidents, for that matter); rather it is reporting on the 2001 internet hoax targeting GW with an unfair and fictional comparison. In that context, Dean Simonton's actual 2006 study and its admittedly subjective findings are a valid topic for this article to report, as they provide a new and somewhat improved context for the intelligence comparison that was the hoax's raison-d'etre. This article would be the poorer (less neutral, as well as less informative) for the lack of this counter context. I vote for removing the POV tag.Bookerj (talk) 18:04, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I have removed the POV tag after inserting a critical article. --GirasoleDE (talk) 16:28, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Deletion of table
Following from the discussion at AfD for a related article, I propose to delete the table of estimated IQs for a number of reasons. Mostly, it is based purely on a primary source; this source is cited and the material is already adequately summarized in the text above the table. Quoting the results in full give undue weight to a single point of view which is somewhat speculative: for example, Simonton did not validate his methodology by using it to estimate IQs of people for whom test results are known. Indeed, even in his own article (p. 518), Simonton describes the estimated IQ scores as "tentative and approximate". Comments? Dricherby (talk) 17:02, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I tend to be anti-deletionist (the absence of tattered information does not equal balance), but on this one I can't argue against your position. That table is brutal.  The column labelled "Corrected" is really a blended measure, where one element contains a small correction which struck me as pertaining to paucity of data (not a good thing, even with a correction).  The next column has the heading "Cumulative" but I couldn't find that word in the source at all.  Apart from that, the underlying study appears to be about as good as these things get at combining indirect measures, which tops out at suggestive, and never truly breaks through the GIGO glass ceiling no matter how much sophistication one throws at it.  I'm going to throw a dispute tag on this section, but leave it alone for now. &mdash; MaxEnt 23:28, 30 May 2014 (UTC)


 * The table is ... ridiculous, and it malquotes the source. The source give other figures than the table, f.ex. Gerald Ford - table: 111, source: 124.4, Ulysses Grant - table: 120, source: 115.0. And so on. Delete it! It only attracts vandals! Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 06:02, 28 August 2016 (UTC)


 * The table doesn't even spell Barack correctly, and the source is someone who doesn't understand basic statistics. Just look at the 'reasoning' on the source blog in the "Expected IQ of a Harvard magna cum laude" section, and then delete this table.  They assume that magna cum laude Harvard grads are the smartest 41,000 of 226,000,000 adults, meaning the smartest MIT graduate is less smart than the dumbest Harvard cum laude graduate. Then they halve the dubious ratio from 1/5,500 to make it 1/11,000 for no apparent reason and convert it from a fraction to a standard deviation of 3.73. Instead of converting +3.73 to an IQ of around 155, they hilariously decided to multiply it by a correlation factor between IQ and academic success of 0.65 to get 2.42 standard deviations or 136 IQ. They seem to think that if two sets of data have a correlation of 0.5, you should multiply the difference between any given value and the average by 0.5 to find the true difference from the average. Just awful, please delete.  24.239.196.209 (talk) 20:14, 20 January 2017 (UTC)Signature


 * I am of the opinion this entire article needs to be deleted, but I concur with others on this talk page: the table is unscientific and since its covered by the paragraph preceding it is unnecessary. C5mjohn (talk) 15:04, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Notable? Encyclopedic?
Reads more like a Snopes article than an encyclopedia entry. In fact, it's sourced to Snopes, where I rather think it belongs.E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:39, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

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This article needs to be deleted.
And quickly. There is one single extremely obvious reason why. It is written as if there is only one hoax out there, and that simply is NOT TRUE AT ALL. There are MANY hoaxes in this vein. Either this article needs to address the entire subject and stop presenting this hoax as the only one in existence, or it should be deleted PERIOD. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.235.188.9 (talk) 04:04, 9 April 2018 (UTC)