Slashdot Mirror
AptiQuant Browser/IQ Study Was Likely a Hoax
A steady stream of people have submitted notes this morning saying that the story we (and the entire internet, and even NPR's Marketplace) mentioned recently talking about browser platform correlating with IQ looks like a hoax. Of course, if you read the Slashdot discussion, you probably would have known this already, but now everyone knows. The company responsible for the survey, AptiQuant, looks to not be real.
After all, I use Opera.
The "results" seemed to fit all our pre-established notions of IE users in general - they don't know any better, because they are stupider than the rest of us. Now I would like to see someone do a legit study using this methodology and see what the actual results are. My confirmation bias says they'll actually be pretty close to the fake results.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Don't spoil it now! I'm fully expecting a significant drop in IE6 users in the next round of the various stats put out each month because of this. Anything that gets users off that nightmare and onto something newer, even just a more recent version of IE, is a good thing in my book!
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Say it ain't so Ms. Zuckerburg. They have a web page with a Facebook link. They've got to be real. Right?
Have gnu, will travel.
Back in 1997/1998 when I ran a fan website. For a period of time I had shamefully turned away IE users for a time because of a website incompatibility from the site and received angry e-mails. Then, about 6 months later, I turned away Netscape users with the same reasoning. What I found is that the e-mail from IE users tended to be much shorter and use simpler words with more mistakes in grammar. Its one of things that I did, but alas never published. I still have all the e-mails though. My thoughts about it at the time were that people who choose to use IE at the time don't really think about their choices much and just go with what is given to them.
...Internet Explorer users, on average, fell for the hoax the most, with IE6 users most likely to believe it was real and IE8 users being somewhat less gullible. Firefox, Chrome and Safari users fared somewhat better as they tended to not believe it as much as the IE users. IE with Chrome Frame and Camino users almost never believed the hoax, while Opera users immediately new it not to be true.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is great, but what they conceal is essential.