In fairness he did retract it. However he did want to believe it was true without first fact checking. Here is the link:
Another Liberal Who Wanted to Believe in a Hoax But Ended up with Egg on His Face
Writer hoodwinked by phony IQ article 01-22-2006 By RICHARD ORR
Herald Correspondent
I really got snookered on Bush´s brain. But I wasn´t alone.
Last Sunday, I wrote a column saying GWB and his father before him scored the lowest IQs of all the presidents for the past 50 years. It was based on an Internet article from an official-sounding outfit called the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pa.
Well, it turns out there is no Lovenstein Institute, and GWB isn´t as dumb as the article made out -- or as he appears sometimes.
According to the Urban Legend website snopes.com, the article got its start about five years ago. It was a prank so well-executed, the perpetrators actually registered www.lovenstein.org on the Web “in an attempt to fool people into thinking there really was such an institute,” according to Barbara and David P. Mikkelson, creators of the snopes site.
“The piece is simply a political jibe,” they note, “made obvious by its ranking all the Democratic presidents of the last several decades as having high (even exceptionally high) IQs” -- with Bill Clinton´s “being exactly twice” GWB´s.
Except for Richard Nixon, the Republicans were ranked as “average to moderate,” and the Bushes were at the bottom of the pile. Tricky Dick was rated at genius level: 155. The Bushes were ranked 98 (father) and 91 (son), respectively.
The Mikkelsons pointed out some “noticeable errors” -- chiefly that “the study includes Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died in office in 1945.” Yet the study says its spans the presidents “over the past 50 years.”
Another error occurred when the phony report claimed all the presidents who preceded GWB had written at least one book while he had not. In fact, according to the Mikkelsons, some did and some didn´t. In truth, he´s listed as the author of a book in 1999 titled “A Charge to Keep.”
“Plus,” said the Mikkelsons, “if there is a ÔSwanson/Crain´ system for ranking intelligence (which the non-existent Lovenstein Institute claimed was used to rate the presidents), nobody else seems to have heard of it.”
“In any case,” they continued, “IQ is a dodgy enough concept even when measured by tests designed for the purpose. Trying to guess specific IQ scores based solely on writings and speeches is bound to be error-prone. Based on (GWB´s) extemporaneous speech-making, for example, he couldn´t Ôspeak with clarity´ to save his life.
“But he was clearly far more intelligent than the insultingly low IQ assigned to him. And a recent article reports President Kennedy´s IQ as 119 -- far below the genius-level 174 ascribed to him” in the alleged Lovenstein study.
The Mikkelsons note that “as obvious as the joke was, at least two publications were taken in by it: The (London) Guardian and the New Zealand Southland Times” in the summer of 2001.
After the Associated Press and U.S. News & World Report printed articles showing that the IQ yarn was just that -- a slick fabrication -- The Guardian posted a retraction.
I had some reservations about the study -- mainly because it seemed a bit too pat that Democrats were so much brighter than their Republican counterparts, who generally come from moneyed roots and the better schools.
But given GWB´s bumbling persona, the apparent authenticity of the Lovenstein Institute and a quote from its alleged founder -- a “Dr. Werner R. Lovenstein” -- I ran with it.
User beware.
As marvelous a tool as the Internet is, there are no editors or fact-checkers overseeing its accuracy. Anyone can put anything they like on it with impunity. I´ve seen the same dumb quotes alternately attributed to both GWB and Al Gore.
So if it sounds too good (or bad) to be true, check it out before accepting it. The best place to do that is the Urban Legend site -- assuming it´s on the up and up.
Who knows anymore these days?
(Richard Orr is a Herald correspondent. He can be reached at royko@sptc.net or richard@plainviewdailyherald.com.)
From The Plainview Daily Herald