Web browser, IQ study discovered to be hoax

by Lahmeik Stacey (Guest Contributor/Digital Journalist)

A recent study linking a person’s use of a Web browser and IQ level has been found to be an elaborate hoax. It’s unknown who is behind the phony study.

According to the widely-reported study–Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Browser Usage–performed by AptiQuant Psychometric Consulting Co., people’s intelligence is best reflected, not by the books that they read or the activities that they partake in, but by the web browser that they use.

The study, which said it compiled the results of 100,000 people–from Australia, Canada, The United Kingdom, The United States and New Zealand–found that users with a lower IQ were more likely to use Internet Explorer 6.0 to 9.0 as their browser of choice, while users with a higher IQ tended to browse the Internet using either Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Safari. Furthermore, Opera, Camino and Chrome Frame add-on users proved to have an IQ slightly higher than that of the previous group mentioned, the study claimed.

The Seattle Weekly managed to contact AptiQuant Founder, Leonard Howard, who explained how the study came into effect.

“We were just trying to add some features to our website, and found [Internet Explorer] 6.0 and 7.0 to be extremely difficult to work with, so we thought of doing this study,” he told Seattle Weekly in an email.

It’s uncertain who Howard is and why he decided to publish a bogus study, as BBC News discovered. Supposedly, the AptiQuant website was set up only a month ago.

The results of the study were compared to a similar, but unreleased study conducted in 2006. According to AptiQuant’s comparison, “the average IQ score of the individuals using the then current version of [Internet Explorer] was significantly higher than the individuals using the current version of [Internet Explorer] now, implying that a lot of people with higher IQ are moving away from [Internet Explorer] to other browsers.”

While AptiQuant’s fake survey provides false evidence for the claims it makes, it does give rise to the question: “What reasons do users say they have for using the web browsers that they do?”

Taylor Duke–a resident of Denton, TX, and undergraduate student at the University of North Texas–used Internet Explorer before Mozilla Firefox was introduced, but cannot imagine ever using the web browser again.

“Firefox’s software is more reliable and gives more options to a tech-savvy person to customize their browsing,” said Duke.

Lestor Andrade, a resident of Elmont, NY, is a loyal Internet Explorer user, on the other hand.

“I have become accustomed to clicking on the Internet Explorer icon all of this time, so it is what I have stuck with,” Andrade said.

Andrade admits that, although he also has Mozilla Firefox installed on his computer, he still prefers to use Internet Explorer.

“I was curious to see how Mozilla Firefox worked when it was released, so I downloaded it,” he said. “After using it, though, I found that it was not all that different from Internet Explorer; it didn’t pique my interest for very long.”

Andrade, however, is not so close-minded. Under the impression that Safari could only function on Mac computers, he was pleased to be told otherwise.
“I have used Safari on my friend’s Macbook before and really liked it,” he said. “Now that I know it can run on my PC, I will most definitely install it.”

Photo courtesy tonynetone

This article was recently published on DigitalJournal.com