Update: Internet Explorer IQ story was bogus | Hacker News Reader

Update: Internet Explorer IQ story was bogus

bbc.co.uk

206 pointsColinWright52 comments

So, after all the stories, all the submissions, and all the hype, perhaps the whole thing was a hoax after all.

Also interestingly, it looks like the BBC have changed the text on the referenced page. Originally it reported the story, but now it claims it's a hoax. Can anyone get the original text? I've not been able to get it from the Google cache.

Here are some of the submissions of the story:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2818847 : aptiquant.com <- This has all the comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822935 : conceivablytech.com

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822162 : mashable.com

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2823776 : cnn.com

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2823808 : msn.com

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2823947 : pcworld.com

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2823949 : theatlanticwire.com

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2827618 : theregister.co.uk : killed

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2832782 : telegraph.co.uk : killed

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2832818 : pcmag.com

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2832948 : telegraph.co.uk : killed

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2833997 : (unknown) : killed

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2837736 : bbc.co.uk : killed

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2838228 : npr.org

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2838474 : bbc.co.uk

Can anyone get the original text?

It is a bit annoying how the BBC non-transparently correct their articles. The old version is cached here: http://www.webcitation.org/60evsCAry

We run a web content monitoring service, every media organisation changes their articles as they get new info. No reference is ever made to these changes. It's actually really interesting seeing how stories get updated.

I'm sorry, but there's a difference between changing your article for updates and editor required corrections, and changing your article to look as if you never bit the bullet. BBC did exactly the latter, they didn't put an "Update: It has been determined this was a hoax" or "Please forgive our error, we have made a mistake..." anything.

Reading the cached article, and then going back to the original, I think it is fully within your duty to inform your readers that the article has been updated specifically for the reason of clarification and acknowledging a mistake was made, and that new information has come to the fore.

Trying to hide behind that by virtually rewriting the article is just unsavory, and I expect better from the BBC News.

Sorry if it seems like I'm taking a high road here, but I am; retroactive continuity has NO place in journalism.

You're right, and I agree with you. But yes we've seen stories get changed considerably with no reference to the update. Unfortunately retroactive continuity seems to be pretty much the norm. From a publishers perspective, that's the beauty of the web: unlike print you can change your spin at any time.

It seems that articles on the Guardian[1] have got an "Article history" which list when the article was changed. Saddly they don't tell you how the article was changed.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk

Yet another instance where, someday, people will discover and embrace diff. The legal and tax codes are another. Reading through legislation on thomas.gov is like reading through a pile of bad patches with no unified diff context.

Watched your intro video. That seems like a pretty useful service. For the diffs, do you actually convert block elements to text and run the diff(1) algorithm, or do you compare element trees directly? I imagine either way the comparison is fuzzy / heuristic.

We compare element trees directly. It would be easier to extract the text and just do a regular text diff, but this loss of element/tree info means you can't reconstruct html versions of the page with differences highlighted, which for us is an important feature.

But IE users were more likely to have believed it!

Even ignoring the obvious problems with the study as described, it was likely to be a hoax just based on how pat the conclusion was and how it fed into the prejudices of those of us who must deal with IE6 on a daily basis.

It does make for an interesting study as a weaponised meme though; and it's exposure as a hoax is not likely to hobble it's effectiveness in spreading the idea that people who use IE are drooling idiots barely able to finger a computer. As a piece of agitprop it's quite effective, and although it's being called out as a hoax the velocity and intensity of the debunking is much less than that of the original.

I think I speak for more than a few of us if I say that it's veracity is completely irrelevant if it manages to embarrass a company director or two into decreeing upgrades. And it's a damn good prank.

Confirmation bias is a tough thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias#Persistence_o...

I know about confirmation bias, so I should consciously look closer at things that confirm my prejudices, but it's not easy to remember. In this case, was actually wary of the conclusions (unless I'm misremembering, which is a whole other issue), but I think that's largely because it was such an obvious example.

"...had invited 100,000 web users to take IQ tests..."

Besides the hoax, someone forgot about: "Voluntary response data are worthless." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2772603

Because of that, this should have never even been published.

So are you saying that no response data ever should be published, or people should be forced to take surveys and what not?

Getting good survey data requires that the subjects agree to take a survey before you tell them what will be surveyed. This still biases respondents, obviously, but it puts all surveys on an equal playing field.

Journalism lives and dies by SEO. And if they take their time to carefully check their sources on every story before posting it, then they'll find themselves on the 6th page of Google b/c everybody has already beaten them to the punch. Speed and verification of sources are in total conflict with each other - it's a tough business.

Well, I also heard the report on NPR yesterday during the news highlights. This was big news for more than just the PPC crowd.

Sadly, I don't think the retraction will be more than a blip.

I know plenty of scientists and researchers who use windows because their programs run on it. The kind of professor who ask their kids why there are 20 toolbars in their browser, and the same night write up a quick 200 line python program to test some algo they read about in their favorite journal.

I'm assuming you mean IE, not Windows

So the good news is that the use of Internet Explorer is not strongly correlated with IQ. The bad news is that falling for hoaxes is...

No, just because it was a hoax doesn't mean it isn't true anyway.

You could make a hoax webpage with bogus information about how the earth is not flat. Doing so would not make the earth flat.

[Citation Needed]

How is falling for elaborate hoaxes correlated to IQ?

If it was true, then IE could be the most user friendly browser because even users with lower IQ could use that.

You base your statement on the premise lower IQ people use IE correctly. Considering the volume of malware that infects Windows boxes through IE, I'd assume the opposite.

You can't say, an application is not user friendly because it has got many security holes.

However IE and IQ are connected, I can't get how this kind of articles are of interest to the Hacker News community.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean any offense, it's only that I see this kind of "news" quite unworthy.

- "Cool guys wear Nike" - "Powerful men drive Mercedes" - "Independent women buy Prada"

etc..

The subtext of the story is insulting, and easily disproven: we're supposed to think that choice of browser somehow reflects on a person's intelligence. It is ridiculous that HN picked it up in the first place.

In other words, even if it was true, what can we do with this knowledge? Oh, right: continue to judge people for their choice in a trivial matter.

The tech industry really needs to get over itself.

We also really need to get rid of IE. Especially IE6.

If it were true that stupid people prefer X, then yes: your preference for X would suggest that you were stupid. Preferring X, however, wouldn't _make_ you stupid if you weren't, just as your IQ won't leak out to 'fill the vacuum' were you to attend a Stupidity Convention.

It's just statistics; it's not black magic. Assertions about groups are not assertions about individuals, so don't just treat one as the other.

> In other words, even if it was true, what can we do with this knowledge?

Advertise differently.

> Oh, right: continue to judge[!]

Falsehoods won't do anything to stop that.

> If it were true that stupid people prefer X, then yes: your preference for X would suggest that you were stupid.

This is not correct. Stupid people prefer eating over starving, but a preference for eating does not suggest that you are stupid.

Sure it does. And since most smart people prefer eating over starving as well, that preference also suggests that you are smart. If you combine these suggestions with an assertion of excluded third, you can say that a preference for eating over starving implies a qualifiable intelligence.

That is to say, suggestion is not implication. I can reasonably suggest that you are stupid without it being the most reasonable suggestion.

Even if it wasn't a hoax, it's still fairly meaningless. It doesn't seem unlikely that more intelligent users would be more likely to look for other options rather than using the OS-provided default. For the sake of illustration lets simplify: Users with an IQ over 100 look for alternatives, below 100 and they do not. Even if 80% of the higher IQ users ultimately choose Internet Explorer (which would indicate that it is very high quality), there would be a very significant difference of average IQ between IE users and users of other browsers.

I also find it very distressing that the BBC, CNN, and a whole slew of other outlets all reported this without carrying out the kind of basic checks I do when presented with new information, and I'm not a reporter!

While I agree that people should look for alternatives, I do not necessarily agree with your analysis. I do research in Physics at the University of Sydney, and the proliferation of Internet Explorer is quite high within the research staff, and I can assure you that the IQ's there are not low...

My analysis wasn't meant to be correct in the "this is how things are" sense. I was trying to demonstrate that, given the data "IE users have lower IQs on average" you cannot actually conclude anything about IE, as there are multiple factors that could drive that result. I was just providing one example, showing that a situation where IE is the best browser but still has lower IQ users on average could potentially exist.

That makes me wonder what the role of traditional media like BBC and CNN now. They try to differentiate themselves from "New Media" as a source of verified information. However as this incident shows, they are not any better in that department.

Yep, I think it has been common knowledge for a while now, and studies that are not perfect can still confirm a general trend.

"A story which suggested that users of Internet Explorer have a lower IQ than people who chose other browsers appears to have been an elaborate hoax."

"'It's obviously very easy to create a bogus site like this - as all phishers know it's easy to rip-off someone else's webpages and pictures,' he said."

So setting up a fake site with fake data is elaborate? Seems like these news agencies are the ones with IQs in the ~80s.

"free online IQ testing" as the source didn't give it away?

Secondly browser use is often contextual. I have reasons for using most major browsers, at any given time I may be falling into any demographic... I'm sure many here are the same.

One big one is enterprise portals/software that seem to always be IE-only. It's common at my workplace to use IE + Chrome/Firefox.

My favourite part of this was seeing the report that referred to "less smarter" people.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/190038/20110731/less-smarter...

They've since corrected the text, but the URL shows their original headline.

Ah, schadenfreude ...

This particular story might be bogus, but a few years ago I remember an online IQ test site that collated data about its users, and people using IE or Windows did have lower average IQs than people who used other browsers or OSes.

Faked or not, it helped me convert two IE users to Chrome that day.

That's hilarious. What a good high profile prank that was. Well done to whoever perpetrated it :)

"I believe these figures are implausibly low - and an insult to IE users."

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Ergo BBC reporters must use IE.

OT: Did Bill Gates fixed BBC?

Well, I thought the "study" to be ridiculous from the start...

I'll probably get downvoted to oblivion for this, but here goes...

I think there may be some truth to this rumor. I do a lot of advertising on TrafficVance which is basically pop-up advertising on computers with adware. One thing I noticed regarding the traffic I received to my landing pages was that a disproportionately high number of my visitors were using Internet Explorer. The percentages were so disproportionate that some of the advertisers I was working with flagged it as "suspicious." (This was thankfully cleared up when I explained to them how I get my traffic.)

For whatever reason, it seems like more Internet Explorer users have adware on their computer than users of other browsers. To me this shows that users of other browsers are more technologically literate than IE users, as you wouldn't expect a technologically literate person to have adware on his/her computer.

Does technological literacy correlate with intelligence? I don't know, that's not really for me to say, but I don't think we should be so hasty to dispel this notion simply because a study was faked.

> Does technological literacy correlate with intelligence?

It really depends on what technology you mean.

I used to know a lot of graduate students in the biochem dept of my university. They were quite clearly very competent with technology that was important for them. But if you mean technology as in computing technology, then no. Most of them did not care much about them at all. And many (most?) used IE 6 as well.

Personally I wouldn't rate their intelligence as below normal just because they did not have an affinity towards technology that I happened to be enthusiastic about.

I'll probably get downvoted to oblivion for this, but here goes...

Please don't bring this phrase to Hacker News. The only time to complain about downvotes is when you're sure you've been unjustly downvoted.

I think it's completely reasonable to expect alternate browser users to be more technologically literate than IE users though. Unless their alternate browser was installed by someone else, installing one is a choice that requires enough technical knowledge to find, install, and use another browser. I'd assume these people would be more knowledgeable than most about adware because it would make sense for those skills to be correlated.

On a completely unrelated note from this story, how do you justify supporting adware? I assume this is why you thought you'd be downvoted.

I like money.

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