News Outlets Fooled By Internet Explorer Hoax

[EV_Ares]

A website posing as a legitimate research company managed to fool many major media outlets last week with a false report that users of Microsoft Internet Explorer have lower IQs than users of other Web browsers.

The fake company, called AptiQuant, sent out a bogus press release carrying the headline, "Is Internet Explorer for the Dumb? A New Study Suggests Exactly That."

The release claimed that the company had conducted extensive research on the topic and had offered online IQ tests to more than 100,000 people in order to match their intelligence scores with the browser on which the test was taken.

http://slate.me/nZg252

[wtmusic]

1. Next: do major media outlet employees have statistically lower IQs?

Film at eleven.

[Kali]

2. *snicker*

:donut:

[cherokeeprogressive]

3. Hooo boy did some DU'ers swallow THAT one hook, line, and sinker.

Can you say Balloon Boy?

[Shandris]

4. Well, when something has enough apparency of truth, it should come as no surprise when people...

...buy it. :P

It's not like it wasn't something most of us didn't already know anyway!

/runs out of room, denying responsibility and readying flameproof gear!

:silly:

[cherokeeprogressive]

5. That's some funny funny shit right there.

I'll not flame you for your bias. I promise.

Most? LOLOLOL

[RC]

6. Sounds reasonable.

Did they check Firefox users for their superior IQ's? :evilgrin:

[canetoad]

7. Hoax carried out by a web developer

In frustration. :rofl:

<snip>
About the hoax: While adding some exciting new features to my website, it was getting more and more difficult to support IE version 6.0 to 8.0. Particularly IE 6.0. There is no doubt about IE’s lack of compatibility with web standards (not IE 9.0 though). I am sure every web-developer in the world would agree with me over this, and I am sure every web-developer has at least once in their lifetime felt that how much better the world would be, if there was no IE. I would like to congratulate Micro$oft for making IE 9.0 so compatible, but this whole hoax thing was targeted at IE 6.0 to 8.0

http://www.aptiquant.com/articles/396/