The study was reported by the BBC, Forbes, Mashable, CNN, and the Daily Mail, to name a few. However, many readers were skeptical of the whole thing after finding out that the company who put out the press release, AptiQuant, had only set up its website a month ago. The AptiQuant website says the Canadian company has been around since 2006, so it’s odd that it would have just recently set up a website.
It was also discovered that the photos of AptiQuant’s employees were actually the same as French research company Central Test, but with different names. Central Test was contacted and confirmed that they had no idea what AptiQuant was and had never heard of the research company.
The study, titled “Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Browser Usage” supposedly compiled the IQ test scores of 101,326 people above the age of 16. Mashable called the results “fascinating,” which they are, if they were real.
The research showed that IE 6 users have an average IQ score of just under 80, whereas Firefox and Chrome users average about 110. Opera and Camino users, however, were said to have an average IQ of more than 120.
The results of the study inferred that IE users are less likely to change or upgrade their browsers, and that people with higher IQs are more likely to experiment and chose a different browser or listen to suggestions and security advice.
AptiQuant’s website is still up and active, and you can still take a look at the PDF containing the study. The BBC talked to Graham Cluley, senior security consultant at Sophos, who said the PDF file did not appear to contain any malware.
Perhaps the IE users skeptical of the study are actually smarter than the Opera users who boasted about being superior in the comments of various blogs. If we’ve learned anything from this hoax, it’s to always question everything we read on the Internet.
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