![]() At the very least, for someone who puts so much weight on his IQ score and claims to be so smart, you’d think maybe (just maybe) he’d actually have a working understanding of how IQ scores work. It means nothing about him being particularly smart today. On top of that, all the test showed was that at age 9 Walter was probably much brighter than other kids his age. So, even if the test was accurate, his score would be lower. Worse, research has shown that scores on the L-M test (especially at the high end) correspond to lower scores on the current Stanford-Binet test (SB5). And yet, to back up his claim of being the 4th smartest, he pointed to this chart, which uses the modern Stanford Binet “standardized” scoring system to compute “rarities.” So he’s mixing his metrics. “this score at this age, compared to a normal person at this age”). At age 9, in 1983, the version of the Stanford-Binet that was out was known as the L-M version (two versions ago), in which the scores were not based on standard distributions, but rather a ratio scoring system (i.e. Elsewhere, he had admitted that it was the Stanford-Binet test he took. O’Brien did not respond to a follow-up question asking, since he was using his IQ as a marketing element, why he didn?t later take a Mensa-endorsed test in case that figure got challenged.įirst off, this proves what we said in our last post, that all of his claims about being “the fourth smartest” are complete bunk. “Unfortunately, as I was nine, I didn’t know that I needed to keep the paperwork for future reference.? IQ: Regarding his absence from IQ lists, O’Brien wrote: ?I was about nine years old when a teacher administered my IQ test,” said O’Brien. It appears he avoided most of the really damning stuff - ridiculously claiming that “non-disclosure agreements” prevented him from discussing them. We were skeptical that any followup would happen, but alas, late last week Karlin had a new story describing O’Brien’s weak attempts at responding to the questions about his life story. When many of us raised questions, that story was briefly dropped behind an unimpeachable paywall (it said it was behind the paywall, but offered no way to pay) and then reemerged with a note acknowledging the questions raised and saying that Karlin was reaching out to O’Brien for a followup. Susan Karlin, at Fast Company, had written a profile about O’Brien that repeated many of the claims. In that last post, we noted that a couple of the journalists who had originally written fawning profiles had taken the concerns to heart and had tried to reach out to O’Brien to respond about the inconsistencies. The problem I have is with O’Brien using the obviously bogus claims to try to build a business on false premises, leading people to believe that giving him money will get you results not unlike those in the obviously farcical TV series. And, once again (since this comes up every time), I have absolutely no problem with CBS making whatever TV show they want. And we did another post calling out the “professional journalists” who simply repeated his claims without any skepticism. We already wrote two separate posts detailing the questionable, unbelievable or obviously false claims that he has made recently. I really thought we were done writing about Walter O’Brien - the claimed “inspiration” for the TV show Scorpion. Mon, Oct 20th 2014 02:54pm - Mike Masnick
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