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  • 2021-08-25 (xsd:date)
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  • This child genius is from Iran, not Pakistan (en)
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  • A screenshot that claims a Pakistani girl achieved a score of 162 in an IQ test administered by the world's largest high IQ society has been shared thousands of times in social media posts . The posts also claim this child has an IQ higher than those of Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. However, the claim is false: the child is Iranian, not Pakistani, and there are no records of Einstein and Hawking having taken IQ tests. The claim was shared in this Facebook post published by a Pakistan-based user on August 5, 2021. It has been shared more than 2,400 times and garnered more than 3,600 interactions on Facebook. The posts share what appears to be a screenshot of a tweet which reads: 11 Year old Pakistani girl Tara baloch from Balouchistan passes IQ level test ( getting 162 marks) of MENSA related to OXFORD UNIVERSITY & broke the record of ALBERT EINSTEIN (160) & HAWKING.. Appreciation. The tweet also contains the picture of a child in between those of scientists Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Mensa is the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world. The organisation recognises people who score within the upper 2% of the general population on an intelligence test. Screenshot of the misleading post taken August 24, 2021 While the original tweet appears to have been deleted, an identical screenshot along with the same claim has been posted on Facebook here , here and here with thousands of shares. However, the claim is false. The intelligent girl's name is Tara Sharifi and she is from Iran, not Pakistan. A Google reverse image search of the picture of the child led to this report published on June 3, 2019 by Australian media outlet SBS. In the report, the girl is identified as Iranian student Tara Sharifi, who was studying in the UK in 2019 when she scored 162 in the Mensa IQ test. Below is a screenshot comparison of the photo in the misleading post (L) and SBS's report on Tara Sharifi (R). Comparison of the misleading post and the original article using screenshots taken on August 24, 2021 Her achievement was first reported by UK newspaper The Bucks Herald here , as well as by others including American news agency The Media Line here . She was also identified as an Iranian girl by the Iranian government on the Vice Presidency for Women and Family Affairs' official website on August 14, 2019. While Sharifi did indeed achieve a score of 162 on a Mensa-recognised test, the comparisons to Hawking and Einstein are also misleading. The screenshot implies that Einstein had an IQ of 160 but in an email to AFP, Ann Clarkson, the Communications Manager for British Mensa, stated: There is no evidence Einstein ever took (an IQ) test. Similarly with Stephen Hawking – if he has ever taken a test, he has certainly never made the score public. Clarkson also mentioned that each IQ test supervised by Mensa is scored differently. While 162 may be the maximum a test taker can get in one, 183 may be the highest score in another. Some scores are also adjusted to account for the age of the person taking them. This makes cut-off points for genius arbitrary and dependent on the type of test one takes. (en)
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