Fact Check: Girl shown in the viral post is Iranian, not Pakistani; viral post is misleading

New Delhi (Vishvas News): A post going viral on social media shows the photo of a girl with a claim that states a Pakistani girl achieved a score of 162 in an IQ test administered by the world’s largest high IQ society. The post further claims that this child has an IQ higher than those of Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Vishvas News investigated and found the post to be misleading. The photo of the girl in the image is that of Tara Sharifi. She is from Iran, not Pakistan. There are no records of Einstein and Hawking having taken IQ tests. She scored 162 in the Mensa IQ test. Mensa is the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world.

Claim

The post shared on Facebook 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 post also has the picture of a child in between those of scientists Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

The archived version of the post can be checked here.

Investigation

Vishvas News started investigating the post by breaking down the claims and debunking them one by one:

What is Mensa?

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.

Mensa has members of all ages in more than 100 countries around the world. The society provides its members with diverse and exciting opportunities for social, cultural, and intellectual interaction.

We further investigated by perfoming Google Reverse Image Search of the girl’s photo. We found a report dated June 3, 2019 on the website of an Australian media outlet SBS.

The report stated An 11-year-old Iranian school girl has just become the new face of braininess after receiving the highest possible score on the Mensa IQ test. Tara Sharifi, a student in UK’s Aylesbury High School, recently took the test in Oxford, where she scored an impressive 162 points. The result puts Sharifi well above the “genius benchmark” of 140.

This stated that the girl’s name is Tara Sharifi and not Tara baloch. She is an Iranian girl, not Pakistani. Yes, she took the Mensa IQ test and scored an impressive 162 point.

Various news agencies covered the achievement of the Iranian girl. Click here to check the coverage of the UK newspaper The Bucks Herald and American news agency The Media Line.

We further investigated and found that the girl shown in the post 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.

The official website of Iranian government also stated that it is “estimated”that the girl scored higher than the IQ’s of physicist Albert Einstein and cosmologist Professor Stephen Hawking.

However, we did not find any report stating Einstein or Hawking ever took (an IQ) test. If they have ever taken a test, they certainly never made the score public.

Vishvas News spoke to Adeel Jafry, Senior Assignment Editor of DawnNews Pakistan. He confirmed that the girl shown in the post isn’t from Pakistan.

The post shared on Facebook by a page named Jaanlo. We scanned the page and found that the page is followed by more than 15000 people.

Conclusion: Vishvas News investigated and found the post to be misleading. The photo of the girl in the image is that of Tara Sharifi. She is from Iran, not Pakistan. There are no records of Einstein and Hawking having taken IQ tests. She scored 162 in the Mensa IQ test. Mensa is the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world.

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• Albert Einstein
• Fact Check