Yesterday, Frank Report revealed that a man, Mr. Keith Alan Raniere, created a life coaching organization based in large part on his being “the smartest man in the world.”
To back up his claim, he had three things:
- A high score in a little known, take-home, IQ test,
- A study he himself authored to support the uniqueness of his score on the take-home IQ test
- His inclusion in one edition [1989 Australian] of the Guinness Book of Records.
With this, he and the women of his inner circle – almost all of whom he was having sex with – were able to persuade some 16,000 people to pay from $2,000 to $10,000 and more per course for his Nxivm classes.
In reality, this gent seems to have had help in creating his claim to be the world’s smartest man.
- He likely cheated on his take-home IQ test [Several sources say he had help].
- The test was so obscure and non standard that no one should have considered it a serious measure of intelligence.
- The study that purported to prove his great IQ was flawed, not only because he himself authored the study about his score on a take-home [not monitored] IQ test
- but also because much of the data that supported the study was based on “oral reports” [He did not have written data and claimed he had been told facts over the phone about comparison tests which supported his study conclusions].
- Finally, he had gained control of the Mega Society [he even renamed it] that created the IQ test when his test score was accepted by Guinness for that single year in the Australian edition.
It should be pointed out that Guinness published the Australian edition and it was in fact in print – Raniere’s name does appear in its pages, along with two others, as tied for the highest IQ.
But Guinness did not include Raniere’s name in any other edition, before or after, and his name never appeared in the US edition or any other edition of Guinness.
Other than the sole inclusion in the 1989 Australian edition, Raniere’s name does not appear again.
In fact, something seems to have alerted Guinness to something fishy – for although they had used “highest IQ’ as a category for years, within months of Raniere’s name appearing, Guinness suddenly retired the category and that category has never appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records again.
All of this information I reported in 2016, well before I reported the branding story.
In other words, it was available online. I laid the blueprint for anyone to prove that Raniere’s claims of being the smartest man in the world were dubious and quite possibly a lie.
In order to find out that he was likely lying, it took me a few hours of research online. My main point of suspicion was that the Mega IQ test is a take-home test, which means anyone can cheat – cheating being defined as having others help you since an IQ test is supposed to be a measure of one person’s intelligence.
This to me that invalidated the entire claim for there was no monitoring of the test.

Anyone, after 2016, using my work could confirm the same thing within half an hour – that Raniere’s claim of being the smartest man was based on the flimsiest evidence and mature people would likely suspect it was a lie.
Yet, despite my proving this – about the single most important claim about the uniqueness of Nxivm – the very essence of Nxivm – that it was invented by the world’s smartest man – it seems to have not stopped people from joining. Or spurred on the people who had joined to quitting.
It was not until I revealed that Raniere was branding and blackmailing women that my reports about him get any traction.
Consider – Raniere and his women – got 16,000 people to take his courses based on his false claim that he was the smartest man in the world.
He got more than a 1,000 people to give up vast years of their lives -as full-time coaches, proctors and field trainers and got more than a hundred people to leave their homes and families, wives and children, parents, etc. to come to live in Albany. New York – all based – at least initially – on the false claim that he was the smartest man in the world, a claim that could have been exposed as false with several hours of intelligent research.
This, if nothing else, shows the enormous gullibility of humans.
It shows our trusting, naive nature.
It does not strike at people’s goodness or ethics – two other false claims Raniere made about himself.
It strikes at belief. That people tend to believe and justify what they want to believe and what they can’t prove about something they want to believe they either call any obvious evidence that disproves it as false or they ignore it.
It is so basic to humans wanting to believe what they want to believe that it is common for otherwise intelligent people to claim that the miracles in their religion are true and the miracles in others’ religions are silly superstitions.
It is rooted in the desire for the reward of heaven or nirvana or to become like the smartest man in the world – smarter than others.
And to question these things can cause people to react negatively.
Something like that went on recently when I wrote about whether I was possible to find out if US Rep. Ilman Omar was at one time married to her biological brother.

I had no preconceived favorable or unfavorable impression of Omar. [I might have a slight bias in her favor of her for her bold attitude and I might slightly disagree with some of her political positions.]
However, I was simply approaching the question with a fact-based outlook.
Immediately, people who support her and more importantly her politics attacked me with comments like “for shame” and that “Frank Report has lost all its credibility” for asking the question – as if asking the question is akin to answering it.
I did not answer it. I merely raised a question that many in Omar’s home district are asking and have been asking for several years.
Funny too, Omar could likely settle the question by producing her father, sisters, or even her alleged brother/husband, for interviews, but she has chosen to not do that despite this story being widely covered in the most important publication in her congressional district, the Minneapolis Star Tribune – who have, by their coverage, made literally tens of thousands of people wonder if it is true.
The point is that the people who vote, and the media who cover her, seem to think they have the right to ask the question – did she marry her brother [for allegedly various federal benefits and his right to come into the USA; Omar is a naturalized US citizen]- and they are asking the question.
Omar may well be innocent of the claim. And she does not have to answer the question. The point is people are asking.
And the point is that it seems no one asked Raniere, or rather thousands of people did not ask him to prove he was the smartest man.
And they did not do the research to disprove it.
And they spent money to enable him and not one of them spent this money without first having heard that Raniere is the smartest man in the world – something that they could have likely disproven if they wanted to disprove it.
People gave up their whole lives to Raniere, after having been told he was the world’s smartest man.
Time and again, they let them do their thinking since he was the world’s smartest man.
This is not to condemn them. They believed his disprovable lie.
Some of these same people smiled with a hint of derision at Bible stories – saying how childish the miracles stories in them are and yet they – to a woman – implicitly believed in Raniere’s claim and guided their whole lives by it.
Rep. Omar may or may not have married her brother. Jonah may or may not have been swallowed by a big fish or whale and lived.
Krishna may have lifted Govhardan Hill with his finger and Keith Alan Raniere may or may not have been the smartest man in the world.

He was not the smartest because of bullshit IQ tests and scam studies, of course. But some might argue that anyone who could fool that many people into thinking he was the smartest and then live that way for decades, with adoring followers hanging on his every pearl of wisdom, with women begging to go to bed with him – a pudgy, smelly, excessively hairy, cross-eyed, impotent man – that proves some kind of at least native cunning.
He had women competing to do his laundry, run his errands, starve themselves for him to be pleasing to him, deprive themselves of sleep to work harder for him to achieve his goals, while he ate like a pig and slept all day and fucked [until he became impotent] all night.
Indeed, some would say that he was pretty smart.
But not smart enough not to blackmail and brand women and think they would all keep it a secret.

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[…] series about NXIVM, a multilevel marketing scheme and self-empowerment cult run by self-proclaimed smartest man in the world Keith Raniere.“I was like, ‘Holy fuck,” she says of watching the documentary. […]
[…] series about NXIVM, a multilevel marketing scheme and self-empowerment cult run by self-proclaimed smartest man in the world Keith Raniere.“I was like, ‘Holy fuck,” she says of watching the documentary. […]
[…] series about NXIVM, a multilevel marketing scheme and self-empowerment cult run by self-proclaimed smartest man in the world Keith […]
[…] series about NXIVM, a multilevel marketing scheme and self-empowerment cult run by self-proclaimed smartest man in the world Keith […]
[…] series about NXIVM, a multilevel marketing scheme and self-empowerment cult run by self-proclaimed smartest man in the world Keith […]
[…] series about NXIVM, a multilevel marketing scheme and self-empowerment cult run by self-proclaimed smartest man in the world Keith […]
[…] series about NXIVM, a multilevel marketing scheme and self-empowerment cult run by self-proclaimed smartest man in the world Keith […]
[…] series about NXIVM, a multilevel marketing scheme and self-empowerment cult run by self-proclaimed smartest man in the world Keith […]
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[…] It’s no secret that cults rely on charismatic leadership, and NXIVM is no exception. Raniere made many audacious claims including that he was the smartest man in the world. […]
What it all boils down to Keith is a sexual sadist and pervert who found others of like mind to aid and abet him.
Note they are professionals, the so called elite, celebrities, medical doctors, etc. No one is a poor working schnook, oh, except for the Mexican underage girls brought into the USA for God knows what.
(Kind of makes one examine our medical professionals with a keener eye, doesn’t it?)
Frank,Krclaviger,& anyone else…..
Re: The lack of posts to this article.
I love when the general public and news media pundits and Frankreport readers all complain that the internet based news media, as well as the Frankreport, only push shallow salacious garbage spewed click bait type news……
Because this article by Frank Parlato is well a written thoughtout piece. Yet there are no positive or even negative comments in response to the article…..
Maybe Frank Parlato should have included an analysis of Kim Kardashian’s “ski resort sized” ass and how it compares to Kim Constable’s cannonball ass.
” You can dig for coal in Kim Kardashian’s ass…..And in Kim Constable’s ass you can park a lump of coal and have it squeezed into a diamond.”
Frank,
I enjoy reading your editorial.
Barak Obama showed his birth certificate.
Why can’t Miss Omar show her paper work?
And why can’t someone ask such a question without being labeled a bigot?
She is after all a publicly elected official. All publicly elected officials should be answerable to the people.
Donald Trump should show his taxes for the same reason Omar should show her paper work…..
……Transparency.
‘We the people’ should be able to question and vet all publicly elected officials.
They work for us after all.
To your point that people believe what they want to believe, truer words are rarely spoken.
That’s why changing or structuring their members belief system starting at as early an age as possible is what cults do and what NXIVM did with the best (er, worst) of them.
It is what makes “Rainbow Culture Garden” extremely dangerous to the health of these most innocent, young minds and to society at large.
Raniere and NXIVM’s attempts to manipulate the beliefs of its members about lowering the age of consent for statutory rape is just one example of the poisonous, destructive beliefs it continues to spread.
I hope Rhiannon, Dani and other statutory rape victims come forward for their day in court to help dispel any false belief that this is a victimless crime.
I am 110 percent certain my sister Gina Hutchinson would be alive today had she never met or fled sooner from her rapist and his purview. I believe his primary motive for wanting her “suicided” as “The Rat” revealed was her potential to expose him and the deliterious effects of his crime on her psyche made worse by on-going exposure to KAR and his “ESP” (later NXIVM) tech teachings regarding statuatory rape and suicide.
Here is the really critical aspect of NXIVM’s future.
Of course Raniere is not even the third smartest man in Knox Woods little lone the world.
Nor is Raniere particularly industrious.
Nor is Raniere articulate.
Nor is Raniere intellectually curious.
Nor is Raniere particularly well read.
Raniere might be somewhat charismatic but only to people who are not particularly intelligent themselves.
All that NXIVM is was based on the work of people like Nancy Salzman who concocted the NXIVM philosophy from bits and pieces of Scientology and Ayn Rand.
Add in the financial resources of the Bronfman sisters and the Salinas gang and use charismatic, articulate actresses like Kristen Kreuk and Allison Mack and you have the perfect Petri dish for the growth of a dangerous cult.
Keith Raniere is a Dead Man walking and won’t be around to rebuild the cult.
But the other ingredients of NXIVM’s success are still present.
NXIVM can still be a dangerous cult with the right kind of leadership and someone with more brains than Keith Raniere.
He can legitimately claim to be the smartest man in his cell, but is probably no smarter than its previous occupants.