I would normally describe this as “Pallywood”, but let’s use the sexy new term “Fake News.” Also, as you’ll see in a minute, the dissemination of this lie is being heavily enabled by Google, and not just by pro palestinians and Israel haters.
The following meme is making the rounds on social media.
If you Google ‘Guinness world record youngest doctor’, this is what you see:
Seems pretty clear: Google are placing that factoid (from the World Bulletin website) front and center: Palestinian Muslim woman Iqbal/Eqbal was set by the Guinness World Records as the youngest doctor in the world.
But here’s the deal. The Guinness Book of World Records has a site. To do proper searches you need an account. And when you do the search, this is what you see:
That’s right. Palestinian Muslim woman Iqbal El-Assad is most definitely not the youngest doctor in the world according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Furthermore, she does not seem to be mentioned anywhere in the Guinness Book (under two different spelling variants).
In other words, this is completely made up. It is fake news, and it is being spread by Google, perhaps because they are being ‘gamed.’
I suggest you join me in doing the following:
- Contacting the Guinness Book of World Records to let them know their trademark is being abused in this way.
- Contacting Google by clicking on ‘Feedback’ link under the “factoid”
And filling out the feedback form to bring this error to their attention.
Thanks to Deebo and Brian for help on this post.
Update: I should also point out that there’s also another fundamental dishonesty with the meme.* Notice how the tweeter is using the hashtag “#WeHadEnough” to share a positive story and still blame Israel. But Iqbal’s success was despite Lebanon, which has anti-palestinian apartheid laws, not Israel!
There is just one problem: Iqbal cannot work as a doctor in Lebanon, the country of her birth. “My dream is to come back to do something for the Palestinian refugees in the camps, even by opening a free clinic for them,” she says.
“But if you’re a Palestinian doctor, you’re not allowed to work in public hospitals.”
This is why she studied and received her medical degree at Cornell University’s Qatar branch, and not in Lebanon.
Update: Here is the world’s youngest doctor Balamurali Ambati (hat tip: CBA)
https://youtu.be/IgU4cQRi1mA
* Another issue: She is called a ‘palestinian refugee’ even though she was born in Lebanon – but that’s more a problem with UNRWA’s definition of a refugee which is expanded to include “The descendants of Palestine refugee males”, as opposed to the usual accepted definition of a refugee as “a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.”
