In the summer of 1988, America was introduced to a bespectacled, slightly bewildered-looking boy who had just achieved what seemed impossible. Adragon De Mello, a mere 11 years old, walked across a stage at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to accept a degree in computational mathematics. The media, hungry for a narrative of superhuman intellect, swooped in. But the story they told wasn't just about an early graduation; it was a story embroidered with a fantastical, almost magical detail: the boy, they claimed, possessed an IQ of 400. The number was bandied about as fact. It was a clean, round, awe-inspiring figure that suggested a mind operating on a plane inaccessible to the rest of humanity. It appeared in headlines, in hushed television reports, and in countless debates about the nature of genius. The world was told it was looking at a child who was not just smart, but potentially the smartest person in the history of the species. There was only one problem: the number ...