'Esquire' Article Describes Fake Personality Test

A recent issue of Esquire features an exciting but non-existent method for measuring human behavior which was developed by a brilliant but fictitious professor at the Harvard Medical School.

The article, appearing in the October issue of the magazine, introduces the work of Dr. Herschel McLandress, Hoax Professor of Psychiatric Measurement at the Medical School from 1951 to 1952. Based on the amount of time an individual's thoughts can remain centered on a subject other than himself, the new technique was hailed as a bold advancement in the assessment of human behavior patterns.

Pusey Gets High Rating

Dr. McLandress had purportedly established ratings (called McLandress co-efficients or McL-Cs) for many prominent figures, including Presidents Kennedy and Pusey. JFK's rating was a relatively low 29 minutes and President Pusey's was in the 45-minute range.

Other personality ratings ran somewhat lower. Elizabeth Taylor, David Susskind, and Nikita Khrushchev had McL-Cs of about three minutes each. The late Richard Nixon's rating was maliciously set in the miniscule three second range.

When contacted by telephone, Esquire said they now figured the story to be a spoof, but felt the story's author, Mark Epernay, was real, since he had submitted the article in person. The issue listed Epernay as a long-time student of Dr. McLandress, giving his home as Bogota, New Jersey, Epernay's own McL-C rating is not known, but is suspected to be very high.