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The Greatest Scientific Hoaxes?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Oct 27, 2008 03:34 PM
from the april-fools-one-of-the-best-holidays dept.
from the april-fools-one-of-the-best-holidays dept.
Ponca City, We love you writes "The New Scientist has an amusing story about the seven greatest scientific hoaxes of all time. Of course, there have been serious cases of scientific fraud, such as the stem cell researchers recently found guilty of falsifying data, and the South Korean cloning fraud, but the hoaxes selected point more to human gullibility than malevolence and include the Piltdown Man (constructed from a medieval human cranium); a ten-foot "petrified man" dug up on a small farm in Cardiff; fossils 'found' in Wurzburg, Germany depicting comets, moons and suns, Alan Sokal's paper loaded with nonsensical jargon that was accepted by the journal Social Text; the claim of the Upas tree on the island of Java so poisonous that it killed everything within a 15-mile radius; and Johann Heinrich Cohausen's claim of an elixir produced by collecting the breath of young women in bottles that produced immortality. Our favorite: BBC's broadcast in 1957 about the spaghetti tree in Switzerland that showed a family harvesting pasta that hung from the branches of the tree. After watching the program, hundreds of people phoned in asking how they could grow their own tree but, alas, the program turned out to be an April Fools' Day joke." What massive scientific hoaxes/jokes have other people witnessed?
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E-Meter? (Score:5, Funny)
What massive scientific hoaxes/jokes have other people witnessed?
E-meter [wikipedia.org] comes to mind.
Re:E-Meter? (Score:5, Funny)
[This comment removed due to a copyright violation of the Church of Scientology.]
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Re:E-Meter? (Score:5, Informative)
In case anybody missed it, the "Church" of Scientology successfully censored Slashdot [slashdot.org]. Using the DMCA, which is currently being praised [slashdot.org] on the front page of Slashdot right now.
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you mis-spelled "polygraph" (Score:5, Insightful)
E-meter [wikipedia.org] comes to mind.
You mis-spelled Polygraph [wikipedia.org]. Slightly more important, given that, unlike E-meters, polygraphs are used in criminal investigations and employment decisions (namely, government security services) and police and prosecutors often try to get the results admitted in court as evidence.
Remember Ashley Todd, who claimed she was mugged and had a "B" cut into her face by an imaginary black dude? Cops gave her a polygraph test, but refused to release the results. Hmm, like maybe a "she's telling the truth" result, that would very publicly demonstrate what a piece of useless crap polygraphs are?
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My Favorite Is the Tasaday Stone Age Hoax (Score:5, Interesting)
Even National Geographic [museumofhoaxes.com] fell for it hook, line and sinker. LOL.
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Pride Breeds Ignorance (Score:5, Interesting)
Hilariously enough, it bit L. Ron Hubbard in the ass too [wikipedia.org]:
Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard met less fortunate timing, listing Piltdown Man as one of the ancestors of humanity in his book Scientology: A History of Man, and describing him as having "enormous" teeth and being "quite careless as to whom and what he bit." Piltdown Man would be exposed as a hoax just months after the publication of Hubbard's book.
I am not a historian but I find it hilarious that British, German and French scientists were rejecting claims of early human fossils in Indonesia or Africa on the grounds that their pride in being the origin of life. Instead they were pointing at anything and everything they could find on their own soil as the beginning of life. What made the Piltdown Man such a great hoax is that because of the mounting tension between European super powers leading up to World War I the British were grasping for anything to prove that humans originated in the UK (which, of course, is far from true). And here was this convenient find, an anomaly in the fossil record--but who cared? The British now had evidence of early humans on UK soil with large cranial regions (which they associated with intelligence). Prime minister, we must not allow an origins of our species gap!
All this stupid pride of who stood on the birthplace of humanity blinded so many intelligent people. If I recall correctly the Piltdown Man fragments were hilariously rudimentary painted lower jawbone of an orangutan combined with the skull of a fully developed, modern man. Let this be a lesson to anyone who lets emotions, national pride & religion get in the way of science.
Re:Pride Breeds Ignorance (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny that you should mention Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (though I thought he was only suspected as being behind the hoax). If he was behind it, it would be quite ironic - while he made some members of the scientific community out to be fools, he was made a fool in an equally amusing spiritual hoax (he was quite a spiritualist).
The Cottingly Fairies [wikipedia.org] ranks up there as one of the longest running hoaxes (with some still claiming today that they were real), and ACD was a believer to the extent that he published a book on the subject, called, "The Coming of the Fairies".
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Re:Pride Breeds Ignorance (Score:5, Funny)
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Intelligent Design? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Intelligent Design? (Score:5, Insightful)
How the hell did that get modded "troll"?
"Intelligent design" is the biggest "scientific hoax" ever devised. These people have literally taken creationist ideas and literature, and re-packaged them to look like a scientific theory.
Now, if we were talking about creationism, then ok, it's not a scientific hoax because it doesn't pretend to be scientific. But ID? It should be at the TOP of this list!
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Re:Intelligent Design? (Score:5, Insightful)
A few points.
1) Darwinism doesn't purport to explain the start of the universe.
2) Few things are considered proven in science. The general test to determine if a theory is scientific is whether or not a test can be devised which would disprove the theory. Evolution could be disproven. Intelligent design can never be disproven. Ergo, its status as a scientific theory is highly questionable.
3) Intelligent design goes way farther than the beginning of life on Earth or of the universe. One of the classic examples of an ID argument is that the eye is too complex to have evolved "randomly". That's pretty far removed from the issue of the beginning of life.
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Re:Intelligent Design? (Score:5, Insightful)
Science is neither right nor left. Intelligent design is, by it's very design (pardon the pun) aimed at people who are very religious; people who also happen to lean right on the political spectrum.
The science behind global warming is pretty simple - increased CO2 levels cause increased heat absorption. That's a fact. Where you stand on the political spectrum won't change it, any more than your political position will change the force of gravity. Whether human CO2 emissions are drastically affecting the earths climate is a different question, and one which has not been settled with any degree of certainty.
There is no question that we are having SOME effect. The real question is how much, and whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.
So to correct your earlier statement, it would be safe to say that the Cult of Al Gore is to the left what ID is to the right; global warming as a scientific field of study, though, has nothing in common with either. The fact that some political groups have hijacked the name, doesn't invalidate the science.
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Re:Intelligent Design? (Score:5, Interesting)
He *does* give real science in the movie, that's my point. While you call it "political grandstanding", it does show that what has happened since the industrial revolution FAR outweighs the natural temperature cycles.
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Re:Intelligent Design? (Score:4, Insightful)
Philosophy is a form of science, so no, ID definitely is *not* philosophy. More like idiocy.
I hate to be seeming to defend ID, but a philosophical stance need not be provable, so ID can be a valid philosophy.
Of course a philosophical idea can also be a load of rancid donkey bollocks too...
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Re:Intelligent Design? (Score:5, Insightful)
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P.T. Barnum and the Cardiff Giant. (Score:5, Interesting)
Barnum tried to buy the Cardiff Giant off its owners, but they wouldn't sell. So he had one of his own carved, and traveled around exhibiting it. Barnum was showing a fake fake.
Thiotimoline (Score:5, Interesting)
Odd that NS didn't mention the hoax that started the story, the Great Moon Hoax of 1835 [wikipedia.org] where it was revealed (incorrectly of course) that Sir Walter Herschel had found evidence of life on the moon.
My favorite wasn't really a hoax; it was a humorous science fiction story by Isaac Asimov who was a grad student studying biology when he wrote about thiotimoline [wikipedia.org], a substance that, when added to water, dissolves before it reaches the water.
Definitely... (Score:4, Funny)
Why...this is no poll? Dammit.
What about the Lemming's film (Score:5, Interesting)
This from Wikipedia -
"The myth of lemming mass suicide is long-standing and has been popularized by a number of factors. In 1955, Carl Barks drew an Uncle Scrooge adventure comic with the title "The Lemming with the Locket". This comic, which was inspired by a 1954 National Geographic article, showed massive numbers of lemmings jumping over Norwegian cliffs. Even more influential was the 1958 Disney film White Wilderness in which footage was shown that seems to show the mass suicide of lemmings. The film won an Academy Award for Documentary Feature."
I think this one deserves honorable mention at least!
Re:What about the Lemming's film (Score:5, Funny)
That's so sad. Why didn't somebody put little parachutes on them or have a couple of them stand at the edge of the cliff and redirect them backwards? Unfeeling Norwegian bastards.....
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Re:What about the Lemming's film (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What about the Lemming's film (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry, they were stunt lemmings.
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Re:What about the Lemming's film (Score:5, Funny)
Why do you hate Norway so much? I for one will not tolerate this anti-Norwegian propaganda. Another remark like that and I'll report you to the House Committee on Un-Norwegian Activities. If you are found guilty, you will be beaten to death with a large fish.
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Audiophile cables (Score:5, Informative)
Denon's $500 ethernet cables, those $9000 "vacuum chamber" cables, etc.
Oh, this is science, not technology.
Still, they use edge cases of science to make $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ off of rich fanboys.
In practice, the cable I mentioned are hoaxes.
Re:Audiophile cables (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Audiophile cables (Score:5, Funny)
The "cable elevators" about 2/3 down the page are a personal favorite of mine. ;-)
Good Lord, I had to read that three times before I realized my mind was inverting those two words. I expecting to scroll down that page and see a story about audiophiles who had been duped into using elevator cables for low loss speaker wire.
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Re:Audiophile cables (Score:5, Interesting)
A while back, my roommate at the time and I considered making an audiophile cable company ourselves, on the theory that if you can't convince audiophiles that they're wrong (and I've certainly done my part to try), you can at least make money off of them. Setup is simple enough; make a little box to put a sine wave through a cable for 72 hours as a "break-in" procedure, or cryo-treat cables by pouring liquid N2 (easier to get then you'd think) over them and letting the N2 boil off. (Care has to be taken that the cables don't shatter from heating up too fast, though I never got far enough into the plan to try it.)
I eventually dropped the plan after deciding that I wasn't quite that evil, but before that, my roommate had a discussion with one of his coworkers at the retail shop he worked at (don't remember the exact exchange, but it went like this):
Roommate: I'm setting up a cryo-treatment and burn-in service. Should make lots of money off stupid people.
Coworker: What does cryo-treatment do?
R: Absolutely nothing, but people pay for it thinking it does.
C: Sounds interesting. I might buy a few cables from you to try it out.
So my roommate had flatly stated that it's just a big ripoff, and the guy still wanted it.
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My favorite (or least favorite) (Score:5, Interesting)
The fraudulent research showing that high dose chemo followed by marrow transplants was an effective treatment for breast cancer. It was an experimental procedure, so insurance companies wouldn't cover it. But this study showed it worked, and it got some play in the media, and Congress actually passed a law requiring that insurance companies cover it.
Then it turns out that the researchers left out negative results which, when compiled with the rest of the data, showed a slightly WORSE outcome for this procedure. It seems that the researchers believed that the procedure SHOULD work, and since it was so important to get insurance companies to cover it, they simply modified the data to get the results they wanted.
Of course, insurance companies stopped paying for it, and the procedure isn't used, and Congress has moved onto other things. But I still need to ask: how many women had months or years removed from their life because 2 "scientists" thought they knew better than the data?
What!? (Score:5, Funny)
This list is incomplete. I would provide a proof but this comment box is too small to hold it.
Project Alpha (Score:4, Informative)
Well, some of these hoaxes, like the hilarious Sokal hoax, weren't really scientific hoaxes moreso than exposing the idiocy of certain groups.
So, if you want to go down that route (and I see no reason not too!) then you MUST bring up the venerable James Randi.
Project Alpha humiliated a bunch of paranormal researchers and parapsychologists because of how easily fooled they were.
Banachek has a good article on his website:
http://www.banachek.org/nonflash/project_alpha.htm [banachek.org]
The most interesting thing is that some people were such True Believers in the supposed "powers" of Banachek and Edwards that they continued to believe in them even after revealing it was all just an exposé. The most important thing was that it reveals that while many scientists in this area just didn't properly account for outright fraud; I would guess it is because most experiments do not have to worry about participants purposefully trying to mess with the results.
idle.slashdot.com (Score:5, Funny)
Please someone tell me it's a hoax.
Evolution (Score:5, Funny)
The James Ossuary... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are still people who wish it weren't a hoax. It's an interesting tale in the ways people will ignore evidence of the contrary when it comes to something they want to believe. The signs were obvious - found in a shop with stone cutting tools, yet ignored for years afterward...
Does homeopathy count? (Score:5, Informative)
Madison Priest and his magic box (Score:5, Interesting)
Anthropogenic Global Warming (Score:4, Insightful)
Global warming is a fact, not a theory or hoax. (Score:4, Insightful)
Its cause is not fully understood, but that hardly matters; we have to live with it no matter what causes it.
Ever notice how it's the same deluded people (political conservatives, for some reason) who claim that evolution doesn't happen (hello? antibiotic-resistant bugs?) as claim that global warming doesn't happen?
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Read the subject line again (Score:5, Insightful)
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Color TV! (Score:4, Interesting)
Goat Glands (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing beats the perpetual search for...ahem...male enhancement.
The scientific pioneer was a guy around the Great Depression who made a mint selling an operation in which he would implant goat testicles into his patients, many of whom claimed dramatic improvement.
In the process he managed to revolutionize modern radio and advertising.
Linky linky: John Brinkley [wikipedia.org]
HeadOn (Score:4, Funny)
HeadOn [wikipedia.org]
I almost died laughing when I woman I work with bought some at lunch.
I stopped laughing when she put in charge of operations during our busiest time of year.
I find it hard to believe (Score:4, Informative)
That nobody has mentioned the Museum of Hoaxes [museumofhoaxes.com], which documents all these and more. Much, much more.
The Turk? (Score:4, Interesting)
While perhaps it was more of a parlor trick than a scientific hoax, The Turk [wikipedia.org] was still peddled as a thinking machine that could play chess. Not only did its creator succeed, but subsequent owners did, as well.
Really interesting stuff, well before any modern computer (even beating Charles Babbage's [wikipedia.org] work by almost half a decade). In fact, Babbage was another opponent [thefreelibrary.com] of the turk, and was reportedly inspired by it.
(If you're a CS major and don't know who Babbage is, you really should read up.)
Inadvertent Hoax? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not fraud, because they truly believed what they saw and their publications supported it. And then it went far beyond the source.
Binaural Beat, or EEG "beat frequency" brain stimulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_frequency [wikipedia.org] (see Binaural Beat section), as originated at The Monroe Institute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_institute [wikipedia.org] (TMI).
In acoustics, two beats of nearly the same frequency interfere to produce a change in summed volume of a period equal to the difference between the two frequencies. At TMI, they found that if they played sine waves into each ear of a slightly different frequency, they could detect an increase in EEG power at the beat frequency. I was so taken with an article in OMNI on TMI that I saved it for over a decade until I started studying EEG research under Karl Pribram.
Once I started studying it, a glaring error came to mind. We had to put subjects in a Gaussian cage to shield them from stray signals from the heaters and pumps for the swimming pool elsewhere in the building our lab was at. These caused induced currents in the EEG. If that was necessary, how could they justify putting electromagenticially driven headphones on top an EEG cap?
To first pull things apart, I tested a single subject -- a styrofoam head (a wig stand) with EEG cap and headphones on it. I was able to show power increases at precisely the same frequencies as the beat signal. (I'd first suggested using a bowl of Jell-O. Karl suggested not to, since he'd found increases in alpha waves in a bowl of Jell-O when shaken. No, I don't know why. Neither did Karl. We just thought it was extremely cool.)
To make it more official, I helped teach some students at University of Virginia at Wise to run EEG research. Their EEG system could produce sound remotely in a closed box and transmit it via air conduction up long plastic tubes into the ears -- no electromagnets anywhere near the head. They ran it this was as well as the traditional Monroe way (headphones on top of EEG cap). In the each of the same subjects, the traditional method produced power increases at the beat frequency. With air conduction stimuli, no changes were observed.
My two greatest joys in science are having undergrads produce results presented at international conferences, and in bursting the bubbles of old farts in the field. This particular project resulted in both. Not only did TMI present several pieces of research as valid, but many other people used the same set up and got stuff published elsewhere. Go to PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez [nih.gov] and put in "binaural beat" to get the relevant results (and some not relevant, but they're easy to tell apart).
Now, you'd think that once results are presented that show it's bogus, people would quit. Not so. We did the work on 2002. Check the dates on the PubMed results. Now, that's kind of fraudulent, but more a sign that there's way too many people publishing way too many things in way too many places to be able to keep track of everything. OTOH, our work isn't in PubMed because it was a conference presentation.
What is fraudulent is the many places that produce all sorts of new agey junk based on binaural beat, claiming there's scientific evidence, but not ever quoting any, whether the original well done but slightly fatally flawed TMI work, or any subsequent. Also fairly fraudulent by TMI and all the others is claims that specific frequency differences can be used to produce specific changes such as, oh hell, here's just a sampling from TMI: http://monroeinstitute.com/store/home.php [monroeinstitute.com]
I try to go easy on the scientific community when it comes to possible fraud claims in this area. To their credit, there used to be many more people producing work in this field, including some at U. Va. itself. In fact some from U/
Nonsense! (Score:5, Funny)
I submit that Godel solved this a long time ago.
1) Nothing is more awesome than sex with women.
2) We can imagine sex with women. And frequently do.
3) If we can imagine sex with women, the only thing that would be more awesome would be actually having sex with women. For that, women would have to exist.
4) Since point 1 says that nothing is more awesome than sex with women, they must exist, that being the most awesome thing possible.
Who says my philosophy class was a waste of time? =)
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Re:Nonsense! (Score:5, Funny)
A stale piece of bread is better than nothing.
And nothing is better than a big juicy steak.
Therefore a stale piece of bread is better than a big juicy steak.
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Re:Nonsense! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, you really have no clue what you're talking about, do you? You think you're so clever for nitpicking Goedel's ontological argument.
To be more precise, I did not nitpick Godel's argument. I paralleled it, substituting God with sex. You'll find I posted no counterargument to Godel in my original post. And I also used it to reach a true conclusion: Women Exist.
So yeah, I actually do have a clue what I'm talking about.
Let me ask you this: is there any role in your life for spirituality, whatsoever? I'm not talking about any one conception of God, just your spirituality. If you don't, I really feel sorry for you.
I might ask if you have any clue what a straw man argument is. There is nothing you can deduce about my spirituality from my original post. I can however deduce that you seem to be a fan of Godel, and that I've stepped on your toes by using his argument as the basis of a joke.
Which somewhat ironically, under my definition of spirituality is a blessing of sorts. Nothing tastes quite so delicious as hamburgers made from sacred cows.
If people took spirituality more seriously, we wouldn't have all these problems. People would be more moral and generally pleasant to one another. And maybe you wouldn't talk about sex so much.
Hah! *snort*
It's called a joke. Don't be such an automaton. I don't think about sex any more or less than any average human being.
And for what it's worth, I think taking spirituality seriously to be a HUGE error. It's what gets people burnt at the stake. People need to take it less seriously. Less planes will wind up embedded into skyscrapers that way. I think the world would be a more moral and happy place if they took things less seriously, and approached things with the happiness and wisdom that children have.
The Creator created all - that means humor as well. I don't think this was all made so we could sit around and make sour faces at each other, and the most dour person gets to go to the highest cloud in Heaven.
Something for you to think about. Hopefully.
Fnord.
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Re:Cold fusion (Score:5, Funny)
I don't believe anything is impossible.
With the possible exception of skiing through a revolving door.
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Re:Spaghetti tree (Score:5, Informative)
Back in 1957, even the word 'pasta' wasn't widely used in the UK. There was only 'spaghetti' and that came in tins with tomato sauce (generally served on toast or with fry-ups as an alternative to Baked Beans). This was decades before full ingredients had to be displayed on packaged food, so all the tins used to say was 'Ingredients - Spaghetti, Tomato Sauce'. Widespread use of dried pasta (popularised by the ubiquitous Spaghetti Bolognaise beloved by students) didn't occur until the '70s, and fresh pasta was uncommon until the '90s.
The unfamiliarity with anything remotely resembling 'real' spaghetti, and the fact that the story was broadcast by the BBC on it's flagship documentary programme in it's normal time-slot years before television April Fools pieces were common makes the fact that it was widely believed much less surprising than it would appear to 21st century pasta-eaters with a healthy skepticism towards TV news.
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Re:War on Drug Users (Score:5, Informative)
The evidence I've seen suggests that excessive MDMA use decreases the density of serotonin receptors/transporters but not cell bodies. I don't think the effect is visible at doses relevant to most recreational users. Consider this letter to Nature [nature.com] regarding the risks of using MDMA in human research:
That's 2-3 times a normal recreational dose of MDMA, twice a day, for 4 days straight. That's a lot of MDMA, and no damage as measured by serotonin reuptake sites could be observed. So it's not as simple as causing "brain damage, which increases with every dose." This is what I mean by scientific fraud. People taking extreme results, and applying them to real world situations that don't even come close to real world situations. And then they make public policy based on those unrealistic results. Here's more:
Translation:Uptake sites may be downregulated, instead of destroyed. The same kind of downregulation has been seen with SSRIs, and we have no problem giving them to humans. Trying to pass off receptor downregulation as "brain damage" is still more fraud.
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