The Greatest Scientific Hoaxes? 496
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?
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.
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.
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!
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?
computer-generated journal article (Score:3, Interesting)
My personal favorite is the gibberish computer-generated journal article [theregister.co.uk] that actually got accepted and published...
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".
Re:What about the Lemming's film (Score:1, Interesting)
The film makers chased the poor creatures off the cliff. Then again, THAT might be a film maker's hoax.
Madison Priest and his magic box (Score:5, Interesting)
Color TV! (Score:4, Interesting)
How about (Score:3, Interesting)
Anything mentioned on the new Fox show Fringe. [fox.com]
Re:What!? (Score:3, Interesting)
Fermat's last theorem was proved by Wiles [wikipedia.org] in 1994.
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.
My Favorite Is the Tasaday Stone Age Hoax (Score:5, Interesting)
Even National Geographic [museumofhoaxes.com] fell for it hook, line and sinker. LOL.
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.)
How about "hoaxes" later found to be authentic (Score:3, Interesting)
I know of at least two documents, the Vinland Map and the Paraiba Inscription, that were declared "hoaxes" by experts but were later found to be authentic.
In both cases the documents contained messages encyphered in a manner common for many years. Cyrus Gordon discussed both in his book Riddles in History. Gordon was an expert in ancient languages who also had worked at Bletchley Park during World War II, giving him a knowledge of encryption.
The encypherment was what Gordon called "acrostic/telestic". The first and last letters of a line are treated as a count into the line and the appropriate letters marked. Then the pairs of letters are rearranged according to a pattern. The usual message was the name of the author (by the rearranged front count letters) and a religious message (by the back count letters). An example of this encypherment was found in a scribe's practice attempts in Turkey.
One item of hoax "evidence" was a spelling error in the Vinland Map. It turned out that the author had forced a letter into place, which resulted in the apparent error.
Re:What about (Score:2, Interesting)
well, the globe *is* warming, just as it has done every 1500+-500 years for at least 60 cycles. The hoax is the anthropogenic part of global warming. If man were causing global warming, how do you explain the other 59 warming and cooling cycles? Joe the Plumber's ancestors and their campfires?
Re:Spaghetti tree (Score:3, Interesting)
The best one was "Ghostwatch" by the BBC [bbc.co.uk], which was broadcast as a reality TV show, but in fact was a fiction horror movie. Using presenters (Michael Parkinson) from serious shows such as "Crimewatch", they convinced a good percentage of the British population that this was a reality TV show. Only in the last 15 minutes, did they have children speaking in tongues, the female presenter disappear, and the studio presenter become possessed.
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/
Re:Project Alpha (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really - the big problem with "researchers" in those fields is that they go in expecting to see certain results. Even if we could expect 100% of participants to be totally honest (a silly expectation), the bias of the scientists themselves can easily (and often does) influence the results of the experiment.
The biggest point that Randi makes is that proper scientific controls and double-blind experiments are ESSENTIAL in determining the validity of a theory. There are countless examples of scientists (even well-established ones) conducting experiments which seemed to yield a certain result, only to be completely demolished once the experiment was repeated with proper controls. Perhaps the most famous was Jacques Benveniste's study of "homeopathy", which yielded positive results and was published in Nature - but under the condition that he repeat the experiment and allow a select team to observe and guide his experiment. Now, since the experiment already included control-samples of plain water, the only change that the team made was to re-label the test-tubes using a random code in order to remove any selection-bias on the part of the people performing the experiment. That simple procedure was all that was needed to show that Benveniste's earlier results were invalid - the new experiment showed the homeopathic "cure" being tested to have no effect whatsoever.
We see the same thing with all the other hoaxes - whether intentional or unintentional. The theory is initially accepted by those who WANT to believe it, only to be later disproven by properly controlled analysis or experimentation. As an example, the piltdown man "fossil" was only accepted by a small number of scientists - those who had pre-existing biases (about the supremacy of caucasians) which made them less critical of that fossil than they would be of others.
That's why the scientific process is so important - it forces all theories to undergo examination by other qualified individuals, and ensures that all supporting experiments are fully documented so that they can be repeated by anyone. This allows us to minimize the effect that personal credulity and bias have on the acceptance of theories, which is the only way we can ever really make any discoveries about our world. It's also why I think critical thinking and rational skepticism should be a major part of early-childhood education, but that's a topic for another time ...
Re:War on Drug Users (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as the question "is marijuana addictive" is concerned, the answer is clearly that it is. There are a lot of types of addiction, and if you have ever seen the results of significant marijuana use, you see addiction.
Now, what most people think of as "addiction" is the sort of withdrawal that occurs with heroin or alcohol. Obviously, marijuana is not physically addictive in that manner. It has different physical effects and the method of addiction is different.
In my experience, addiction to marijuana is a whole lot closer to addiction to porn, sex, or gambling. It makes the user do things that are self-destructive towards the end of getting more marijuana. If you haven't been around goal-oriented self-destructive people, you don't know what you are missing. Whatever it is that is driving them, that is their only goal and all other considerations are put aside. Little things like marriage, school, money, children, job, whatever.
Finally, I have not seen marijuana addiction except with high regular use - I suspect occaisional use doesn't reach whatever threshold there is. So it isn't very addictive in the sense that other drugs are either. I guess an argument could be made that anything which offers the user some psychological reward is addictive in this manner. While that may be the case, I still don't think you can say that marijuana is not addictive.
Re:How about "hoaxes" later found to be authentic (Score:2, Interesting)
Sorry, neither have been proven to be true.
Though there is evidence that vikings found vinland before columbus the authenticity of the map has still not been proven.
And for paraiba:
http://www.badarchaeology.net/data/ooparts/paraiba.php [badarchaeology.net]
Or if i'm wrong, please provide source material that proves your claim.
Hotheaded Naked Ice Borers (Score:2, Interesting)
This one's a classic from the April 1995 issue of Discover mag. A friend compounded things by handing it to me in August - the bastard. Maybe if I had known what 'pazzo' meant at the time...
---------
April Pazzo was about to call it a day when she noticed that the penquins she was observing seemed strangely agitated. Pazzo, a wildlife biologist, was in Antarctica studying penguins at a remote, poorly explored area along the coast of the Ross Sea. "I was getting ready to release a penguin I had tagged when I heard a lot of squawking," says Pazzo. "When I looked up, the whole flock had sort of stampeded. They were waddling away faster than I'd ever seen them move."
Pazzo waded through the panicked birds to find out what was wrong. She found one penguin that hadn't fled. "It was sinking into the ice as if into quicksand," she says. Somehow the ice beneath the bird had melted; the penguin was waist deep in slush. Pazzo tried to help the struggling penguin. She grabbed its wings and pulled. With a heave she freed the bird. But the penguin wasn't the only thing she hauled from the slush. About a dozen small, hairless pink molelike creatures had clamped their jaws onto the penguin's lower body. Pazzo managed to capture one of the creatures -- the others quickly released their grip and vanished into the slush.
Over the next few months Pazzo caught several of the animals and watched others in the wild. She calls the strange new species hotheaded naked ice borers. "They're repulsive," says Pazzo. Adults are about six inches long, weigh a few ounces, have a very high metabolic rate -- their body temperature is 110 degrees -- and live in labyrinthine tunnels carved in the ice.
Perhaps their most fascinating feature is a bony plate on their forehead. Innumerable blood vessels line the skin covering the plate. The animals radiate tremendous amounts of body heat through their "hot plates," which they use to melt their tunnels in ice and to hunt their favorite prey: penguins.
A pack of ice borers will cluster under a penguin and melt the ice and snow it's standing on. When the hapless bird sinks into the slush, the ice borers attack, dispatching it with bites of their sharp incisors. They then carve it up and carry its flesh back to their burrows, leaving behind only webbed feet, a beak, and some feathers. "They travel through the ice at surprisingly high speeds," says Pazzo, "much faster than a penguin can waddle."
Pazzo's discovery may also help solve a long-standing Antarctic mystery: What happened to the heroic polar explorer Phillipe Poisson, who disappeared in Antarctica without a trace in 1837? "I wouldn't rule out the possibility that a big pack of ice borers got him," says Pazzo. "I've seen what these things do to emporer penguins -- it isn't pretty -- and emporers can be as much as four feet tall. Poisson was about 5 foot 6. To the ice borers, he would have looked like a big penguin."
War of the Worlds... (Score:1, Interesting)
comes to mind. Not a scientific hoax per se, but it had enough believers to cause mass panic.
Re:Nonsense! (Score:1, Interesting)
nothing is more P than experiencing Q
we can imagine Q
if we can imagine Q then experiencing Q is more P
to experience Q then R must exist
since nothing is more P than experiencing Q then R must exist
In other words, BULLSHIT!
Re:Project Alpha (Score:4, Interesting)
That's true of most of the things that Randi "debunks" (for lack of a better word), but not really in Project Alpha. Project Alpha involved deliberately deceiving the researchers to show that their scientific controls were not strong enough.
For example:
During one type of telepathy test, a subject would be given a sealed envelope containing a picture drawn from a target pool. Left alone with the envelope, the subject would subsequently surrender the envelope to the experimenter, who would examine it for signs of tampering. The subject would then announce his selection for the target pool. This series of tests was quite successful â" though not overly so, because the boys realized that 100 percent might be suggestive of trickery. They purposely minimized their success. The method was easy. Since the envelope was âoesealedâ only with a few staples, they removed them, peeked, and then replaced the staples through the original holes! In one case, Michael lost two staples, and to cover this he opted to open the envelope himself upon confronting the experimenter. The breach of protocol was accepted. The subject had been allowed to shape the experiment.
Project Alpha was more about finding weaknesses in the testing protocols of the researchers. In fact, if you read the link, Project Alpha largely began because the researchers in question did not take Randi's advice on how to properly control for fraud and deception in such experiments. It is true that experimenter bias is a factor, but the spotlight here was on the shoddy test designs and poor protocols.
Re:My favorite (or least favorite) (Score:2, Interesting)
However, I think there is a two fold fix here
1. Nothing like the threat of having all of your money and control taken away to get you to start behaving. I think there is no better way to get things fixed than to threaten the very existance of these medical insurance companies and pharma companies. Better to behave and stay afloat than to keep up your greedy antics and lose it all. These companies need to have their backs broken if things are to get any better.
2. Nothing like government healthcare to convince people that there is a better way.
Kensington Runestone (Score:3, Interesting)
The Kensington Runestone [wikipedia.org] is an intriguing item in my neck of the woods. It's largely considered a hoax these days, but there will always be believers. It's pretty elaborate for a hoax if it is one, causing a century of controversy.
Re:Pride Breeds Ignorance (Score:4, Interesting)
The British aren't alone in this. China, for instace, tries to make the case that Peking Man (Homo erectus pekinensis), a real hominid, is the direct ancestor of the modern Chinese race, while the rest of us are lower on the tree, coming from Africa.
Japanese also have an exaggerated sense of their own antiquity and separateness. Shinichi Fujimura made a career out of planting and then "discovering" Stone Age artifacts and fossils.
Re:How about "hoaxes" later found to be authentic (Score:3, Interesting)
Or if i'm wrong, please provide source material that proves your claim.
Cyrus Gordon's analysis of both the Vinland Map and the Paraiba Inscription are in his book Riddles in History. I don't have my own copy, so I am working from memory on this.
Part of the evidence he presents is that the encypherment scheme was not known until it was archaeologically found in Turkey a few years before he wrote the book.
The Paraiba Inscription translation he presents in the book is not exactly the same as the one provided at your link. He states the encyphered message in the Paraiba Inscription is "We have been saved from death. Trust only in YH." This runs counter to some of the text of the inscription, so the author did not want it publicly stated.
I forget the translation of the encyphered message in the Vinland Map, but it was the more usual author's identity and religious message.
BTW, while many who study this kind of document regard spelling errors as evidence of a hoax, Gordon regarded it as possible evidence of a poorly encyphered message with some letter(s) being forced into place.
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.
Re:Intelligent Design? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, no, you'd have to take out the phrase "best explained", since ID basically hinges on the idea that design is the ONLY possible explanation for certain phenomena. That's their entire case - "such and such is too complex to have evolved, ergo DESIGNER!".
That's a bit watered-down. ID-ers argue that everything from the Bacterial Flagellum to the eyeball is irreducibly complex. That implies, at the very least, that the bacterial flagellum was designed in it's current form, and that the half-dozen various major types of eyeballs were all designed in their current form. The implication is that this "designer" creates things the way he wants them, and that any major changes in species cannot happen without outside interference.
At the very least they are saying that speciation doesn't happen without interference, which is essentially the same thing as saying that "god" creates species. I may have been a bit extreme with my earlier summation, but it's fairly close to what their actual argument is. And I was certainly a lot closer than "edsousas" claim that ID "only defends that randomness was not a factor in the beginning of universe and life on Earth".
Sure. Let me reword my earlier statement then:
No, ID says "life was designed and constantly redesigned until it was finally designed in its current form".
Better? :)
It's semantics. Whether this "designer" created earlier versions or not is irrelevant, as long as you keep claiming that he's still designing. If I say that engineers at IBM designed the P3, that doesn't mean they didn't also design the P4 "in it's current form". It just means they made an earlier version before they made the new one. I'm still not allowing for the possibility of the P3 evolving into the P4 through natural selection.
And yes, I know that analogy probably sucks, but it's the best I can do at the moment ...
Re:Pride Breeds Ignorance (Score:2, Interesting)
Scary if true. Unfortunately, a lot of Chinese (not all of course, I'm talking politics, not race) are becoming very nationalistic and developing a sense of their own inherent superiority. As they become a dominant economic and military power, enough might start believing the Peking Man idea.
One of the ideas (if I understand correctly) behind the Aryan Master Race idea that the Nazis had was that the Germanic people were descended from an Atlantean god race, while Jews and others were descended from apes. They wanted to purify their blood by ridding themselves of all non-German genes, thus purifying and perfecting the Aryan race. With an idea like the Peking Man, the same sort of thing is possible. It is wholly unscientific, but that won't stop tons of people from believing it. I mean, look at the old European idea of the White Man's Burden and all the Americans who think they are somehow exceptional in the world.