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The Greatest Scientific Hoaxes?
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?
It is not really that good of a hoax. The argumentations are really poor, and anyone with three live neurons can see through it.
That IDers have been so successfull (in the US) means little more that the people they have managed to convince are dumb.
Saying that the big bang, or fish turning into men, or fossils being millions of years old seems like a hoax. None of it is observable or repeatable. Saying that watching a butterfly change/adapt to a new environment equals men evolving from monkeys or fish, is like comparing apples to potatoes. Sure, they're both round and grow, but really, that's about it.
I do understand that most of you who believe in evolution will never even consider creationism. Not because it lacks credibility, but because your presuppositions are most likely already ingrained in your head and no amount of evidence will sway you. It really goes both ways. Both sides are thick headed. But, for those who aren't so thick headed and are interested in expanding their little box, here's a starting point to some research.
https://www.csm.org.uk/faqs.php