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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?
What massive scientific hoaxes/jokes have other people witnessed?
E-meter comes to mind.
My work here is dung.
It's such a great hoax that there are still people who believe it! :-)
Why...this is no poll? Dammit.
har har
Ville / Varuste.net
This list is incomplete. I would provide a proof but this comment box is too small to hold it.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Please someone tell me it's a hoax.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Really?
Where?
Homer J.
It was thought up by Charles Darwin and it goes something like this: In the beginning we were all fish, okay, swimming around in the water. And then one day a couple of fish had a retard baby, and the retard baby was different, so it got to live. So retard fish goes on to make more retard babies, and then one day a retard baby fish crawled out of the ocean with its... mutant fish hands, and it had butt-sex with a squirrel or something, and made this retard fish-squirrel, and then that had a retard baby which was a monkey-fish-frog, and then this monkey-fish-frog had butt-sex with that monkey; that monkey had a mutant retard baby that screwed another monkey and that made you. So there you go. You're the retarded offspring of five monkeys having butt-sex with a fish-squirrel!! Congratulations!
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.....
Let's see. First of all, evolution of course. That means that astronomy, nuclear physics, geology, paleontology and archaeology are wrong too, which (among others) invalidates Quantum Theory and General Relativity.
Special Relativity may be correct since the Bible doesn't say anything about the speed of light.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
No, it isn't science, it's philosophy and as such isn't a hoax.
It pretends to be science, so it pretends to be a hoax, which means it isn't really one, so it is true.
Don't dare to dispute me, I remember my Mathematical Logic classes!
thegodmovie.com - watch it
HeadOn
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.
Question everything
Better to line the bottom of the cliffs with PETA members to break the fall of the poor creatures.
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? =)
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Slow gradual change just can't be rationalized given the six thousand year age of the Earth. It has to be the most elaborate hoax in history.
"Battery operation is inherently selftimed, in that when the battery dies, the FryBaby output stops." Someone had fun writing this one. :-D
Don't worry, they were stunt lemmings.
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.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
"Why do you hate Norway so much?"
Easy. He's Swedish.
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.
Piltdown Man is alive and well Sincerely, Piltdown Man
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDOn639E114
There's a difference between fact and belief, although the less intellectually honest people will try to say that their beliefs are equivalent to fact.
It's easy to distinguish them. If it comes from a book, then it's a fact.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
The global warming of ducks is known as roasting and isn't a hoax. I have seen it happen with my very own eyes.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
You misspelled misspelled.
Fata viam invenient.
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Technical Info: Nuclear fission is the source of electricity from nuclear power. Along with the well known energy discharge from fission, a second discharge occurs, called the tachyon impulse, which, unlike the rest of the released energy, cannot be altered. This tachyon impulse gives all of the energy produced from fission a special signature, which is immutable due to the law of conservation of engergy. Consequently, all electricity from nuclear power is marked with this signature.