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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.
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.
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.....
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.
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
I don't believe anything is impossible.
With the possible exception of skiing through a revolving door.
I've found that nurturing one's Zen nature is vital to dealing with technology. Violence is pretty damn useful too.
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