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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?
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.
proud caffeine whore
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
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.
The memory of water was a famous hoax, at least in France, 15-20 years ago, although I'm not sure it's exactly an hoax. Another famous hoax was when a government-appointed researcher declared in 1986 that the radioactive cloud coming from Chernobyl had stopped at the eastern French borders, and thus the official policy was to not take any of the precautions that other countries took regarding grown food or the prevention of cancer. Isn't spoon bending a hoax as well?
You just got troll'd!
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
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
That nobody has mentioned the Museum of Hoaxes, which documents all these and more. Much, much more.
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.
[ ]Half Empty [ ]Half Full [x]Twice as big as it needs to be
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 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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In case anybody missed it, the "Church" of Scientology successfully censored Slashdot. Using the DMCA, which is currently being praised on the front page of Slashdot right now.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Not a theory, a theorem. In mathematics, a theorem is a statement that has been rigorously been proven to be true. A theory is the body of work associated with a particular mathematical subject e.g. number theory, group theory, set theory. Thanks to Andrew Wiles, Fermat's Last Theorem is a theorem of number theory.
Before Andrew Wiles proved it, it was technically a conjecture. However, it became known as Fermat's Last Theorem because of the way Fermat worked. It wasn't unusual for Fermat to write down mathematical statements and then claim to have a proof without actually stating the proof. In fact, at the time of Fermat, it was quite common for mathematicians generally to keep their discoveries secret.
Over the years since his death, proofs were discovered for all of the other statements that Fermat made. Therefore, they turned out to all be theorems. It was thus natural to assume that he wasn't lying when he wrote the infamous marginal note and Fermat's Last Theorem was so-called because it was the last one left without a proof.
By the time it became clear that a proof was not going to be easily forthcoming, the tradition of calling FLT FLT had already set in. Wiles' proof is certainly not the proof that Fermat said he had - it builds on far too much maths that was discovered after Fermat's death. I think the consensus is that Fermat thought he had a proof but there was an error in it.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe