Not even science can get it right all the time, and sometimes even scientists can get tricked – or do the tricking. Here are the top 10 science hoaxes ever!
1. Piltdown Man
Believed to be the “missing link” between humans and apes, the Piltdown man was “discovered” by Charles Dawson in 1912. Dawson claimed to have found the unusual bones in a gravel pit, and they were assembled by a British Museum paleontologist. However, 40 years later scientists proved that it was a fraud attempt.
2. Archaeoraptor
A more recent hoax made its way into the 1999 National Geographic claiming to be another “missing link” between dinosaurs and birds – or maybe not. The “fossil” claimed to have been found in China was actually real fossils, but of all different species that had been rearranged to construct the archaeoraptor.
3. El Chupacabra
This hoax was actually more of a misunderstanding and belongs alongside Big Foot legends. El Chupacabra was a savage chicken-eater who terrorized villages. Or not so much, the real chicken-eater was a hungry hairless wolf.
4. Rabbit Mother
18th-century English woman, Mary Toft had doctors convinced that had given birth to 16 rabbits. She did gain some celebrity and even had a short narrative written by King George’s surgeon “A Short Narrative of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbits.” The story even put people off from eating rabbit stew. The hoax was eventually discovered, and the medical community had to suffer through its embarrassment.
5. The Fiji Mermaid
Part of P.T. Barnum’s museum, the Fiji Mermaid was advertised to be a beautiful topless siren. This probably got plenty of men’s attention, but the actual mermaid was only the mummified corpse of an ape sewn onto a fish.
6. The Turk
The 1770 advancement in technology was a chess playing fiend that nobody could beat. Called the Turk, after a tour across Europe the robot chess player was discovered to just be a chess master in a robot disguise. No artificial intelligence, just fraud!
7. Alien Autopsy
This is far from the only hoax surrounding the 1947 Roswell Incident, but it is one of the most interesting. Cameraman Ray Santilli claimed to own footage of an alien autopsy from Roswell, and a portion of it was even aired on Fox. Santilli confessed to the hoax in 2006, explaining that the “alien” entrails were actually a combination of sheep brains, raspberry jam, and chicken innards.
8. Say No to Cake
A 1995 fake British news cast called Brass Eye gave an investigative report on a new street drug they made up – naming it “cake” and claiming it affected the “Shatner’s Bassoon” of the brain. This might be hard to believe, but the real media believed it! They reported against cake and the British government took it all the way to Parliament.
9. Disappearing Blonde Gene
The belief that natural blonds will go extinct before long is brought up every few generations, with the most recent scare happening in 2002. News organizations including BBC and CNN quoted a fake report from the World Health Organization stating that blond hair was caused by a dying recessive gene – but obviously the World Health Organization never conducted the study.
10. The Nacirema Tribe
Horace Miner published an anthropological paper in 1956 describing the Nacirema tribe living in North America. Miner described strange rituals including “scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument” and “inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.” However, the “anthropological” paper was actually a satire describing American life – Nacirema is “american” spelled backwards and the strange rituals include shaving and brushing teeth.
Human and scientific curiosity can be taken advantage of, leaving us shaking our heads when the hoax comes to light. Still, these aren’t the first or the last time frauds make it into the scientific community.
source: http://www.gizmocrazed.com/2014/02/top-10-science-hoaxes/2/#ixzz33HgfFbNK
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