Hoaxes

[anshirk]

I thought these were good to post. It's actually kind of funny that people fell for these. Especially the 3rd one. I think they forgot about the Yeti theory.

Top 10 Science Hoaxes
By the Science Channel
We've all fallen for an April Fool's joke before, despite our best efforts to be impervious to shenanigans. At worst, we look silly at the office for an afternoon. In the case of these hoaxes, however, much more was at stake. Take a tour through some of history's most outrageous science hoaxes!

10. The Nacirema tribe
The Nacirema were supposedly a tribe of people living in North America, as described by Horace Miner in his anthropological paper "Body Ritual among the Nacirema," published in 1956. It was actually a satire of everyday American life as it revolves around personal grooming, bathroom habits and body image. Nacirema is American spelled backward.

9. The disappearing blonde gene
Every generation or so, an alarm is sounded over a report that natural blondes will soon go the way of the dodo due to the shrinking number of people carrying the recessive blonde gene. Often attributed to the World Health Organization, or WHO, these reports have appeared in the media as far back as 1865 and as recently as 2006 when the story was featured on "The Colbert Report." The WHO has never conducted such a study, and most geneticists would agree that blondes are in no danger of going extinct.

8. "Say no to cake"
In 1995, British faux news show "Brass Eye" conducted an "investigative report" on a street drug they invented called "cake," claiming it affected an area of the brain called "Shatner's Bassoon." Members of the media lashed out against cake, and the British government even took the matter to Parliament.

7. Alien autopsy
English cameraman Ray Santilli claimed to own footage of an alien autopsy performed after the 1947 Roswell UFO incident. FOX aired a portion of it on television in 1995, but in 2006, Santilli confessed that the film was a "reconstruction." It had been shot in a London flat using fabricated alien bodies filled with animal entrails and raspberry jam.

6. The Turk
It was nearly impossible to beat this chess-playing automaton of 1770, named for its exotic, turban-clad appearance. It was even toured across Europe and North America. Many decades passed before it was revealed that the Turk was actually operated by a human chess whiz concealed amongst the complicated clockwork machinery that supposedly powered the Turk from the cabinet below.

5. The Fiji mermaid (aka "Feejee mermaid")
This artifact in P.T. Barnum's museum was advertised as a gorgeous topless siren, but was actually the mummified corpse of an ape sewn to a fish.

4. Rabbit mother
In 18th-century England, Mary Toft convinced doctors she had given birth to 16 rabbits. "A Short Narrative of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbets [sic]" was written by King George's surgeon about her case. People stopped serving rabbit stew. Once the hoax was discovered, the medical community suffered great embarrassment.

3. Dihydrogen monoxide
In 1989, a group of college students circulated flyers around the University of California, Santa Cruz campus warning of the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide contamination. The movement later spawned a Web site noting the widespread use of this hazardous compound despite being known to cause severe burns, corrosion of metals and even global warming. Many people have signed petitions urging the government to ban dihydrogen monoxide -- obviously unaware that this is just another term for plain old water.

2. Archaeoraptor
Unearthed in China in 1997, this creature was heralded as the "missing link" between dinosaurs and birds in a 1999 National Geographic article. The magazine later had to retract the article when it was discovered that the archaeoraptor specimen was a forgery, composed of fossilized bones from a known species of bird's upper half and a dinosaur's lower half.

1. Piltdown man
The skull and jawbone fragments collected from a gravel pit in Piltdown, England in 1912 were believed to represent the "missing link" between humans and apes, and were even introduced as evidence of human evolution in the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. Although the Piltdown man's authenticity was questioned by several leading scientists from the time of its discovery, it was not until 1953 that it was revealed as a forgery, consisting of an orangutan jaw and a modern human skull. Considered one of the greatest anthropological hoaxes of all time, the Piltdown man significantly influenced the study of human evolution for more than 40 years.

This post has been edited by anshirk on Mar 31 2009, 02:23 AM

[Lady Chadwick]

I love the dihydrogen monoxide! Anybody can write it out to see it is H20. I love urban legends too like hoaxes. I never found out if the Amityville Horror was a hoax.

[flea dip]

Beyonce Amazed By Hacked Vocals Prank

Wednesday, E! News revealed that the entire story was a hoax and even found the person who edited the track to sound as if Beyonce could not sing.

A sourced named Matt from an upstart blog admitted that the Beyonce vocals were a joke. "Yes I created them, and they are fake," he told E! News.

Thursday, Beyonce also confirmed the scam to Today Show host Matt Lauer.

"It's so amazing that someone in their home can do a little prank and it can end up on these major radio stations," Beyonce told Lauer.

To read the entire story please click the link at top.

[flea dip]

I'm also using this thread for urban legends, myths, etc.

Someone at another site said this page has a list of myths about comic books

Comic Book Legends Revealed History

The book has SIXTY-FIVE new legends that are not featured on this list!

To see if the legends below are true or false, you have to click on the link!

[flea dip]

Balloon-boy mom: Entire family in on hoax

Affidavit: Mom told deputies balloon saga was hoax

Mom admits to "Balloon Boy" hoax: court record

Parents in Balloon Case to Surrender

The mother of a Colorado boy thought to be aboard a homemade helium balloon has admitted to investigators the whole thing was a hoax, according to a court document made public on Friday.

The local sheriff had already said the October 15 "Balloon Boy" incident was a publicity stunt and expected felony charges to be filed against the 6-year-old boy's parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene.

Charges in balloon hoax delayed until next week

Balloon-boy hoax shows Richard Heene is fine with sacrificing family for publicity

Balloon Boy Hoax

Balloon boy 'hoax' fooled plenty

Fallout from Balloon Boy Hoax

[flea dip]

10 most heinous hoaxes on the Net

Excerpts (visit link above to read whole list)-

Most online hoaxes are mildly annoying, and a few are hilarious. But propagating a false AMBER Alert over Twitter? Plastering an epilepsy forum with flashing images? Not cool. We'll take a look at some of the Web's most heinous hoaxes over the years, and sprinkle in a handful of amusing ones.

Twitter/Facebook AMBER alert
The AMBER Alert system — a child abduction alert system broadcast over radio, TV, satellite radio and other media whenever a child is abducted — was created after 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted and murdered in Arlington, Texas, in 1996. Recently, some users have also broadcast alerts over text messages and Twitter.

Last July, someone tweeted an AMBER Alert for a 3-year-old girl. People responded by spreading the alert as fast and as far as they could. It turned out to be a false alarm. A similar sequence of panicked, rapid-fire tweeting followed another false AMBER Alert occurred in September.

How heinous is this? Though we're glad that no abduction occurred in either case, there's a disturbing "cry wolf" aspect to the story — what happens the next time a real AMBER Alert goes out? For eroding the value of a potentially vital line of defense against child abduction, this hoax sets the platinum standard for repugnance.

Bonsai Kitten
Paging PETA: In 2001, a group of enterprising MIT grad students put together a little Web site called Bonsai Kitten, which detailed how to grow a kitten in a jar for aesthetic purposes.

The site included tips on how to insert a feeding tube and a waste removal tube, and where to drill air-holes "prior to kitten insertion." It also included a gallery of pictures of "Bonsai Kittens" and a guestbook filled with love (and hate) mail.

The site was so realistic that it caused uproar among kitty enthusiasts and animal rights activists (including the Humane Society), and it eventually gained enough notoriety that the FBI investigated the site's authenticity (or lack thereof). But since no kittens were actually harmed in the perpetration of this hoax, we think it tends more toward the hilarious than the heinous.

Save Toby
Taking a cue from Bonsai Kitten, a site called Save Toby used a creepy premise to throw animal rights activists into a tizzy.

The Save Toby saga began in the early days of 2005, when the site announced that its owners had found a wounded rabbit (which they named Toby) and nursed it back to health — but then declared that if they did not receive $50,000 in donations for the care of Toby by July 30, 2005, they would be forced to cook and eat the rabbit.

The owners asserted that the site was not a hoax: They would, indeed, cook and eat Toby if they did not receive the money. Animal rights activists cried "animal cruelty," to which the owners responded that they were doing nothing cruel to Toby — in fact, they were trying to save him. Supposedly, the site collected more than $24,000 before Bored.com bought it, and Toby was saved. (By the way, possible inspirations from pre-Internet days for the Save Toby hoaxers aren't hard to find.) But holding a bunny hostage for ransom? Real classy, fellas.

Work-at-home scams
Like the Nigerian money scams, work-at-home come-ons are heavily reported in the media. Yet people still fall for them. Most people know that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. But desperation or greed makes some people forget.

Work-at-home scams promise you the opportunity to make quick, easy money from the comfort of your house; all you need is a computer — which, of course, you have. Any number of activities may be your ticket to riches — stuffing envelopes, transcribing, medical billing — but first you need to do send the scammer some money for preliminary materials. Except, of course, that materials will never come, and you'll have lost your money, and you still won't have a job.

Heinous? Such scams aren't life threatening, but they can certainly put a dent in your savings — especially if you fall for them more than once. And the fact that they prey primarily on unemployed or underemployed people who aren't exactly swimming in discretionary income (it's hard to imagine Warren Buffett jumping at the chance to make money by stuffing envelopes) increases their vileness quotient at least a little. Remember, if prospective employers ask you to send money before you start working for them ... it's probably a scam.

[flea dip]

Following story was also posted to the Video Game thread in the Outlook forum:

Mass: We Pray: Yeah, It Was a Hoax

We called it: The Mass: We Pray website that purported to offer a new videogame system that let people go to church every day without leaving their house is in fact a hoax.

Earlier this week we stumbled upon a website advertising a new game system called Mass: We Pray that promised to let truly devout gamers take part in worship-friendly virtual activities like Lighting Prayer Candles, Transubstantiation and Genuflecting. As elaborate and convincing as it was, it was also very weird and most people were fairly certain it was a hoax; some particularly astute observers (ahem) went further and predicted that it would turn out to be another stealth promotion for Dante's Inferno.

And you know what? I was right! The company behind Mass: We Pray said it would begin taking preorders on the system today but clicking the preorder button takes you instead to an all-new trailer for Dante's Inferno, EA's upcoming epic journey into Hell. Actually, it's an age gate for the trailer which takes a little bit of the zing out of the experience, but the net result is the same: Another look at EA's interpretation of the general unpleasantness that is eternal damnation.

[flea dip]

Salvation Army left short of cash by fake SC check

CHARLESTON, S.C. – The Salvation Army thought it had received a grand gift ahead of Christmas — a $25,000 check. But the donation turned out to be an expensive hoax that may force the charity to cut back on winter assistance for the needy.

Investigators said Wednesday that more than a dozen Charleston-area charities received fake checks before Christmas purporting to be gifts from a genuine local company.

None of the other charities cashed theirs, but the Salvation Army deposited its check. It went ahead and spent some of the money on food and toys for about 100 families, counting on the check to clear.

The bank called two days before Christmas to say the check had bounced, and the agency was left with less money than planned to help the needy this cold January.

"It's a matter of counting on that so we would have a cushion," said Kiki Cooper, the director of development for the local chapter. She said the single check represented about 10 percent of what the Salvation Army typically raises during the holiday season.

The check and accompanying letter appeared to come from Force Protection Inc., an armored vehicle manufacturer in Ladson. The letter said the company had enjoyed success and wanted to share with local charities.

Other charities called the company about the unsolicited donations and Force Protection sent out a memo Dec. 17 — the same day the Salvation Army deposited their check — saying it had been the victim of a holiday scam.

Officers were investigating but there had been no arrests in the case as of Wednesday, said Maj. John Clark of the Charleston County Sheriff's Department.

Tommy Pruitt, a spokesman for Force Protection, said the checks were written on a company bank account that had been closed months ago. He said he did not want to speculate on who might be responsible.

Cooper said the check arrived at the busiest time of year for the charity.

"People say why don't you check every check? We have old ladies who send us a dollar and we're talking at this time of year we have anywhere from 500 to 1,000 checks coming in a week," she said.

Cooper said people were already offering to help offset the loss.

"We've actually had a couple of people walking in dropping off $20. We have that at Christmas, never in January," she said.

Nationally, the Salvation Army raises about $500 million each holiday season — about 40 percent of its yearly donations.