A Paper On Believing The Biggest Scientific
Hoaxes, Big Time
by Edissy Claudine Ramos
Sponge. That is what we are. We
readily believe what we hear and what we see, be it from words of mouth of nosy
neighbors or classmates, status updates, tweets, pictures, and even
advertisements. We are easily swayed by media, naive and gullible-enough to
believe anything spoon-fed to us. Maybe I am over-generalizing, but come think
of it, when we were still young enough to think for ourselves, we were
naturally inclined to believe in new ideas or information presented to us. We
believed in everything our parents said and what our teachers told us. We believed
in our moms when they told us that the police will snatch us if we do not
behave properly. We assumed everything to be true, even the manipulative
childish lies of our older siblings.
Nowadays, some of us are
becoming less and less of a sponge. Through time and with age and experience,
some of us are thinking more critically and judging more carefully. However,
with our relentless pursuit for expanding science, some scientists ‘abuse’ our
cravings for explanations, for discoveries - for something to believe in. Below
are three of the greatest (in my point of view) scientific hoaxes that fooled
many people.
The Fiji (FeJee, FeeJee) Mermaid is a patchwork comprising the head and torso of a monkey and the lower-half of a fish. It was one of P. T. Barnum’s most popular hoaxes. In his autobiography, The Life of P. T. Barnum, he described how he perpetrated the mermaid hoax. “This was the easiest part of the experiment. How to modify general incredulity in the existence of mermaids, so far as to awaken curiosity to see and examine the specimen, was now the all-important question.” (Barnum, 1855)
The Beringer’s Fossils also known as Beringer’s Lying Stones are limestones carved by Beringer’s jealous colleagues into various improbable shapes planted for Beringer to ‘discover’. Beringer claimed that the stones have been chiseled by the hand of God to test the faith of mankind. “ "For whatever power has fashioned [them] the agent...has surpassed his limits by employing the art of writing, and has traced the characters of several languages, but especially those of the sacred tongue, so exactly in accordance with the rules of Hebrew orthography that they were adjudged in the opinion of experts to extol in eloquent titles the most holy name, power, and wisdom of God, and thus perhaps manifest the one and only author of these wondrous stones." (Beringer,1963)
The Piltdown Man’s Skull was
found by a collector named Charles Dawson, and it was said to represent the
missing link proving the evolutionary relationship between ape and human. It
was then revealed as human cranium attached to the jawbone of an orangutan. “Piltdown
is the most famous forgery in anthropology and perhaps even in science.”
(Spencer,1990)
These three examples may seem
hilarious or extremely asinine now but at the time they were released, many
believed that even the scientific community was fooled. Hoaxes like these are
dangerous shenanigans, setting science back rather than advancing it. So before
believing in some discoveries or explanations, let out the inner-scientists in
us. Be a critical-thinker, rational and informed by evidence, while maintaining
an open-mind.
References:
Barnum,
P.T., 1855. Barnum on the FeJee Mermaid, The Life of P.T. Barnum.
http://chnm.gmu.edu/lostmuseum/lm/182/.
March 9,2014.
Beringer,
Johann, 1963. The Lying Stones, Translated and Annotated by M.Jahn and D.Woolf.
The Regents of the University of California.
Spencer, Frank, 1990. Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery. Oxford University
Press. 1990.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/250/4984/1162.extract. March 9, 2014
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