Hoaxes

"Be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out."
--Groucho Marx

Crop Circles

Piltdown Man

The Piltdown Chicken

The Alien Autopsy Film

Fake "Memoirs"

UFO Hoaxes

Frank Kaufmann, MJ-12 Documents

The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

The Man Who Never Was

The CBS Killian Memos

The Loch Ness Monster (Nessie)

Bigfoot

Vinland Map

The Voynich Manuscript

The Shroud of Turin

Jammal Noah's Ark Hoax

RAND Computer Model

Giant Skeleton

We now turn to another form of unusual occurrence - the hoax. Unlike real scientific errors or self-delusions, a hoax involves deliberate deception. A hoax is intended to fool and deceive. The motivations for hoaxing vary widely; the only way to find out about that is to ask the hoaxer.

History is riddled with classic hoaxes. For those who are interested in finding out more about hoaxes, try The Museum of Hoaxes. Alex Boese's collection of hoax history is worth looking at. His book by the same name is also very worthwhile.

Crop Circles

Crop circles are a fascinating phenomenon - intricate patterns appear in fields of grain. They are made up of circles, lines and other geometric forms. They once garnered a LOT of attention, but have lately fallen off in interest, largely because two Englishmen, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, admitted to making the circles for over 12 years. They had pulled off one of history's longer-running hoaxes.

We viewed a few video segments about crop circles, including one that demonstrated that three guys who knew what they were doing and equipped with a few simple implements and a preplanned design could easily execute a large and complex design in under six hours.

The following sites will give you all you ever wanted to know about crop circles and then some.

In the context of our class, crop circles provide some examples of how to approach such weird things.

As the crop circle phenomenon developed in England, and number of people calling themselves "cerealogists" began to "study" the circles. They decided that the circles must be the work of super-intelligent aliens that were visiting Earth. These "experts" were convinced that it was simply not possible for humans to make these figures. Then - Doug and Dave confessed to the hoax, and even demonstrated how they did it. This, as one might guess, immediately spawned legions of copycat hoaxers, some of whom styled themselves as artists, or circle-makers. Patterns got more and more complex, some being really nice designs.

This was not good news for the cerealogists. It became rather obvious that most, if not all, crop circles were really made by humans, whether strictly for amusement or for the sake of art.

Cerealogists did not give up. They maintained that, while most circles were hoaxes, there were still a few that were "genuine", meaning that aliens made them.

How to approach this?? Is it necessary, or even useful, to invoke a supernatural explanation here? Remember this premise: The fact that you can't explain something does NOT mean that is supernatural. It more likely means that you do not have enough information to figure it out.

One claim to be skeptical of is one that asserts that "humans could not have done this." Is it really impossible for humans to make crop stalks lie down like that? The artists and hoaxers have shown that humans are perfectly capable of doing it. How about the complex designs? Humans can make those perfectly well. A strange crop circle showed up in South Africa; it somehow resembled a BMW emblem. In fact, it WAS a BMW emblem; BMW had paid a circle-maker to do it.

Does the acknowledged fact that most crop circles are human-made (art or hoaxes), does that prove that aliens are not responsible for at least a few of them? The surprising answer is NO. You can't prove the negative. However, there is no need to postulate aliens when humans will do. Cerealogists are still looking for "genuine" crop circles, which means those made by some supernatural force. Seems like a futile effort.

Consider the Hume approach: Which would be more miraculous - aliens making the circles or humans making them?

Take the Occam's Razor approach. Which explanation - aliens or hoaxers - requires the most assumptions?

Piltdown Man

Piltdown Man is the premier scientific hoax. In 1912, a skull was unearthed at Piltdown in England. It appeared to be that of a creature somewhere between an ape and a man and got called Piltdown Man. It was really a composite - a hoax. The skull was actually that of a prehistoric human but the jaw bone was from a modern orangutan. The bones had been treated to make them look old. Remember that the techniques we have for dating such relics did not exist in 1912. Forty-one years later, in 1953, a team at the British Museum performed rigorous tests and exposed the hoax.

For decades many people have speculated on who might have done it. There is a large list of suspects, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. No one knows for sure, but there are some things one can conclude. First, the orangutan jawbone was treated to make it look older. This required someone with sufficient knowledge to realize it was necessary and to do it. Second, the fake skull had to be found if the hoax was to work at all. This suggests that the hoaxer was familiar with the digging being done at Piltdown. They either buried it where they knew the investigators would dig, or were able to subtly influence the dig sites to ensure that the fake would be discovered. These suggest (but don't prove) that it was an inside job.

The following web sites will provide excellent background and descriptions of this historic hoax.



The Piltdown Chicken

This one was found in China in 1999. The fossil appeared to be that of some creature that was a combination of a bird and a dinosaur; it had the body of a bird and the tail of a small dinosaur. National Geographic went all-out to announce the great discovery. Unfortunately, it was a hoax. A farmer, wanting some extra money, had made up a composite from parts of two different fossils and sold it to a dealer. It became a scientific sensation until Dr. Xu Xing discovered the deception. Read the story in the Museum of Hoaxes.



The Alien Autopsy Film

You may have heard of the "Alien Autopsy" film, which purports to show an autopsy on the corpse of an alien found at the "flying saucer crash" site near Roswell, New Mexico. The film appeared in 1995, alleged to have been hidden away for decades by the cinematographer who filmed it. It was shot (supposedly) in 1947 on 16mm black-and-white movie film with a Bell & Howell Filmo camera. Remember, creatures of the 21st century, that video recording did not exist in 1947; movie film was the only moving picture medium.

The opinion of CSICOP at the time is interesting. Read their story from 1995.

Defenders of the film insisted that it is genuine, while many others showed evidence that it is a hoax. Fox, the network that aired the film, seems to have had the last word. Check out this reference. This seems to settle it.

New Mexicans for Science and Reason (nmsr.org) Annual Best and Worst Awards for 2006

The whole idea of UFO investigation, if indeed there is any scientific value in it at all, is not helped by hoaxes such as this.

Fake "Memoirs"

Are any of the following books familiar?

All were presented as really interesting autobiographical memoirs written by people who had some amazing experiences. There's only one problem: all three were fiction. They were hoax memoirs. The first one (Frey) was exposed in January 2006 and the last two in February and March 2008. The degree of fictionalization varies, but none are truly autobiographical.

In the last case, author Margaret Seltzer (writing as Jones) executed an elaborate hoax, proving bogus materials, photos, letters and "siblings" to the publisher's fact checkers. On 5 March 2008 the Los Angeles Times said "No nonfiction publisher can afford serious fact-checking anymore; most do none at all." They also note that a simple novel (fiction) does not attract anywhere near the publicity and promotion that such a "memoir" will. The economics of the business provide a motivation for fakery.


UFO Hoaxes

Ask Google for "ufo hoaxes" or "ufo hoax photos" and you will get a LOAD of sites. If you read them, you will find some that defend UFO photos with claims similar to "There's no evidence that it is a hoax, so it must be genuine." If there is no evidence of hoax, there are two possibilities: either it is genuine OR it is a hoax good enough to escape detection. In this world of very capable image manipulation, a photograph by itself is not adequate. One research reference noted that, for any UFO claim to be seriously considered, you must rule out hoax. This is almost impossible to do now. Software like Adobe Photoshop is so good that really excellent results can be achieved. Look at this site and get a sample.

Another web site, "Experimental UFO Hoaxing, tells a story about UFOs and lack of critical thinking that all should read.

The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

This wonderful April Fool hoax was perpetrated by, of all organizations, the BBC. It was done on April 1, 1957 and is a classic. Follow this link to the Museum of Hoaxes to find out more and actually see this wonderful hoax.

The Man Who Never Was

This is one of the finest and most significant hoaxes in history. It had a very limited audience - the German military intelligence and command structure up to and including Hitler in World War II. The hoax was perpetrated by British Naval Intelligence people. Lt. Cmdr. Ewen Montagu, the chief hoaxer, told the story in 1953 in the book "The Man Who Never Was." Hollywood couldn't generate a better story.

The story of the hoax began in late 1942, when a young man died of pneumonia in London. His involvement in the hoax is almost too fantastic to believe.

At the same time, the Allied forces were seeing the requirement for taking Sicily from the Germans. It was serving as a base for attacking Allied supply convoys in the Mediterranean, resulting in serious losses in those convoys. What would be the target of an Allied invasion? Churchill himself later said that "anybody but a damn' fool would know it is Sicily." Montagu's project was to develop a hoax that would deceive the Germans into thinking that the Allied invasion would start somewhere else. But how to do that? The Germans were very thorough and checked everything very carefully.

The hoax entailed developing a plausible scenario that would deliver documents of significant military value to the Germans; the documents would, of course, be fake and constitute the payload of the hoax. The challenge was to make the scenario so perfectly believable that the Germans would accept the documents as genuine. The plot was given the code name "Operation Mincemeat."

The ultimate scenario can be summarized as follows.

  1. The Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Gen. Sir Archibald Nye, writes a letter to Gen. Sir Harold Alexander, who was commanding an army in Tunisia. This letter would be most sensitive and secret because it discussed Mediterranean operations and cover plans, along with a few other issues of interest to Gen. Alexander.
  2. This letter would be hand-carried to Africa by a Major William Martin of the Royal Marines.
  3. Because flying over enemy territory with sensitive material was prohibited, the Major's aircraft would avoid land until it reached Africa.
  4. Some accident occurs, the aircraft crashes at sea and all hands perish.
  5. Major Martin's body, still clutching the briefcase containing the letters he was carrying, washes up on the beach at Huelva, on the Atlantic coast of Spain. An overturned life raft is found in the same area.
  6. The body is found by a fisherman and turned over to authorities.
  7. After an autopsy, Major Martin is buried with full military honors in the Huelva cemetery.
  8. The Major's briefcase would later be returned to British diplomats in Spain and ultimately returned to England.
  9. German intelligence agents, active in Spain, would obtain copies of whatever documents Major Martin was carrying.
That was the plan. The actions of the Spanish were reasonably predictable, so the last steps were relatively certain.

Montagu and his team knew that, even though Spain was neutral in the war, the Abwehr (German intelligence service) was quite active there and that the Spanish were cooperative. This knowledge was important in the design of the scenario.

The letters Major Martin carried were carefully designed deceptive fakes intended to suggest that the Allied invasion would be aimed at Greece and Sardinia, NOT Sicily. The vehicle for their delivery was the stuff of legend: Major Martin was a completely fictitious character - the Man Who Never Was. He never existed. So - just who was it that washed ashore at Huelva? Remember that young man who died of pneumonia in London? Montagu needed a corpse of a young man to pose as Major Martin. After the body was discreetly (and legally) obtained, it was put in cold storage while the plot was developed. Montagu noted that Major Martin was the only man ever to join the Royal Marines after he was dead!

Major Martin did not die in an airplane accident - he was already dead! The body, fitted out as a Royal Marine major, was iced down in a special container, loaded aboard a British submarine, taken to a point offshore from Huelva and placed in the water. The onshore wind carried the body towards shore where the fisherman found it. After that the Spanish did exactly as Montagu had predicted.

It's a long and fascinating story. To sum it up, the hoax worked beyond Montagu's wildest dreams. It fooled everyone in the German command, including Hitler. That letter from Gen. Nye caused the Germans to split and dilute their defenses in a catastrophic way. An important Panzer division was diverted to Greece and a large amount of resources was expended in fortifying the area. A useful naval unit was sent to the Aegean, taking it out of action in Sicily. In the West, defensive efforts were diverted from Sicily to Sardinia and Corsica.

The seriously weakened defenses of Sicily were unable to withstand the huge Allied assault and collapsed fairly quickly. After a few days the Germans began to suspect something, as the invasion of Sicily continued and nothing was happening at Sardinia and Greece, but it was too late to recover.

The monstrous hoax had done its job perfectly; it caused the Germans to split their defenses across Europe, ensuring an Allied success at Sicily and saving thousands of Allied lives. The pen was mightier than the sword!

If you want to know the details of the care and planning that went into this memorable hoax, you need to read Montagu's book. Copies of it are available at Amazon and Abebooks.

The CBS Killian Memos

This is a story from September of 2004. We don't yet know all the details. The overall view is that CBS News was given some memos purporting to pertain to President Bush's National Guard service. After a few of days of analysis by bloggers, it became apparent that the memos as released by CBS were modern forgeries, not documents typed in 1973. The fake documents were an attempt to deceive (successful for a while) and are rightfully called a hoax. This hoax had as its ultimate target all of us - it appeared to be an attempt to influence the upcoming election. Before that deception could occur the hoaxer had to fool CBS News. Seems that was not difficult.

Some, but not all, details are reasonably well-known.

  1. CBS got the memos from one Bill Burkett, a former Texas Guardsman who strongly dislikes Mr. Bush.
  2. Mr. Burkett claims that he got the memos from someone else, who he refuses to identify.
  3. Mr. Burkett initially lied to CBS about his source for the documents.
  4. Document examiners engaged by CBS gave warnings about the authenticity of the documents.
  5. The memos can be shown to be fakes on the basis of typographical evidence alone. Analysis of the content is not necessary.
  6. CBS used the documents in their story in spite of the warnings.
  7. CBS defended the authenticity of the documents even as evidence of forgery piled up in the blogosphere.
  8. The documents are low-grade forgeries; the fakery was obvious.
  9. CBS issued a statement acknowledging that the documents might be fakes and apologizing for using them.

There are still important details that are not known.

  1. Who actually created the forged memos?
  2. Was Mr. Burkett aware that the memos were fake when he gave them to CBS?
  3. What was the motive for the hoax?
  4. Why were the documents such low-grade forgeries?
  5. Why did CBS fall for those low-grade fakes?
  6. Why did CBS continue to defend the memos after it became obvious that they were fakes?
We'll have to keep following the story to see if anyone can come up with any answers to these and other questions.

If you would like to see the fake memos for yourself, here they are.

Suggestion: study them closely to see if you can see the signs that screamed HOAX to those with enough background to recognize them.
For reference, here is a Bush personnel record released from DOD archives; it WAS prepared on a typewriter. Look at the format carefully.

For deep details of the typographical analysis, see Dr. Joseph Newcomer's excellent dissection of the typography of the memos. He demonstrates quite scientifically that the memos were forgeries. He actually outlines, then uses, the scientific method to do it.

Hoaxing is not dead yet!!

Critical Thinking About Fake Documents

Here we have two examples of hoaxes involving forged documents- Operation Mincemeat and the phoney CBS memos. How could a skeptical approach work in such cases?

It seems that the German intelligence service was VERY skeptical; they had to be careful lest they be taken in by planted false information. They were quite careful to check everything, even the published British casualty lists, to be sure every detail checked out. In the end everything did check out and they were unable to dent the story of Major Martin, so they accepted the documents as genuine. In this case, the hoax was so skillfully and perfectly executed that even careful analysis did not reveal it. The success of the hoax depended upon that flawless execution.

The CBS memos are another thing. Those documents are not only forgeries, they are lousy forgeries. Typographical analysis quickly showed that the memos were NOT prepared with a 1970s typewriter. The forgery was well-established within a few days of the initial broadcast. Here there is no question that critical analysis by CBS would have revealed the hoax in a few days. That's why this hoax is interesting - it succeeded, seriously damaging and embarrassing CBS News in spite of the low-grade forgery. Here the success of the hoax depended upon the target (CBS News) being sloppy enough that low quality fake documents would get past them.

One could conclude that critical analysis can detect some, but not all, hoaxes. A plot executed as beautifully as Operation Mincemeat will very likely succeed. Remember that a hoax is a deliberate attempt to deceive; if done well enough it can succeed.

The Loch Ness Monster (Nessie)

We include this one because evidence is beginning to indicate that this marvelous creature is actually a simple hoax that spread. It has been around since 1934. "Nessie" has become a tourist industry in the Inverness area of Scotland. Not that the monster is the only reason to visit the Scottish Highlands - they are marvelously beautiful. The monster is an added attraction. The following web site gives the story.

From The Un-Museum

There's a bit more to add. In the last few decades, a number of groups have mounted expeditions to Loch Ness for the explicit purpose of locating the monster. The searchers have used sonar, underwater cameras, and surface surveillance. They found lots of fish, plus a few unidentifed echoes, but no monster. Also - creatures such as Nessie were air breathers. Even if they did spend most of their time underwater, they would have to come up at intervals to breathe. They would also have to eat, and someone calculated that the water conditions on the loch would not support enough of a food chain to feed such a large creature. In summary, a lot of effort has been directed toward finding Nessie, with absolutely no success. This, coupled with the confession of hoax, doesn't give one a lot of confidence that Nessie exists. Doesn't prove that the monster doesn't exist, but certainly gives no encouragement.



Bigfoot

Here's another strange creature sighting. This one is known as Bigfoot. It is supposedly a large, humanoid creature that walks like we do and lives in the deep woods. Native American legends about such a creature called Sasquatch exist, but cannot be confirmed. The real break came in 1967 when a fellow named Patterson managed to get some movie footage of a Bigfoot walking off into the woods. The film was a sensation, although not everybody agreed with the premise. Some thought it was a monstrous hoax, showing only a man in a gorilla suit.

Some Bigfoot advocates claimed that the creature's walking gait could not be duplicated by a human. Other looking at the film saw a perfectly normal human gait. Others claimed that the creature's anatomy was so different from human that it had to be real. Skeptics did not agree, although it was certainly possible that Patterson thought it was real. Read more in the Museum of Hoaxes.

To read a lot more about Bigfoot and the hoax, ask Google for "bigfoot patterson hoax" and you will get a load of references.


Photographs as Evidence

We got into a discussion of the value of photographs as evidence in such cases. In this world of very capable computer image processing, hoax photos of very high quality can be made. At this point, if someone tells you that some photo has been carefully examined and has passed all tests looking for fraud, all you know is that one of two possibilities is true: the photo is either real or it is a hoax of such quality that normal examination will not reveal it. You do not have enough information to know which one it is.

Someone asked if photos would usable in court as evidence if there was a possibility of faking. The consensus was that it might be OK if the person taking it was recognized by the court as reliable. Someone might research this one.

World Net Daily article - courtesy of Mr. Medrano

More on Hoaxes

Pickover's Encyclopedia of Hoaxes

Vinland Map

http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/vinland/vinland.htm

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa004&articleID=00069D8F-B5FC-101E-B40D83414B7F0000

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=000891FA-7A3C-1FC2-BA3C83414B7F0000

The Viking Deception - PBS NOVA

From http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/LMwebpages/243.html

The Voynich Manuscript

Scientific American, July 2004, by Gordon Rugg

www.keele.ac.uk/depts/cs/staff/g.rugg/voynich/

www.voynich.nu/

www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/

mysite.freeserve.com/philipneal_vms

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/voynich.html

The Shroud of Turin

Large positive image of the shroud

http://www.shroud.com/

http://www.skepdic.com/shroud.html

The Skeptical Shroud of Turin Website

The Shroud of Turin from the McCrone Research Institute

Shroud of Turin articles from CSICOP

Books:

Jammal Noah's Ark Hoax

Hoaxing the Hoaxers: Or The Incredible (Phony) Discovery of Noah's Ark -- by George Jammal

Sun Goes Down in Flames - The Jammal Ark Hoax from the Talk.Origins Archive

CSICOP article on hoaxes


Can you believe that someone fell for this?