Great Hoaxes of Science. Spoiler Alert: Most are about Evolution and/or early man

[Seymour Flops]

Some of you may have already read on anther thread that the famous "Piltdown Man" hoax is still fooling some of the people, some of the time.

Piltdown is a town in England. But lest American evolutionary hoaxters be outdone, let us consider "Nebraska Man."

To be fair, "Nebraska Man," was not a hoax exactly. You could say that the discoverers of Hesperopithecus haroldcookii, were only fooling themselves. They may well have seriously believed that they found the first higher primate in North America, in the heart of the Midwest, no less. After all . . . they had a whole tooth to prove it! Anyway,

This is what happens when wishful thinking and ambition over-ride common sense and scientific skepticism.

From Wiki:

Examinations of the specimen continued, and the original describers continued to draw comparisons between Hesperopithecus and apes. Further field work on the site in the summers of 1925 and 1926 uncovered other parts of the skeleton. These discoveries revealed that the tooth was incorrectly identified. According to these discovered pieces, the tooth belonged neither to a man nor an ape, but to a fossil of an extinct species of peccary called Prosthennops serus. The misidentification was attributed to the fact that the original specimen was severely weathered. The earlier identification as an ape was retracted in the journal Science in 1927.[3]

BTW: here's what a peccary is:

So, wait. They found a tooth. They concluded it was a human-like ape tooth. Then years later, they bothered to dig up the rest of the skeleton.

That's the kind of crack investigative work that led to the Muller Report!

Hm . . . the specimen was "severely weathered," so they made a mistake? Is being severely weathered really taht rare in bones that have been buried for tens of thousands of years? I think not . . .

 

[miketx]

 

[daveman]

 

[abu afak]

Some of you may have already read on anther thread that the famous "Piltdown Man" hoax is still fooling some of the people, some of the time.

Piltdown is a town in England. But lest American evolutionary hoaxters be outdone, let us consider "Nebraska Man."

To be fair, "Nebraska Man," was not a hoax exactly. You could say that the discoverers of Hesperopithecus haroldcookii, were only fooling themselves. They may well have seriously believed that they found the first higher primate in North America, in the heart of the Midwest, no less. After all . . . they had a whole tooth to prove it! Anyway,

View attachment 594083
This is what happens when wishful thinking and ambition over-ride common sense and scientific skepticism.

From Wiki:

Examinations of the specimen continued, and the original describers continued to draw comparisons between Hesperopithecus and apes. Further field work on the site in the summers of 1925 and 1926 uncovered other parts of the skeleton. These discoveries revealed that the tooth was incorrectly identified. According to these discovered pieces, the tooth belonged neither to a man nor an ape, but to a fossil of an extinct species of peccary called Prosthennops serus. The misidentification was attributed to the fact that the original specimen was severely weathered. The earlier identification as an ape was retracted in the journal Science in 1927.[3]

BTW: here's what a peccary is:

View attachment 594084

So, wait. They found a tooth. They concluded it was a human-like ape tooth. Then years later, they bothered to dig up the rest of the skeleton.

That's the kind of crack investigative work that led to the Muller Report!

Hm . . . the specimen was "severely weathered," so they made a mistake? Is being severely weathered really taht rare in bones that have been buried for tens of thousands of years? I think not . . .

Piltdown was a ONE Man find/plant Outed BY Scientists.
The only people knowledgeable enough to do so!

No resemblance to any modern paleontology or Any Evolution Link I posted.. nor Refutation of Hundreds of Thousands Legitimate Fossils.

Evolution is not just a Scientific Theory, but a Fact, HUGE Consensus, and the very basis of Modern Biology.

The OP is a creationist/ID clown trying to discredit science,
with 'thanks' from 'Ringtone' and 'Crusader Frank,' both also avowed Kweationists.
(waiting for our favorite 'spy'/Fraud to make 3 'thanks')
`

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Climate "science" only wishes that it was as credible as Piltdown Man

 

[Seymour Flops]

Piltdown was a ONE Man find/plant Outed BY Scientists.
The only people knowledgeable enough to do so!

The knowledgeable part clearly lets you out. Piltdown man was perpetuated by one man - it only took one man - which fooled layfolk like yourself who insist on draping themselves in the authority of scientists when arguing with other layfolk.

So there are two things that you're not getting here:

1) Evolution researchers are often fooled, when it comes to purported finds of early man. When it comes to early man hoaxes, they are often fooled because they are so desperate to find evidence for early man as a descendant of lower animals. They lose the skeptical approach which should influence all dispassionate inquiry.

2) When you, as a layman, argue from authority, using those same too-often-fooled researchers, you commit a double fallacy: The obvious appeal to authority fallacy, which is enough to render your argument useless. But also the not named fallacy that I will call "appeal to authority when those authorities have been wrong so often that no rational person would appeal to them fallacy."

I don't just mean the number of times the researchers have fallen for hoaxes, which is shocking. I also mean the fact that nothing evolves further and faster than the various theories of evolution themselves. You or one of your comrades showed a human/ape purported family tree, as if it were documentary proof of something. In truth those diagrams are updated and the previous versions thrown down the memory hole about as often as Zsa Zsa Gabor updated her wedding portrait.

No resemblance to any modern paleontology or Any Evolution Link I posted.. nor Refutation of Hundreds of Thousands Legitimate Fossils.

Evolution is not just a Scientific Theory, but a Fact, HUGE Consensus, and the very basis of Modern Biology.

The OP is a creationist/ID clown trying to discredit science,
with 'thanks' from 'Ringtone' and 'Crusader Frank,' both also avowed Kweationists.
(waiting for our favorite 'spy'/Fraud to make 3 'thanks')
`

See above.

 

[Seymour Flops]

How about Orce Man? Not to be confused with minor super hero OrcaMan.

You see that? SCIENTISTS said it was a million year old human. And they had "very detailed drawings" to prove it!

I guess some Spanish rancher finally said, Pardon . . . Eso no es un hombre, eso es un burro. I hope he wasn't attacked the way hoax exposers are attacked on this forum.

For those of you who consistently fall for such nonsense, do you believe it is time for criminal penalties to apply to people who perpetuate these nearly-always-successful hoaxes? You tell me, I never fall for this stuff, so it's more an amusement to me.

Do you ever spend money buying the comic books and t-shirts and whatnot? Do you feel makes you the victim? Or are you only victimized by looking foolish on internet forums?

I'm asking because I'm seriously considering perpetuating an early-man hoax myself. Just for laughs, not for money. People who are dumb enough to keep falling for this are probably not smart enough to make much money. Eh, I guess I could sell a few trinkets.

 

[Hollie]

Some of you may have already read on anther thread that the famous "Piltdown Man" hoax is still fooling some of the people, some of the time.

Piltdown is a town in England. But lest American evolutionary hoaxters be outdone, let us consider "Nebraska Man."

To be fair, "Nebraska Man," was not a hoax exactly. You could say that the discoverers of Hesperopithecus haroldcookii, were only fooling themselves. They may well have seriously believed that they found the first higher primate in North America, in the heart of the Midwest, no less. After all . . . they had a whole tooth to prove it! Anyway,

View attachment 594083
This is what happens when wishful thinking and ambition over-ride common sense and scientific skepticism.

From Wiki:

Examinations of the specimen continued, and the original describers continued to draw comparisons between Hesperopithecus and apes. Further field work on the site in the summers of 1925 and 1926 uncovered other parts of the skeleton. These discoveries revealed that the tooth was incorrectly identified. According to these discovered pieces, the tooth belonged neither to a man nor an ape, but to a fossil of an extinct species of peccary called Prosthennops serus. The misidentification was attributed to the fact that the original specimen was severely weathered. The earlier identification as an ape was retracted in the journal Science in 1927.[3]

BTW: here's what a peccary is:

View attachment 594084

So, wait. They found a tooth. They concluded it was a human-like ape tooth. Then years later, they bothered to dig up the rest of the skeleton.

That's the kind of crack investigative work that led to the Muller Report!

Hm . . . the specimen was "severely weathered," so they made a mistake? Is being severely weathered really taht rare in bones that have been buried for tens of thousands of years? I think not . . .

Piltdown Man fools only religious extremists.

 

[Hollie]

How about Orce Man? Not to be confused with minor super hero OrcaMan.

View attachment 594325
You see that? SCIENTISTS said it was a million year old human. And they had "very detailed drawings" to prove it!

I guess some Spanish rancher finally said, Pardon . . . Eso no es un hombre, eso es un burro. I hope he wasn't attacked the way hoax exposers are attacked on this forum.

For those of you who consistently fall for such nonsense, do you believe it is time for criminal penalties to apply to people who perpetuate these nearly-always-successful hoaxes? You tell me, I never fall for this stuff, so it's more an amusement to me.

Do you ever spend money buying the comic books and t-shirts and whatnot? Do you feel makes you the victim? Or are you only victimized by looking foolish on internet forums?

I'm asking because I'm seriously considering perpetuating an early-man hoax myself. Just for laughs, not for money. People who are dumb enough to keep falling for this are probably not smart enough to make much money. Eh, I guess I could sell a few trinkets.

You have cut and pasted two instances of hoaxes and equate that to ''consistently fall...''.

The planet is not flat as much as you would want to press that narrative.

 

[Seymour Flops]

Since Hollie wants to see more example of scientific frauds before she will believe that they happen, and since I hate for Asia to be left out, now that we have frauds from America, England and Europe, let's look at one of the "greatest scientific advancements" in proving that birds evolved from dinosaurs:

Yes, a "hypothetical reconstruction." What some of you may not understand, or may simply pretend not to understand, is that all of these depictions of early man and other early animals derived from fossils are hypothetical reconstructions. Sadly, the popular media only wants to admit that after an outright fraud is discovered.

With all the excitement about dinosaurs as proto-birds, the producers of the Jurassic Park movies considered featuring feathered dinos in the next sequel.

The actor who played the scientist of the Park:

would have been replaced by:

Fortunately for the producers, the hoax was discovered before they had egg on their faces.

Get it?

 

[Seymour Flops]

Next: Java Man

Java Man is unique in this collection of outright frauds, because it was not actually an outright fraud. Instead it was a prime exemplar of early human researchers' tendencies to announce new species of early man on the flimsiest of evidence, and to create drawings and reconstructions to push that narrative.

The first "Java Man" discovered consisted of a skullcap and a tooth. Eugene Dubois was a proponent of the theory that humanity originated in Asia, not Africa as Darwin insisted.

In October 1887, Dubois abandoned his academic career and left for the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) to look for the fossilized ancestor of modern man.[3] Having received no funding from the Dutch government for his eccentric endeavor – since no one at the time had ever found an early human fossil while looking for it – he joined the Dutch East Indies Army as a military surgeon.[4]

Again assisted by convict laborers and two army sergeants, Dubois began searching along the Solo River near Trinil in August 1891.[8] His team soon excavated a molar (Trinil 1) and a skullcap (Trinil 2).

In August 1892, a year later, Dubois's team found a long femur (thighbone) shaped like a human one, suggesting that its owner had stood upright. The femur bone was found 50 feet (approx. 15 meters) from the original find one year earlier. Believing that the three fossils belonged to a single individual, "probably a very aged female", Dubois renamed the specimen Anthropopithecus erectus.[9]

Really? One year later, and the assumption is that it must be the same individual? That seems barely possible, much less likely.

Here is a picture of those three finds on display:

They did not fill in the gaps with modelling material for this one, to their credit. Of course I don't know whether these are the actual fossils or themselves models. I'll let Hollie explain again why the bones we see in museums aren't always the real bones.

They did make a "reconstruction" in 1922 (not using facial recognition software, I would imagine), that looked like this:

Hopefully, even Hollie will agree that this is primarily modeling material.

Interesting thing is that this is supposedly "Homo Erectus," or "standing man." But how do they know from the skullcap that this species had hair on the top of its head, like a human? How do they know it's head hair was short, in what used to be called a "semi-Beatle haircut?" How do they know the face was not covered with fur, like the overwhelming majority of mammals?

Of course they do not know any of that. But if this "reconstruction" were covered with fur, it would look like an ape, not an "ape-man" or the first standing man. Am I claiming that this species was a now-extinct ape? No!

How could anyone reasonably claim anything from a skullcap and a femur that were found one year apart from each other? It's ludicrous.

After Dubois let a number of scientists examine the fossils in a series of conferences held in Europe in the 1890s, they started to agree that Java Man may be a transitional form after all, but most of them thought of it as "an extinct side branch" of the human tree that had indeed descended from apes, but not evolved into humans.[30] This interpretation eventually imposed itself and remained dominant until the 1940s.[31]

Dubois was bitter about this and locked the fossil up in a trunk until 1923 when he showed it to Ales Hrdlicka from the Smithsonian Institution.[26

Why would Dubois be bitter? Bitter enough to be so childish that he locks his discovery away? I thought evolution researchers were only searching for the truth, not personal aggrandizement.

OK, I'm kidding about that, of course. Every early human researcher wants to be the one to finally discover the long-sought missing link, or at least a convincing fake. It seems that Dubois may have been caught in the fakery to the point that he thought he found a real one.

 

[Dadoalex]

Some of you may have already read on anther thread that the famous "Piltdown Man" hoax is still fooling some of the people, some of the time.

Piltdown is a town in England. But lest American evolutionary hoaxters be outdone, let us consider "Nebraska Man."

To be fair, "Nebraska Man," was not a hoax exactly. You could say that the discoverers of Hesperopithecus haroldcookii, were only fooling themselves. They may well have seriously believed that they found the first higher primate in North America, in the heart of the Midwest, no less. After all . . . they had a whole tooth to prove it! Anyway,

View attachment 594083
This is what happens when wishful thinking and ambition over-ride common sense and scientific skepticism.

From Wiki:

Examinations of the specimen continued, and the original describers continued to draw comparisons between Hesperopithecus and apes. Further field work on the site in the summers of 1925 and 1926 uncovered other parts of the skeleton. These discoveries revealed that the tooth was incorrectly identified. According to these discovered pieces, the tooth belonged neither to a man nor an ape, but to a fossil of an extinct species of peccary called Prosthennops serus. The misidentification was attributed to the fact that the original specimen was severely weathered. The earlier identification as an ape was retracted in the journal Science in 1927.[3]

BTW: here's what a peccary is:

View attachment 594084

So, wait. They found a tooth. They concluded it was a human-like ape tooth. Then years later, they bothered to dig up the rest of the skeleton.

That's the kind of crack investigative work that led to the Muller Report!

Hm . . . the specimen was "severely weathered," so they made a mistake? Is being severely weathered really taht rare in bones that have been buried for tens of thousands of years? I think not . . .

As new information becomes available previous assumptions are changed to accommodate the new information.

It is called the scientific method.

Now please present us with your competing evidence that GAWOD created everything in 6 days, that each and every animal alive today is a direct descendant from those on Noah's boat.

I'll be fascinated by your presentation.

 

[Dadoalex]

Piltdown was a ONE Man find/plant Outed BY Scientists.
The only people knowledgeable enough to do so!

No resemblance to any modern paleontology or Any Evolution Link I posted.. nor Refutation of Hundreds of Thousands Legitimate Fossils.

Evolution is not just a Scientific Theory, but a Fact, HUGE Consensus, and the very basis of Modern Biology.

The OP is a creationist/ID clown trying to discredit science,
with 'thanks' from 'Ringtone' and 'Crusader Frank,' both also avowed Kweationists.
(waiting for our favorite 'spy'/Fraud to make 3 'thanks')
`

You are wrong.

Evolution is a strongly supported theory both in terms of scientific consensus and available evidence but, because we do not, and probably never will, have all the missing pieces, it remains a theory.

We do know what the OP is but we must not stray from the facts because that is their domain.

 

[Dadoalex]

The knowledgeable part clearly lets you out. Piltdown man was perpetuated by one man - it only took one man - which fooled layfolk like yourself who insist on draping themselves in the authority of scientists when arguing with other layfolk.

So there are two things that you're not getting here:

1) Evolution researchers are often fooled, when it comes to purported finds of early man. When it comes to early man hoaxes, they are often fooled because they are so desperate to find evidence for early man as a descendant of lower animals. They lose the skeptical approach which should influence all dispassionate inquiry.

2) When you, as a layman, argue from authority, using those same too-often-fooled researchers, you commit a double fallacy: The obvious appeal to authority fallacy, which is enough to render your argument useless. But also the not named fallacy that I will call "appeal to authority when those authorities have been wrong so often that no rational person would appeal to them fallacy."

I don't just mean the number of times the researchers have fallen for hoaxes, which is shocking. I also mean the fact that nothing evolves further and faster than the various theories of evolution themselves. You or one of your comrades showed a human/ape purported family tree, as if it were documentary proof of something. In truth those diagrams are updated and the previous versions thrown down the memory hole about as often as Zsa Zsa Gabor updated her wedding portrait.



See above.

Only took one man to fool you.

Moses.

 

[Seymour Flops]

As new information becomes available previous assumptions are changed to accommodate the new information.

It is called the scientific method.

Are you seriously claiming the scientific method legitimately includes outright fakery?

Now please present us with your competing evidence that GAWOD created everything in 6 days, that each and every animal alive today is a direct descendant from those on Noah's boat.

I'll be fascinated by your presentation.

You would need to ask someone who believes that.

 

[abu afak]

You are wrong.

Evolution is a strongly supported theory both in terms of scientific consensus and available evidence but, because we do not, and probably never will, have all the missing pieces, it remains a theory.

We do know what the OP is but we must not stray from the facts because that is their domain.

Virtually all theories remain Theories.
That does not make it any less credible.
It's also a FACT.
Only math really has 'proof.'
Science deals in theories affirmed over time.

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
By John Rennie - July 1, 2002
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific American

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense​

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in Elementary School that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty -- above a mere hypothesis but below a law.
Scientists do NOT use the terms that way, however.
According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a Scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature.
So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution -- or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter -- they are NOT expressing reservations about its truth.

In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the Fact of evolution."..."

`

 

[Seymour Flops]

Piltdown was a ONE Man find/plant Outed BY Scientists.
The only people knowledgeable enough to do so!

No resemblance to any modern paleontology or Any Evolution Link I posted.. nor Refutation of Hundreds of Thousands Legitimate Fossils.

Evolution is not just a Scientific Theory, but a Fact, HUGE Consensus, and the very basis of Modern Biology.

The OP is a creationist/ID clown trying to discredit science,
with 'thanks' from 'Ringtone' and 'Crusader Frank,' both also avowed Kweationists.
(waiting for our favorite 'spy'/Fraud to make 3 'thanks')
`

You are wrong.

Evolution is a strongly supported theory both in terms of scientific consensus and available evidence but, because we do not, and probably never will, have all the missing pieces, it remains a theory.

We do know what the OP is but we must not stray from the facts because that is their domain.

Uh-Oh!

Trouble among the Darwinian faithful, I see.

Dadoalex makes more sense, but Abu Afak uses a bigger font, so I'm not sure who wins that one in Darwinian faithful logic.

I like that both of you place great value in scientific consensus. You see science as a direct democracy, do you?

Majority rules, evidence drools?

 

[Hollie]

Since Hollie wants to see more example of scientific frauds before she will believe that they happen, and since I hate for Asia to be left out, now that we have frauds from America, England and Europe, let's look at one of the "greatest scientific advancements" in proving that birds evolved from dinosaurs:

View attachment 594761

View attachment 594763
Yes, a "hypothetical reconstruction." What some of you may not understand, or may simply pretend not to understand, is that all of these depictions of early man and other early animals derived from fossils are hypothetical reconstructions. Sadly, the popular media only wants to admit that after an outright fraud is discovered.

With all the excitement about dinosaurs as proto-birds, the producers of the Jurassic Park movies considered featuring feathered dinos in the next sequel.

The actor who played the scientist of the Park:

View attachment 594770
would have been replaced by:

View attachment 594771

Fortunately for the producers, the hoax was discovered before they had egg on their faces.

Get it?

I'm afraid that long cut and paste is something you stole from AIG. At any rate, your fraudulent attempt to make it something it's not is a desperate tactic, typical of religious extremists.

Firstly, Archaeoraptor was not a fraud of the science community. It was perpetrated by the Chinese fossil hunter who discovered it. Pieces were cobbled together to make the fossil more attractive to collectors, not to researchers. As you never bother to do anything more than cut and paste, you should be aware that Archaeoraptor was published in the popular press, not in peer-reviewed journals. The author of the article about the find was National Geographic's art editor, not a scientist. Both journals Nature and Science rejected the papers describing it.

Good gawd you're an ass.

 

[abu afak]

Uh-Oh!

Trouble among the Darwinian faithful, I see.

Dadoalex makes more sense, but Abu Afak uses a bigger font, so I'm not sure who wins that one in Darwinian faithful logic.

I like that both of you place great value in scientific consensus. You science as a direct democracy, do you?

Majority rules, evidence drools?

You have no substance whatsoever clown boy.
WHY does he "make more sense." Because he makes Evo more dubious for Godists like you?
`

 

[Seymour Flops]

I'm afraid that long cut and paste is something you stole from AIG. At any rate, your fraudulent attempt to make it something it's not is a desperate tactic, typical of religious extremists.

Firstly, Archaeoraptor was not a fraud of the science community. It was perpetrated by the Chinese fossil hunter who discovered it. Pieces were cobbled together to make the fossil more attractive to collectors, not to researchers. As you never bother to do anything more than cut and paste, you should be aware that Archaeoraptor was published in the popular press, not in peer-reviewed journals. The author of the article about the find was National Geographic's art editor, not a scientist. Both journals Nature and Science rejected the papers describing it.

Good gawd you're an ass.

Good who?

Archaeoraptor was widely accepted by the same kind of laypersons who infest boards like this, constantly claiming to know of troves of evidence that they never seem to be able to show.