Great hoaxes and/or exaggerated claims

[rolerbe]

I'm looking for references or anecdotes to recent (>1950) science hoaxes, unrepeatable claims (e.g. cold fusion), or cargo-cult science for some research I'm doing. Predictive sciences only, not descriptive sciences -- Physics, Chem, etc., not Anthropology (e.g. Piltdown man, etc.)

Most grateful for any leads to track down.

 

[alxm]

You'd really have to be more specific, since there's a broad spectrum from pure crackpottery to real research ideas that are/were overly speculative (and which may appear sillier in hindsight than they did at the time). In the latter vein, check out Langmuir's famous lecture on 'pathological science', if you haven't already.

Then there's the second dimension of notoriety/publicity, which is often pretty unrelated to the scientific merit. E.g. cold fusion is so well known due to media attention they managed to garner.

Another example of that, is that 'Orbo' device by those Irish guys, which managed to get a relatively big amount of international press, despite being nothing more than the most 'classical', conventional, sort of perpetuum mobile device. The whole 'alternative energy' field is fairly rife with stuff that ranges from outright bogus to ideas which are correct-but-not-new-nor-practical. (there's always the occasional local news that gets duped into running a story about yet another inventor of a water powered vehicle)

A pretty good example (post-1950) of reputed scientists (if only a small minority) deluding themselves was 'polywater' back in the 1960's.

 

[Archosaur]

How about all of these idiots who are trying to make "free energy" by making motors out of nothing but permanent magnets.

 

[Cantab Morgan]

Consider Henrik Schon. He apparently faked research in nanotechnology. But he was exposed by a physicist at Berkeley, when she noticed that the graphs of several different experiments were exactly identical.

 

[buffordboy23]

Consider Henrik Schon. He apparently faked research in nanotechnology. But he was exposed by a physicist at Berkeley, when she noticed that the graphs of several different experiments were exactly identical.

This guy must be as clever as a student that submits physics homework copied verbatim from the solutions manual.

There are a plethora free energy devices, which obviously don't work. I "heard" that the U.S. Patent Office no longer accepts any applications for devices with such claims. You could probably find a lot of rubbish patents concerning free energy on their website.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Element 118.

 

[rolerbe]

Great! A couple of new leads I did not already have. Thanks! Keep 'em coming!

I had heard of the Orbo device early on, but paged out of following it when it became clear to me that it was just bunk. Didn't hear how it finally turned out in the public forum.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Just how spectacular do want? I'm not sure I could think of any cases of real scientists just hoaxing exaggerating claims on legitimate scientific research.

http://www.life-enthusiast.com/twilight/research_emoto.htm

Hutchison Effect

The Global Consciousness Project

Angel Light


I'm sure if you look you can probably find several items in the S&D forum.

 

[D H]

Another kind of scientific misconduct is plagiarism -- and that may be exactly what is going on in this very thread. The original post looks to me like homework. We may well be doing this guy's homework research for him, and the OP of course will not credit us for doing that homework.

 

[alxm]

Oh and let's not forget the Bogdanov affair, which was more a case of outright fraud enabled by a failure of the peer review process.

OTOH it did lead to a good debate on whether Theoretical Physics is starting to get too abstract for its own good.

 

[rolerbe]

A reasonable concern, but just to be clear, it is not for homework. I'm a 50yo engineer working on an SF story which may use some of these as backdrop.

Thanks again for the links.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

A reasonable concern, but just to be clear, it is not for homework. I'm a 50yo engineer working on an SF story which may use some of these as backdrop.

Thanks again for the links.

Awesome!
So the really out there stuff is good?
I would suggest listening to Coast to Coast for material but lately they have been focusing more on "supernatural" phenomenon. Never a bad idea to check it out though. And the Skepticism and Debunking forum is always a good resource for this sort of thing.

 

[LowlyPion]

There's this guy and his anti-gravity shield.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Podkletnov

 

[buffordboy23]

How about the Joe Cell? How can you beat a device that harnesses Orgone (life) energy to provide a source of free energy and exhibits anti-gravity effects?

http://peswiki.com/energy/Directory:Joe_Cell

I really have trouble understanding how people can be so scientifically misinformed to believe such garbage. At first, I thought this was a joke until I saw people seriously discussing it on other forums. Scary!

 

[buffordboy23]

One more and I'm done. These guys have found the answer to our free energy problems by being able to dissociate water by electrolysis using only 1.0 V of applied voltage, which is below the theoretical value 1.23 V.

A patent for generation of electrolytic hydrogen by a cost effective and cheaper route
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V3F-4C2FD30-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=48db01f6293717ad55b782bd388055cf

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Piltdown man was debunked in 1953.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man

We also have the closed topics list in S&D

CLOSED TOPICS LIST

As per the PF posting guidelines,
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=5374
all religious debates are off limits including
"physics according to the Quran"
"physics according to the Bible".

Other closed subjects include:
John Titor
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=5396&highlight=Titor

The Philadelphia Experiment
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=57097&highlight=Philadelphia
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=46108&highlight=Philadelphia

Hutchison Effect
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=58448&highlight=Hutchison

The Searl Effect
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=126084
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Searl

911 conspiracy theories.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=85541v
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=79062
Several threads were merged.
The explanation for the WTC collapse is here:
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc082108.html

Prophet Yahweh
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=77086&highlight=yahweh

Flat Earth theories
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=129832

Perpetual motion and "free energy" discussions
Search PF and you will find many threads that have been closed in a number of forums. As for S&D, any claim of this nature would be reproducible and/or testable by the scientific community; hence there is no need for debate.

Water as fuel
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=172340

Bob Lazar
http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/sflazar.html

Hollow Earth Theories
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=185502

David Sereda's Quantum Physics Of UFO Travel
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=209623

Conspiracy of Science - The Earth is growing


Flying Rods
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=212421
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=2003
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=45195

Planet X
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=177755
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=176291
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=105533
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=84740
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=2900

Scalar Waves
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=238709

What The **$&#$ "Bleep" Do We Know - the movie

Marfa Mystery Lights
This is a cool one. I think we can safely add the so called "Marfa Mystery Lights" to the "explained" list, thanks to a nice bit of field work by a Chapter of the SPS.
http://www.spsnational.org/wormhole/utd_sps_report.pdf

2012 Prophesies
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=286535
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=281478
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=276392
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=258068
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=250216
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=237624
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=227444
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=208935
many more can be found with a search

Biefeld-Brown Effect and Electrogravity Theory
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=288008

To be continued...

 

[Evo]

Stem Cell Research fraud.

Hwang Woo-Suk (Korean: 황우석, born 29 January 1953)[1] is a South Korean researcher. He was a professor of theriogenology and biotechnology at Seoul National University (dismissed on March 20, 2006) who claimed a series of breakthroughs in the field of stem cell research. Until November 2005, he was considered one of the pioneering experts in the field of stem cell research, best known for two articles published in the journal Science in 2004 and 2005 where he fraudulently reported to have succeeded in creating human embryonic stem cells by cloning. Both papers were later editorially retracted after they were found to contain a large amount of fabricated data. He has admitted to various charges of fraud.

On May 12, 2006, Hwang was "indicted on embezzlement and bioethics law violations linked to faked stem cell research.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-Suk

 

[rolerbe]

Excellent stuff, Thanks! Also just saw the S&D thread -- never scrolled down that far before <LOL> This will tank me up pretty good.

 

[Andre]

Linking to crackpot claims is implicitely against the guidelines, so this thread is basically violating them.

But the ultimate exagarated crackpot hypopthesis is an exploding Earth by Tom Chalko, easy to google.

*** warning, don't believe it ***

 

[Chi Meson]

Linking to crackpot claims is implicitely against the guidelines, so this thread is basically violating them.

But the ultimate exagarated crackpot hypopthesis is an exploding Earth by Tom Chalko, easy to google.

*** warning, don't believe it ***

Is that the "Earth is expanding and all of the laws of physics as we know them must be wrong"?

 

[Andre]

No, just google the obvious

Edit: And sure enough with that search google already produced a link to this thread.