In recent centuries, scientific discoveries have appeared at such a speed that it is simply impossible to keep track of them: electricity, the theory of relativity, the Internet. All these innovations have changed our life and brought science to a completely new level. But not all discoveries are useful, and not all of them are honest and uncompromising … Sometimes just someone decided to glue the bones found during archaeological excavations, for the sake of glory or profit. It's time to remember the loudest fakes in the field of science. We present you the top 10 most famous scientific fakes made in different years.
1. Fossils of Beringer (1725)
A whole collection of fossils was found by students in the vicinity of the Bavarian town. They immediately showed the find to their scientific advisor, professor of medicine at the University of Würzburg, John Behringer. There were about 2000 stones in total, some of them bore the prints of insects, lizards and other fossil plants and living organisms; others could distinguish between Jewish writing and astronomical calculations. Boehringer was so sure that the stones were made by man in the era of the great flood that he wrote and published a book about it.
Disclosure: As soon as the book was published, several guys brought him the last stone, on which his name was legibly written. As it turned out, all these stones were made and planted by Behringer's colleagues, as a kind of revenge for his arrogance.
2. Perpetual motion machine (1813)
Promotional video:
This "invention" is the brainchild of Charles Redheffer. He claimed to have invented an engine that will never stop.
Disclosure: Noting the strange vibrations, engineer and mechanic Robert Fulton stated that he had already found the source of the "perpetual motion" of the apparatus. And he did find it - it was an elderly man who occasionally pulled a lever hidden in the attic.
3. Life on the Moon (1835)
The New York Sun newspaper published information that the astronomer John Herschel found a solution to almost all problems in mathematical astronomy, and also discovered several new planets. One of the most shocking discoveries was the alleged existence of life on the moon.
Disclosure: As it turned out later, John Herschel not only did not make these discoveries, he did not even know about them, let alone associate them with his name!
4. The Giant of Cardiff (1869)
The petrified body of a man about 3 meters tall was discovered by a group of workers digging a well.
Disclosure: An atheist named George Hull created this giant as a joke on a friend of his who believed that the Earth was once inhabited by giants, as it is written in the Bible. Later, Hull even tried to sue a certain PiTi Barnum (he decided to recreate the giant). However, Hull lost the case, since he could not prove that it was he who fashioned the first giant …
Wherever this photo has not appeared …
5. The Piltdown Man (1912)
Fragments of a skull very similar to a human were found by Charles Dawson, a lawyer and amateur archaeologist. The structure of the jaw was more typical of monkeys, and a pair of molars was also preserved in the skull. The interest of the find was that it was presented as that very missing link between man and primate, because Dawson assumed that the age of the find is about 500 thousand years.
Exposure: In the 1950s, scientists rechecked the bones again and found that the skull itself was 50, not 500 thousand years old. As for the jaw, it was a couple of decades older and really belonged to a monkey. In addition, the researchers found that the bones were specially treated with chemicals to make them look like Dawson's stated age. True, the fraudster himself is neither hot nor cold from this discovery, because by the time of exposure he had long been dead.
6. Alien Autopsy (1947)
An autopsy footage of an alien who died in the 1947 crash of his spacecraft in Roswell, New Mexico. In 1995, Briton Ray Santili announced that he had a video of this autopsy, which he obtained from a retired military cameraman.
Exposure: Ray's statement did not go unnoticed, and the scientific community demanded a recording, but Ray did not want to reveal his deception and held out until 2006. But now he claims that the autopsy really took place. It was just that the shooting of the autopsy itself was in such poor quality that he had to reconstruct it and shoot, in fact, a staging.
7. Tasadai-Manube tribe (1971)
Philippine Government Minister Manuel Elisalde said that a Stone Age tribe was discovered on the island of Indanau: “the tribe speaks a strange language, gathers, uses stone utensils, lives in caves and uses plants and moldings as clothing” - just like that it was reported in The Guardian. As a result, the President of the Philippines closed the island to explorers and visitors and declared it a reservation …
The tribe is young, unfamiliar …
Exposing: After the president was ousted, two journalists made their way to the island (in 1986). It turned out that the tribe lives in houses, wears ordinary clothes, and they led the way of life of a primitive tribe only for some time at the insistence of Elisalde.
8. Shiniche Fujimura and his Stone Age finds (1981)
Shiniche Fujimara was already known as an archaeologist who found the oldest artifacts in Japan in 1981. In 2000, he allegedly discovered artifacts about 600 thousand years old. These findings would already be of much greater value, because they would be the earliest evidence of human existence on earth.
Exposure: In 2000, a group of journalists filmed the process of burying "ancient artifacts." It turned out that the scientist independently made and threw his "finds" to the excavation sites.
9. New elements of the periodic table (1998)
Previously unknown radioactive elements were discovered by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory by exposing lead to krypton. The new elements were named Ununoctium (element 118) and Livermorium (element 16). Then this discovery was called nothing less than "a breakthrough that opens new horizons in the study of the atomic nucleus."
Disclosure: Experiments were carried out until 2000, but the elements were never synthesized. As a result, scientists retracted their statement, and Viktor Ninov was accused of falsifying information. By the way, in 2000, the named elements were still synthesized.
10. The remains of the Archeoraptor (1999)
Feathered dinosaur fossils. The find has been claimed as the missing link between dinosaurs and birds.
Disclosure: It turned out that the Archeoraptor skeleton turned out to be just a composite hodgepodge of various bones that were simply glued together: the upper body was taken from an ancient bird, the tail from a small winged dinosaur, and the owner of the legs remains generally unknown.
But thanks for trying!
