Medieval naturalists had a great appreciation of hoaxes, and they spent a lot of time collecting and studying them. However, they didn't call them hoaxes. Instead, they called them Lusus Naturae, or Jokes of Nature. The term Lusus Naturae described any creature or specimen that defied classification. One famous example was the Scythian Lamb, or Vegetable Lamb. This bizarre creature, which medieval naturalists were sure existed, although they couldn't locate a specimen, was part plant and part animal. It consisted of a lamb from whose belly grew a thick stem that was firmly rooted in the ground. Thus rendered immobile, the creature survived by eating the grass which grew around it. Medieval naturalists labelled the creature a Lusus Naturae because it defied classification, being neither plant nor animal. More→

Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) was a Jesuit Scholar and professor of Mathematics at the Roman College in Italy. He was one of the central figures of Baroque scientific culture, and probably the greatest expert on ancient and universal languages, archaeology, astronomy, magnetism, and Chinese and Egyptian culture in Europe at that time. However, he was also reported to be the target of a number of pranks and hoaxes. More→

Shortly before his death in 1702, butterfly collector William Charlton (1642-1702) sent a specimen to esteemed London entomologist James Petiver. Petiver thought it was quite remarkable. He wrote, "It exactly resembles our English Brimstone Butterfly (R. Rhamni), were it not for those black spots and apparent blue moons on the lower wings. This is the only one I have seen."

Carl Linnaeus had a chance to examine the rare butterfly in 1763 and declared it to be a new species that he named Papilio ecclipsis. He included it in the 12th edition (1767) of his Systema Naturae.

But thirty years later, in 1793, the Danish entomologist John Christian Fabricius examined it more closely and realized it was a fake. The black spots had been painted on the wings. The rare butterfly, the only one of its kind ever seen, was nothing more than a common Brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni).


When Dr. E.W. Gray, keeper of National Curiosities at the British Museum where the specimen was stored, heard of the deception, he is said to have become so enraged that he "indignantly stamped the specimen to pieces". The lepidopterist William Jones carefully created two replica specimens that are now preserved as "The Charlton Brimstones".

It is unclear whether this is an example of scientific fraud (i.e. Was Charlton hoping he would be credited with the discovery of a new species?), or if it was intended as a mere practical joke.

In 1750 the British Royal Society received a curious report titled Lucina Sine Concubita, which translated means "Pregnancy without Intercourse".

In the letter the writer argued that women could become pregnant without having engaged in any sexual activity, due to the presence of microscopic "floating animalcula" present in the air. The author claimed to have isolated some of these animalcula using "a wonderful, cylindrical, catoptrical, rotundo-concavo-convex machine." When he examined these animalcula under a microscope he found them to be shaped like miniature men and women. This discovery, he suggested, would go a long way toward restoring the honor of women who could not otherwise explain their pregnancies. An engraving accompanying the letter showed a "floating animalcula" approaching a sleeping woman.

The author concluded by proposing that, for the purpose of experimentation, a royal edict should ban copulation for one year.

The letter was signed by Abraham Johnson, but this was a pseudonym of Sir John Hill. His intent was apparently to satirize the "spermist" theory, which held that sperm were actually little men (homunculi) that, when placed inside women, grew into children.

The letter proved very popular and was printed and distributed widely throughout Europe.

It is also said that Hill wrote the letter to revenge himself for having been denied membership to the Royal Society. (Needs confirmation)

On October 19, 1752, the Pennsylvania Gazette published a brief description of an experiment recently conducted by Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, the article said, had flown a kite in a thunderstorm, causing electricity to be conducted down the line of the kite and electrifying a key tied to it. This demonstrated that lightning, as many had speculated, was a form of electricity.

Franklin's electric kite became the most famous experiment of the eighteenth century, helping to make Franklin famous throughout Europe and America. And yet, some historians argue that it probably never happened.

They point to a curious lack of details about the experiment. It is not known exactly when the experiment occurred. Sometime in June, 1752 was the closest Franklin ever came to an exact date. Nor did Franklin ever write a formal report about it. The only witness to the event was Franklin's son, who never said a word about it. Finally, such an experiment would have been extremely dangerous, possibly fatal, as Franklin knew.

Historian Tom Tucker suggests that Franklin originally proposed the idea for the experiment as a joke. Frustrated because the British Royal Society had been ignoring his letters to them about his earlier electrical research, he might have proposed the deadly experiment as a subtle joke. It was his way of saying, Go fly a kite in a storm! But when his suggestion reached France, where people took it seriously, Franklin decided to play along and claimed he really had conducted the experiment.

Tucker's theory remains controversial. Other historians argue that Franklin would never have risked being exposed as a liar by the scientific community.

In 1799 the naturalist George Shaw, Keeper of the Department of Natural History at the British Museum, received a specimen of an Australian animal that appeared to be a combination of a duck and a mole. Shaw described the specimen in a scientific journal, the Naturalist’s Miscellany, but admitted he suspected the specimen was a hoax. He wrote, "there might have been practised some arts of deception in its structure." Other British naturalists were also suspicious of the authenticity of the creature. It was only when more specimens of the strange Australian creature arrived in England that naturalists finally, grudgingly admitted it was real. Today we know the creature as the Duckbilled Platypus. It is one of the more famous instances of a hoax that proved not to be a hoax after all. More→

On February 25, 1866, workers found a human skull buried deep inside a mine on Bald Mountain in Calaveras County, California. The skull was located 130 feet below the surface, beneath a layer of lava. The owner of the mine gave the skull to a merchant who in turn passed it on to a local physician until it eventually found its way into the possession of J.D. Whitney, the State Geologist of California and Professor of Geology at Harvard University. Whitney determined that the skull was evidence of the existence of Pliocene age man in North America. This made it the oldest known record of human existence in North America. It also suggested that humans had lived in the Americas far longer than previously thought, perhaps as long as they had lived in Europe.

However, the authenticity of the skull was challenged by other scholars. What ensued was a long controversy between those who insisted the skull had been planted at the mine, and those who insisted it was a genuine find.

It took many years before the skull was decisively determined to be a fake. The skull was simply too modern in character to be from the Pliocene age. In addition, the sediment attached to it was not from the mine deposit, indicating it had been planted. It is not known who planted the skull, but the fraud may have been perpetrated by miners playing a practical joke. More→

in early February 1874, the Kansas City Times ran a story claiming that scientists had discovered that the transatlantic telegraph cables were acting like enormous electromagnets, pulling the earth into the sun. Calculations indicated that if the earth's current trajectory continued unchecked, Europe would become tropical in 12 years, and the entire earth would be uninhabitable soon after. Finally the planet would plunge into the sun. More→

The Taughannock Giant was a stone giant unearthed on July 4, 1879 on the shores of Lake Cayuga in Ithaca. It was pronounced to be of ancient origin by scientists and physicians. However, it turned out to be the work of Ira Dean who had spent months carving it in his home, with the simple desire of fooling someone.

When the six-volume Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography was published between 1887 and 1889, it was one of the first and most definitive works of its kind in America. It contained biographical information about thousands of people (some famous, some obscure) in American history. It was hailed as a valuable source of information for both scholars and students alike.

But thirty years after the Cyclopedia's publication, questions began to be raised about its reliability. The botanist Dr. John Hendley Barnhart published a brief article in the Journal of the New York Botanical Garden suggesting some of the Cyclopedia's biographical sketches might be fictitious. He had specific doubts about fourteen botanists. He had never heard of these people, nor could he find references to them anywhere else. More→

In 1912 amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson unearthed a skull and jawbone from a gravel pit near Piltdown, England. The skull was unmistakably human, whereas the jaw appeared to be from an ape, but their proximity within the pit suggested they came from the same creature. The discovery was believed to be of great significance. The fossil was possibly the long-sought missing link between man and ape. For almost forty years the authenticity of the Piltdown fossil remained unquestioned. But in 1953 researchers at the British Museum took a closer look and realized the fossil was a fake. The skull belonged to a prehistoric human, but the jawbone (stained brown to make it appear older) came from a modern orangutan. More→

During the 1920s, Austrian scientist Paul Kammerer designed an experiment involving a species called the Midwife Toad. He wanted to prove that Lamarckian inheritance was possible. When his experiment produced positive results, the scientitic community was stunned. That is, until researchers had a chance to examine his toads more closely. More→

In 1925, 24-year-old Margaret Mead traveled to Samoa where she stayed for nine months. On her return she wrote Coming of Age in Samoa, which was published in 1928. It portrayed Samoa as a gentle, easy-going society where teenagers grew up free of sexual hang-ups. Premarital sex was common. Rape was unheard of. Young people grew to adulthood without enduring the adolescent trauma typical in western countries. She used these findings to support her thesis that culture, not biology, determines human behavior and personality. The book became an anthropological classic, read by generations of college students. But In 1983 New Zealand anthropologist Derek Freeman challenged her claims, claiming that Mead had been taken in by a hoax. More→

An article that appeared in the Spring 1996 issue of the cultural studies journal Social Text bore the portentous title "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." At first glance the article appeared to be an unlikely candidate for controversy. It was written in the typical style of academic articles, slightly overbearing and verbose, and it came armored with a bristling flank of footnotes (more footnotes than actual text). But on the day that the Spring issue of Social Text appeared in print, the author of the article, New York University physics professor Alan Sokal, published a letter in the academic trade publication Lingua Franca revealing his article was intended as a parody, a fact which the editorial board of Social Text had apparently failed to recognize.

"Any competent physicist or mathematician (or undergraduate physics or math major) would realize that it is a spoof," Sokal asserted. He suggested that his article's acceptance by the journal pointed to "an apparent decline in the standards of rigor in certan precincts of the academic humanities." He also fumed over "how readily they [Social Text] accepted my implication that the search for truth in science must be subordinated to a political agenda."

The New York Times ran the story of Sokal's revelation on its front page on May 18, and from there the controversy grew. More→

The National Geographic Society held a press conference on October 15, 1999 to announce a major discovery: It had found a 125-million-year-old fossil in northeastern China that appeared to be the long-sought missing link between dinosaurs and birds. For over twenty years paleontologists had debated whether birds were descended from dinosaurs. This fossil seemed to provide conclusive proof they were.

The fossil bird, when living, would have been about the size of a large chicken, or a turkey. But it would have been a turkey that bore the long tail of a dinosaur. It was this mixture of dinosaur and bird parts that made researchers believe they had found the dinosaur-bird missing link. As Christopher Sloan, author of the National Geographic article, enthusiastically wrote, "Its long arms and small body scream 'Bird!' Its long, stiff tail... screams 'Dinosaur!'"

What Sloan didn't realize at the time, was that the body and tail together should have screamed 'Fake!' More→