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About the Museum
The Museum of Hoaxes, founded by Alex Boese in 1997, is dedicated to promoting knowledge about the phenomenon of hoaxes. On our blog (to the left) we post about dubious-sounding claims — and whatever else strikes our fancy. But there's more to the museum than the blog. Check out our historical wing, which contains hundreds of articles about famous hoaxes, arranged chronologically from the Middle Ages right up to the present. Our Gallery of the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes Ever celebrates that one day of the year devoted to pranks and practical jokes. In our forum, you can chat with other MoH members. And there's much, much more.
The Museum of Hoaxes, founded by Alex Boese in 1997, is dedicated to promoting knowledge about the phenomenon of hoaxes. On our blog (to the left) we post about dubious-sounding claims — and whatever else strikes our fancy. But there's more to the museum than the blog. Check out our historical wing, which contains hundreds of articles about famous hoaxes, arranged chronologically from the Middle Ages right up to the present. Our Gallery of the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes Ever celebrates that one day of the year devoted to pranks and practical jokes. In our forum, you can chat with other MoH members. And there's much, much more.
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Radioactive fallout helps authenticate art
Status: News
This news is about a month old, but it's new to me! Russian curator Elena Basner thinks she might have developed a foolproof way of determining whether a work of art was made before or after 1945. She tests the paint for radioactive isotopes. From the Times Online:The first nuclear bomb was successfully tested in July 1945 in New Mexico. On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and three days later a second, more powerful bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. About 550 further explosions were carried out by the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and France before most countries signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963. China tested its first Bomb the next year.
Dr Basner’s team argue that this activity released isotopes into the environment that do not occur naturally. Tiny traces of these isotopes, caesium-137 and strontium-90, permeated soil and plant life and ended up in all postwar paintings through the natural oils used as binding agents for paints.
Any work of art purporting to be more than 63 years old that registers trace amounts of the two isotopes can therefore be definitively declared a fake, Dr Basner said.
Dr Basner’s team argue that this activity released isotopes into the environment that do not occur naturally. Tiny traces of these isotopes, caesium-137 and strontium-90, permeated soil and plant life and ended up in all postwar paintings through the natural oils used as binding agents for paints.
Any work of art purporting to be more than 63 years old that registers trace amounts of the two isotopes can therefore be definitively declared a fake, Dr Basner said.
The article goes on to point out that it would be possible for a forger to circumvent this method of detection by using paints and canvasses from the relevant period. I can understand how a forger could obtain an old canvas, but where would they get old paint?
Bra Explodes on NPR
Status: Urban Legend
NPR's Storycorps gave the air this week to 94-year-old Betty Jenkins, who tells the tale of an inflatable bra her mother gave her when she was younger. She decided to wear the bra on a plane trip to South America. Unfortunately, as she sat in the unpressurized cabin, her bra started to get bigger and bigger:"As the thing got bigger, I tried to stand up," Jenkins said, "and I couldn't see my feet."
The instructions said that the bra's pads could be inflated up to a size 48.
"I thought, 'What would happen if it goes beyond 48?'" Jenkins recalled.
"I found out what happened," she said. "It blew out."
Only one of the cups burst, Jenkins said. But the noise was loud enough to seize the attention of everyone on the plane.
"The co-pilot came into the cabin with a gun, wondering what had happened. The men all pointed to me."
The instructions said that the bra's pads could be inflated up to a size 48.
"I thought, 'What would happen if it goes beyond 48?'" Jenkins recalled.
"I found out what happened," she said. "It blew out."
Only one of the cups burst, Jenkins said. But the noise was loud enough to seize the attention of everyone on the plane.
"The co-pilot came into the cabin with a gun, wondering what had happened. The men all pointed to me."
Next week Betty will be telling the story of how she once accidentally microwaved her poodle. But seriously, I wonder if NPR realized that Betty's story is the classic urban legend of the exploding bra? As David Emery points out, you can find variants of it dating back to the 1950s. And was Betty just pulling everybody's leg, or does she actually believe this happened to her? Who knows. But David makes a good point:
chivalry forbids calling Ms. Jenkins out on her embellishment of this well-known urban legend, especially since, as the StoryCorps website clearly states, its mission is to collect "the stories and legends of everyday America" (emphasis added).
Sewer Horse 2
Status: Undetermined
I came across another picture of a horse in a sewer. I guess when it rains sewer horses, it pours. The previous sewer horse was pretty implausible. After all, you had a horse sticking its head out of a sewer, and no one was even looking at it.This sewer horse is more believable. I could imagine a horse wandering around in an open field, which happens to back into an open hole. And at least the firemen are looking at this horse.
However, the shadows seem wrong. The angle of light hitting the firemen looks slightly different than the angle of light hitting the horse. And based on the length of the mens' shadows, shouldn't the horse's shadow be longer? But I'm not good enough at interpreting shadow angles to call this one a definite fake.
Posted By: Alex | Date: Tue Jul 01, 2008 |
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Comments (12)
Category: Animals, Photos/Videos
Category: Animals, Photos/Videos
Holotext Messaging
Status: Fake
One day I'm sure it'll be possible to receive holographic messages on your iPhone. But not yet. Which means that this video showing (what appears to be) an iPhone displaying Holotext messages is a fake.I kept expecting Princess Leia to pop up and say, "Help me, Obi-Wan. You're my only hope."
Posted By: Alex | Date: Sun Jun 29, 2008 |
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Comments (5)
Category: Photos/Videos, Technology
Category: Photos/Videos, Technology
NOVA Quiz
Status: Photo quiz
NOVA interviewed Hany Farid, the world's leading digital forensics expert. If you want to know if an image is real or fake, he's the guy to ask. To accompany the interview, they posted a nine image real-or-fake challenge. Each image shows NOVA host Neil deGrasse Tyson posing with a different celebrity. You have to figure out which images are fake, and which are real. Farid then gives the answer in an audio clip and explains what clues you should have looked for. It's a good quiz. I got one wrong. But on a few of them I guessed and got lucky.
What is it?
Status: Scary creature
I was working in my backyard this weekend, when I turned over a rock and discovered this creepy-crawly. Anyone have an idea what it is? I wasn't about to mess with it. Looked like it had a stinger on its tail.
Update: Thanks to Robin Bobcat for identifying it as a Jerusalem Cricket. According to the San Diego Natural History Museum: "this nocturnal cricket is actually non-aggressive and possesses no poison glands, although its jaws can inflict a painful bite." Even if it's non-poisonous, I'm glad I stayed away from it. And it's still out there in my backyard somewhere.
Tribal Laptop
Status: Undetermined
I saw this image posted on Gizmodo (who got it from pixdaus). They claim to know nothing about it, except that it shows the Dani people of Papua, New Guinea. 
Is it real, or has the Sony Vaio been photoshopped in? My hunch is that it's real. I'd guess that the laptop belongs to a photographer or researcher who handed the laptop to the guy with the big headdress in order to show him a picture. But that's just a guess.
I debated whether the image could be considered "not safe for work." But then I figured, No, it's too "National Geographic" to be considered sexual. (Though if this were the exact same scene with Caucasian women, I'm sure it would be considered NSFW... strange how that works.)
Only one question: What's with the disembodied hand reaching out from behind the headdress?
Posted By: Alex | Date: Wed Jun 25, 2008 |
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Comments (32)
Category: Photos/Videos, Technology
Category: Photos/Videos, Technology
Gloucester Pregnancy Pact
Status: Undetermined
There's one final news item I've received a lot of emails about in the past week -- and so deserves a place on the front page (though it's already in the forum). The Gloucester Pregnancy Pact.Seventeen girls at Gloucester High School are pregnant. According to Time magazine, they all made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. From Time:
School officials started looking into the matter as early as October after an unusual number of girls began filing into the school clinic to find out if they were pregnant. By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, "some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse. "We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy," the principal says, shaking his head.
My first thought was that this reminded me of the prom babies rumor I posted about last year. According to this rumor, girls try to get pregnant on prom night so they won't have to go to college. With the Gloucester pregnancy pact, we again have the notion of teenage girls conspiring to get pregnant.
Teenage girls (like teenage boys) are capable of incredibly stupid behavior, but the pregnancy pact has the whiff of urban legend. Sure enough, school officials are now throwing cold water on the idea, claiming they never heard of such a pact until it appeared in Time. Which isn't to say that group psychology didn't play a powerful role in influencing the girls' behavior. It obviously did. But did the girls make a premeditated pact, and then act on it? That seems highly unlikely to me.
Posted By: Alex | Date: Tue Jun 24, 2008 |
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Comments (9)
Category: Birth/Babies, Urban Legends
Category: Birth/Babies, Urban Legends
Fake Foot
Status: Hoax in the news
I'm still catching up on all the recent hoaxes... So here's another one that a lot of people have emailed me about. The fake foot that washed up on a beach in British Columbia.Five human feet have washed up on beaches in British Columbia during the past year, generating a lot of media interest. After all, who do these feet belong to? It's a mystery. But a sixth foot that washed up turned out to be a hoax. From ctv.ca:
A sixth foot believed to have washed ashore on Vancouver Island was not human, although it was found inside a sock and running shoe, according to the B.C. Coroners Service. "A forensic pathologist and an anthropologist have examined the shoe and remains, and determined a skeletonised animal paw was inserted into the shoe with a sock and packed with dried seaweed," BCCS said in a statement Thursday. The foot had been found inside a size-10 black Adidas shoe.
I've posted about similar hoaxes. For instance, back in 2003 I wrote about police in Crawford County launching an investigation after finding leg bones sticking out of boots found beside a lake in Arkansas. The bones turned out to belong to an animal.
New Scientist has an interesting take on the recent case. (You may only be able to read their full article if you're a subscriber.) They discuss the field of ocean forensics, which apparently is quite undeveloped. When bodies wash up from the ocean, it's usually very difficult for forensic scientists to figure out what happened to the person because there's not a good understanding of what happens to corpses floating in the ocean.
Researcher Gail Anderson is trying to change this. She's chained the carcass of a 25-kilogram pig to the ocean floor and has been recording the exact stages of its decomposition, carefully noting the crabs, lobsters, and fish that feed on it. She's already discovered that fish tend to feed on the face last. So if a body washes up with damage to the face, but not to the rest of the body, foul play is likely. I'm going to add this to my growing list of great trivia to bring up at cocktail parties.
Uncontacted tribe not so uncontacted
Status: Update
Thanks to everyone who emailed me about the Uncontacted Brazilian Tribe hoax that's now making headlines (and is already noted in the forum). I was at the library all yesterday, so I didn't have a chance to post anything.Anyway, to summarize: Last month the Brazilian government released photographs of an "uncontacted" tribe living in the Amazon. At the time I noted it would be very strange for a tribe to be truly uncontacted, and sure enough this week brings the revelation that anthropologists have known about the tribe's existence for almost one hundred years. From the Guardian:
It has now emerged that, far from being unknown, the tribe's existence has been noted since 1910 and the mission to photograph them was undertaken in order to prove that 'uncontacted' tribes still existed in an area endangered by the menace of the logging industry. The disclosures have been made by the man behind the pictures, José Carlos Meirelles, 61, one of the handful of sertanistas – experts on indigenous tribes – working for the Brazilian Indian Protection Agency, Funai, which is dedicated to searching out remote tribes and protecting them.
So the hoax was to describe the tribe as "uncontacted." But it's not that much of a hoax. It's not like the tribe members are actors (as was alleged to be the case with the Tasaday), or are popping over to their local Starbucks every day to get some coffee. The tribe (it seems) truly is living very close to nature and has had hardly any contact with the modern world.