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data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Latvian_meteorite_hoax-0.md
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title: "2009 Latvian meteorite hoax"
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Latvian_meteorite_hoax"
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category: "reference"
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tags: "science, encyclopedia"
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date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:34.813828+00:00"
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The 2009 Latvian meteorite hoax was a publicity stunt in which Swedish-based telecommunications company Tele2 staged an apparent meteorite landing which was later revealed to be fake.
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== The "Meteorite" incident ==
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The drama began at around 17:30 local time (15:30 GMT) in Latvia on Sunday 25 October 2009. Student Ancis Steinbergs reported that a fiery meteor-like object had fallen in a field outside the town of Mazsalaca near the Estonian border. Reports described the object lighting up the evening sky with a blazing trail and hitting the ground with a loud crash, leaving a burning crater claimed to be around 20 m (66 ft) wide and from 3 m (9.8 ft) up to 10 m (33 ft) deep. Fire crews, police and military units attended the site, which was cordoned off while tests were carried out to check radiation levels. The crater quickly attracted scientific and media interest amid widespread speculation about the origin of the object.
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Steinbergs also filmed a video in which he and his two companions (his girlfriend and another student) approach the smoking crater and talk to each other excitedly when they apparently discover a burning mass at the bottom of the crater. The deliberately amateur style of the video, with shaky handheld camerawork and apparently spontaneous reactions from the students, has been compared to The Blair Witch Project. The video was published on YouTube and news websites, attracting worldwide interest. Landowner Larisa Gerasimova reportedly charged visitors the equivalent of $2 each to view the crater.
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== Investigation ==
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The first scientist to visit the site, Uldis Nulle of the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Centre, said his initial impression was that a meteor impact could have caused the crater.
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However, when he later examined the site in daylight he concluded it had been faked. Other scientists who inspected the crater confirmed that it was a hoax.
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Andris Karpovics, a doctoral student of geology at the University of Latvia, described the crater as "a simple, man-made hole with a substance poured in". He told journalists that the hole appeared to have been dug with shovels, and noted that thermite (a mixture of aluminium and iron, possibly with sulfur added), probably caused the increased temperatures observed in the crater. The crater was considerably smaller than initially reported: its actual diameter was around 9–10 m (30–33 ft) and it was about 2–3 m (6.6–9.8 ft) deep.
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Dr Ilgonis Vilks, chairman of the scientific council at the University of Latvia's Institute of Astronomy, declared "it’s a fake. It’s very disappointing, I was full of hope coming here, but I am certain it is not a meteorite". Dr Vilks pointed out that there was green grass inside the artificial crater, with only a small area at the bottom burnt, and no ejected material or meteorite fragments were found on surrounding land. He described the supposed meteorite as "a ball of clay that was burning", and said that samples had been taken for university geologists to examine. He noted "There was a small blast heard by local people but this was not strong enough to create the crater". Nature conservationist Dainis Ozols also examined the scene and said he believed that someone had burned a pyrotechnic compound at the bottom of a man-made hole to create the illusion of a meteorite crater. Police warned of a possible criminal investigation into the hoax.
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Caroline Smith, meteorite curator at the Natural History Museum in London, stated that the pictures and video footage of the burning crater indicated that it was not a meteorite crater: meteorites are not aflame when they strike Earth. Smith also pointed out that there were no other reported sightings of any fireball in the sky, which would have been very clearly visible had the "meteorite" been real.
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It is believed that a meteorite would have to be around a metre or more in diameter to result in a crater of that size. Sizeable meteorites are rare, since most objects which enter the Earth's atmosphere burn up before reaching the planet's surface. The most recent large meteorite known to have landed on Earth struck near Carancas in Peru in 2007, leaving a crater around 15 m (49 ft) wide.
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== Tele2's admission and aftermath ==
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On Tuesday 27 October 2009, Swedish-based telecommunications company Tele2 admitted to perpetrating the hoax as a publicity stunt, and promised to reimburse the Latvian government for expenses incurred in responding to the incident.
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Spokesperson Vita Sirica representing the Latvian branch of Tele2 said the stunt, which was organised in collaboration with media agency Inspired,
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was intended "to draw attention away from Latvia's economic crisis and toward something else more interesting." She explained that 9 people had dug the hole and burned chemicals at the bottom to create the elaborate hoax. The meteorite hoax occurred the day before the recession-hit Latvian government approved an austerity budget for 2010, and some officials were not impressed by the stunt. Interior Minister Linda Murniece accused Tele2 of a "cynical mockery", and announced that the Government would cancel its contract with Tele2, stating "The Interior Ministry doesn't want to do business with a firm that promotes itself at our expense".
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Pernilla Oldmark, spokesperson for Tele2 in Stockholm, said the hoax had been carried out by the Latvian branch of Tele2 though authorised by its head office. She apologised for disruption and said the stunt had been intended to launch a forthcoming marketing campaign, claiming "The message will become clear as soon as the concept is launched". Latvian Advertising Association President Girts Ozols said that the situation was unprecedented but the hoax could be considered an ethics violation in professional advertising. Ozols expressed concern that the incident had caused the community to feel insecure, and commented "If such a prank is pulled, the culprits should not have allowed it to drag on for so long without revealing the truth." The Latvian Advertising Association's board is to review the matter.
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== References ==
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title: "A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 16th and 17th Centuries"
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_Science,_Technology,_and_Philosophy_in_the_16th_and_17th_Centuries"
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A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 16th and 17th Centuries is a book by Abraham Wolf first published in 1935 by George Allen and Unwin. A survey of the history of science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it received a mixed critical reception.
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== Background and summary ==
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Written by Abraham Wolf with the assistance of University College London astronomer Angus Armitage and University of Bonn professor Friedrich Dannemann, the book was first published in London in 1935 by George Allen and Unwin. A second edition, with minor revisions to the bibliography by Douglas McKie, was published in 1950, following Wolf's death. Dedicated to Master of Science students at University College London, where Wolf lectured, the book comprises twenty-six chapters, with a particular focus on the physical sciences (including astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, and meteorology) and mathematics, as well as the positive relationship between modern science and technology. A companion history, titled A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 18th Century, was published in 1938.
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== Reception ==
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The book received mixed reviews from critics. Herbert Blumer commended Wolf for writing "a very notable contribution to the history of science." The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science contributor A. C. Crombie described A History of Science as "an invaluable source of information", while C. W. G. of The Mathematical Gazette admitted to being "impressed by the wide reading and profound erudition of the author." In Nature, W. C. D. Dampier concluded: "Prof. Wolf is to be congratulated on a volume, which, if not perfect, is yet a notable achievement." Dampier also commented in Philosophy that the book was "satisfactory". Journal of Chemical Education reviewer Tenney L. Davis praised the book for being "a good all-round treatment of its subject" that was "easy and interesting to read", but added that a "student of the history of chemistry or sociology, or any one of the special sciences, will probably find that it contains little or nothing on his subject which is new to him."
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Journal of the History of Ideas reviewer I. Bernard Cohen observed that Wolf failed to establish a clear link between science and philosophy. In a review for The American Historical Review, Bert James Loewenberg lamented, "Professor Wolf has given us merely another history of science." J. D. Bernal dismissed Wolf's work as "not history" because it did not "instruct the scientific worker about the position and function of science within the larger whole." Henry E. Sigerist likewise argued in Science that "Professor Wolf's book is not a history of science but a collection of brief essays on the history of various scientific disciplines". He also wrote that he felt "disappointed" and "depressed" after reading the book. Isis reviewer George Sarton similarly stated that he was "bitterly disappointed". On the other hand, Alfred Romer opined in the American Journal of Physics: "Disappointment is an ungrateful emotion. This is not by any means a bad book. It was an enormous task to write it, and an all-but-impossible task to do it better. Though we could wish for more, this much at least we have."
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== References ==
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=== Citations ===
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=== Sources ===
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---
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title: "A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 18th Century"
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_Science,_Technology,_and_Philosophy_in_the_18th_Century"
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category: "reference"
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tags: "science, encyclopedia"
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date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:18.908034+00:00"
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A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 18th Century is a book by Abraham Wolf first published in 1939 as a sequel to his 1935 work, A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 16th and 17th Centuries.
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== Summary ==
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Written by Abraham Wolf as a sequel to A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 16th and 17th Centuries (1935), the book was first published in 1939. It comprises 32 chapters, most of which pertain to the sciences, including astronomy, botany, chemistry, geology, geography, mathematics, mechanics, medicine, meteorology, physics, and zoology. Conversely, only two chapters are about philosophy.
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== Reception ==
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Science reviewer Frederick E. Brasch concluded that the book was a "decidedly useful compendium of scientific, technical and philosophical knowledge of the eighteenth century" but criticised its index and table of contents. Writing in The American Historical Review, Frederick Barry described Wolf's work as "readable" and "interesting". The American Journal of Psychology reviewer E. G. Boring called the book a "masterpiece of erudition". Tenney L. Davis, in the Journal of Chemical Education, called the book "truly encyclopedic in scope", but specifically criticised it for not having a "satisfying" account of chemistry in the eighteenth century.
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== References ==
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=== Citations ===
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=== Sources ===
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data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Autopsy_(1995_film)-0.md
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title: "Alien Autopsy (1995 film)"
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date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:35.993109+00:00"
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Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is a 1995 pseudo-documentary containing grainy black and white footage of a hoaxed alien autopsy. In 1995, film purporting to show an alien autopsy conducted shortly after the Roswell incident was released by British entrepreneur Ray Santilli. The footage aired on television networks around the world. Fox television broadcast the purported autopsy, hosted by Jonathan Frakes, on August 28, 1995, under the title Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction, and re-broadcast it twice, each time to higher ratings. The footage was also broadcast on UK's Channel 4, and repackaged for the home video market. The program was an overnight sensation, with Time magazine declaring that the film had sparked a debate "with an intensity not lavished on any home movie since the Zapruder film".
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The program was thoroughly debunked; the footage was shot on an inexpensive set constructed in a London living room. Its alien bodies were hollow plaster casts filled with offal, sheep brains, and raspberry jam. Multiple participants in Alien Autopsy stated that misleading editing had removed their opinions that the footage was a hoax. Santilli admitted in 2006 that the film was a fake, though he continued to claim it was inspired by genuine, but lost footage.
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== Production ==
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On April 4, 2006, days before the release of the British feature film, Alien Autopsy, Sky broadcast a documentary, Eamonn Investigates: Alien Autopsy, presented by Eamonn Holmes. In this program, Ray Santilli and fellow producer Gary Shoefield admitted that they had created the 1995 footage.
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Shoefield and Santilli had filmed a simulated autopsy on a fabricated alien, based upon what Santilli claimed to have seen in 1992. According to Santilli, a set was constructed in the living room of an empty flat in Rochester Square, Camden Town, London. John Humphreys, an artist and sculptor, was employed to construct two dummy alien bodies over three weeks. He filled plaster cast sculptures of alien bodies with raspberry jam, sheep brains, chicken entrails, and knuckle joints obtained from a butcher to serve as organs. Humphreys also played the role of the chief examiner, to allow him to control the effects being filmed. There were two separate attempts at making the footage. After filming, the team disposed of the "bodies" by cutting them into small pieces and placing them in rubbish bins across London.
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Alien artifacts, supposedly items recovered from the crash site, were depicted in the footage. These included alien symbols and six-finger control panels, which Santilli describes as being the result of artistic license on his part. These artifacts were also created by Humphreys. The footage also showed a man reading a statement "verifying" his identity as the original cameraman and the source of the footage. Santilli and Shoefield admitted in the 2006 documentary that they had found an unidentified homeless man on the streets of Los Angeles, persuaded him to play the role of the cameraman, and filmed him in a motel.
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== In popular culture ==
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Alien Autopsy was derided in the media, and was the subject of numerous parodies. In 1995, The X-Files featured alien autopsy footage that the skeptical Agent Scully decries as "even hokier than the one they aired on the Fox network". It was satirized again in the 1996 X-Files episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space". In 1998, Fox aired a new special, The World's Greatest Hoaxes and Secrets Revealed!, which debunked the 1995 footage. A fictionalized version of the creation of the footage and its release was retold in the comedy film Alien Autopsy (2006).
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== References ==
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=== Sources ===
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Frank, Adam (2023). The Little Book of Aliens (Ebook ed.). New York: Harper. ISBN 9780063279773.
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Goldberg, Robert Alan (2001). "Chapter 6: The Roswell Incident". Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300132946.
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Knight, Peter (2013). Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to the X Files. Oxfordshire, England: Routledge. ISBN 9781135117313.
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Korff, Kal (1997). The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don't Want You to Know (First ed.). Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1573921275.
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Lavery, David; Hague, Angela; Cartwright, Maria (1996). Deny All Knowledge: Reading the X-Files. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815627173.
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Levy, Michael M; Mendlesohn, Farah (2019). Aliens in Popular Culture. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781440838330.
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== Further reading ==
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Bauer, Joseph A. (January 1996). "A Surgeon's View: Alien Autopsy's Overwhelming Lack of Credibility". Skeptical Inquirer. 20 (1): 23–24. Reprinted in Frazier, Kendrick; Karr, Barry; Nickell, Joe, eds. (1997). The UFO Invasion: The Roswell Incident, Alien Abductions, and Government Coverups. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-131-9. Also reprinted in Bizarre Cases: From the Files of Skeptical Inquirer. CSICOP. 2000.
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Emery, C. Eugene Jr (November 1995). "Alien Autopsy' Show and Tell: Long on Tell, Short on Show". Skeptical Inquirer. 19 (6): 15–16, 55. Reprinted in Frazier, Kendrick; Karr, Barry; Nickell, Joe, eds. (1997). The UFO Invasion: The Roswell Incident, Alien Abductions, and Government Coverups. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-131-9.
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Hesemann, Michael; Mantle, Philip; Shell, Bob (1998). Beyond Roswell: The Alien Autopsy Film, Area 51, & the U.S. Government Coverup of Ufos. Marlowe. ISBN 978-1-56924-709-9.
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Musella, David Park (July 2006). "Alien Autopsy Hoax Revealed – Again". Skeptical Inquirer. 30 (4): 9, 11.
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Nickell, Joe (November 1995). "Alien Autopsy' Hoax". Skeptical Inquirer. 19 (6): 17–19. Reprinted in Frazier, Kendrick; Karr, Barry; Nickell, Joe, eds. (1997). The UFO Invasion: The Roswell Incident, Alien Abductions, and Government Coverups. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-131-9.
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Sagan, Carl (1997). The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (2nd ed.). New York: Ballantine. ISBN 0-345-40946-9.
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Stokes, Trey (January 1996). "How to Make an "Alien" for "Autopsy"". Skeptical Inquirer. 20 (1): 19–23. Reprinted in Frazier, Kendrick; Karr, Barry; Nickell, Joe, eds. (1997). The UFO Invasion: The Roswell Incident, Alien Abductions, and Government Coverups. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-131-9. Also reprinted in Bizarre Cases: From the Files of Skeptical Inquirer. CSICOP. 2000.
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== External links ==
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Santilli, Ray (1997). "My Story". VJ Enterprises.
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Ray Santilli at IMDb
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Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction? on YouTube
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data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonokia-0.md
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title: "Babylonokia"
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonokia"
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category: "reference"
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---
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Babylonokia (also Babylon-Nokia, Alien-Mobile, and Cuneiform Mobile Phone) is a 2012 artwork by Karl Weingärtner in the form of a clay tablet shaped like a mobile phone, its keys and screen showing cuneiform script.
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Weingärtner created the work to represent the evolution of information transfer from the ancient world to the present. Fringe scientists and pseudoarchaeology proponents subsequently misrepresented a photograph of the artwork as showing an 800-year-old archaeological find; that story was popularised in a video on the YouTube channel Paranormal Crucible and led to the object being reported by some press sources as a mystery.
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== Artwork ==
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Weingärtner created the phone-styled clay tablet with cuneiform signs as a reaction to an exhibition at the Museum for Communication in Berlin titled From the Cuneiform to the SMS: Communication Once and Today, as well as the negative, global effects of information technology. Cuneiform signals the beginning of written records of information.
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The fact that it is a clay copy of what appears to be an Ericsson S868 mobile phone, a model from the 1990s, had no meaning for the artist, who was using it as a metaphor for mobile devices in general.
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The work of art is unique and is kept by the artist. It is available on request as a loan for museums and exhibitions. It is made from clay, weighs 91 grams (3¼ oz), and measures approximately 13.5 by 6.5 by 0.8 centimetres (5.31 by 2.56 by 0.31 in).
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== Misrepresentation ==
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Weingärtner posted a photo of the image on Facebook as part of a sale of his work, and a Facebook commenter coined the name "BabyloNokia". Three years later, the image was posted to the Conspiracy Club website with the headline "800-Year-Old Mobile Phone Found In Austria? Check This Out." The Express reposted Weingärtner's photo without attribution and claimed that the artifact had been dated to the 13th century BCE.
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Speaking about the image's use by fringe websites and the press, Weingärtner said "The photo was used without my knowledge and without my consent. [...] It’s not what I wanted. I do not believe in UFOs and I do not believe in aliens."
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== References ==
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data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bare-fronted_Hoodwink-0.md
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title: "Bare-fronted Hoodwink"
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The Bare-fronted Hoodwink (Dissimulatrix spuria) was a hoax and satirical wastebasket species of bird created by ornithologist M. F. M. Meiklejohn.
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The Hoodwink has the ability to be "almost seen" or "almost captured". Bird watchers can easily identify this bird by its "blurred appearance and extremely rapid flight away from the observer." Meiklejohn claimed that the single species could easily account for every bird not completely sighted.
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Birdwatchers added this species to their list of birds to watch for, and amateurs seemed to sight the Hoodwink more often.
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On 1 April 1975, the bird was put on display at the Royal Scottish Museum at Edinburgh. The exhibit also included photos of blurry birds flying away. The bird was created using the head of a carrion crow, the body of a plover, and the feet of an unknown waterfowl. The bare front appeared to be wax.
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Meiklejohn's paper was published in the scientific journal Bird Notes in 1950. The paper was rather long and humorous, and he even claimed the genus to be descendant of an ancient species Paleodissimulatrix.
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== References ==
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data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringer's_Lying_Stones-0.md
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title: "Beringer's Lying Stones"
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringer's_Lying_Stones"
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---
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Beringer's Lying Stones (German: Lügensteine) are pieces of limestone which were carved into the shape of various fictitious animals and "discovered" in 1725 by Johann Bartholomeus Adam Beringer (1667–1740), Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Würzburg. Beringer believed them to be fossils, and because some of them bore the name of God in Hebrew, suggested that they might be of divine origin. The scientific community at the time was still unsure as to what fossils actually were, the notion that they were the petrified remains of once-living organisms being merely one of several competing hypotheses.
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Beringer published a book on his findings but shortly after discovered that he had been the victim of a hoax. He took the hoaxers to court and won the case but his reputation was forever besmirched.
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== Background ==
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Johann Bartholomew Adam Beringer was born in 1667 to German physician Ludwig Behringer. Beringer held high positions including chief physician to the Julian Hospital and dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the university. In addition to all this, he took an interest in oryctics. He had hired Christian Zänger (aged 17), and the brothers Niklaus and Valentin Hehn (aged 18 and 14) to help him search for unusual rocks around Würzburg in 1725. J. Ignace Roderique, a professor of geography, algebra and analysis at the university, Johann Georg von Eckhart, librarian to the university, and Baron von Hof, a local noble, decided to prank the professor as he was considered arrogant. Roderique had figures carved in limestone and had them planted through one of Beringer's assistants. To some of these stones, they added inscriptions such as the Hebrew name of God in Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew characters. They planted these stones on Mount Eibelstadt where Beringer and his assistants frequently went to search for fossils. Beringer began to find many such rocks and without suspecting them began to document them. The hoaxers carved fragments of limestone into shapes of animals such as lizards, frogs, and spiders on their webs.
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Beringer published a book with illustrations of his findings Lithographiae Wirceburgensis (1726). Shortly after the book went into print, he realized that he had been duped and took legal action against Roderique and von Eckhart and won the case. The two were removed from their positions at the university and Roderique was banished from Würzburg but Beringer's reputation was forever destroyed. Eckhart lost his post and privileges to use the library and archives. This hampered his own historical research, which was left unfinished at his death. The stones became known as Lügensteine, or "lying stones". Some of the stones have survived to the present and a few are now on display at the Oxford University Museum, and Teylers Museum in the Netherlands.
|
||||
In his book Beringer examined multiple hypotheses to explain the origin of the stones including that they were the remains of former life forms, formed inorganically, vis plastica, by special creative forces of divine nature or the "capricious fabrications of God". He also considered the possibility that they were the carvings of prehistoric pagans, but he had to rule this out since pagans had no knowledge of the name of God. The idea that they were impressions of former living forms was supported in his time by the belief of the Biblical flood. Some critics had pointed out chisel marks on the rocks and Beringer noted that:
|
||||
|
||||
...the figures...are so exactly fitted to the dimensions of the stones, that one would swear that they are the work of a very meticulous sculptor...[and they] seem to bear unmistakable indications of the sculptor's knife... One would swear that he discerned in many of them the strokes of a knife gone awry, and superfluous gouges in several directions.
|
||||
|
||||
However, this evidence of sculpting only convinced him more strongly that the chisel was wielded by the hand of God.
|
||||
Some of the court transcript still exists, and in the testimony the hoaxers make clear that they did indeed want to discredit Beringer, because, they said, "he was so arrogant and despised us all". A 2005 book suggests that Roderique may not have been responsible for the fabrications of the fossil since Roderique was posted to the University of Würzburg only on 11 December 1725 and was in Münster when the stones were found in the summer of 1725. The authors suggested that Beringer himself may have been responsible for the fraud. Beringer spent many years recovering copies of his book. A second printing of his book was made in 1767, well after his death and it was translated into English in 1963.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Further reading ==
|
||||
Jahn, Melvin (1970). "Beringer, Johann Bartholomaeus Adam". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 2. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 15–16. ISBN 0-684-10114-9.
|
||||
Gould, Stephen Jay (2000). The Lying Stones of Marrakech: Penultimate Reflections in Natural History. Harmony Books. ISBN 0-609-60142-3.
|
||||
Pain, Stephani (25 December 2004). "Histories: Johann Beringer and the fraudulent fossils". New Scientist.
|
||||
(in German) Kelber, K.-P.; Okrusch, M. (2006). "Die geologische Erforschung und Kartierung des Würzburger Stadtgebietes von den Anfängen bis 1925". Mainfränkische Hefte 105. pp. 71–115. Würzburg.
|
||||
Jahn, Melvin E.; Woolf, Daniel J. (1963). The lying stones of Dr. Johann Bartholomew Adam Beringer: being his Lithographiæ Wirceburgensis. University of California Press. Translation of: Beringer, Johann; Hueber, George Ludwig (1726). Lithographiæ Wirceburgensis. Würzburg.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
Drawings of the "fossils" in Beringer's book
|
||||
Lithographiæ Wirceburgensis (Latin), Beringer's book, online at the University of Bologna.
|
||||
Lithographiæ Wirceburgensis Archived 2017-07-03 at the Wayback Machine – full digital facsimile from the Linda Hall Library
|
||||
19
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bixonimania-0.md
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19
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bixonimania-0.md
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Bixonimania"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bixonimania"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:40.597299+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Bixonimania is a fake disease invented by researchers to examine artificial intelligence and its ability to utilize information in medical and healthcare applications. The fake enabled researchers to show that some AI engines would report as fact fake research that to an expert would be obviously implausible.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Use in exposing weaknesses of artificial intelligence ==
|
||||
The disorder, with symptoms of sore eyes and darkening around them ("periorbital hyperpigmentation"), is supposedly caused by blue light from screens. The name was first used in a blog posted on Medium titled "How many people suffer from Bixonimania?" A more scholarly-looking paper describing it was posted later in April 2024 on a preprint server with several fake authors. A second paper was posted in May. By 2026, AI chatbots suggested bixonimania based on the list of symptoms provided. The experiment was conducted by a team from the University of Gothenburg led by Almira Osmanovic Thunström. Many steps were taken to ensure that any person who read the actual paper could tell it wasn't a real condition. The team chose an obviously inappropriate name ending in -mania, a description used only in psychiatry. The lead author was noted as belonging to Asteria Horizon University located in Nova City, California, neither of which exist. An acknowledgement was made to "Professor Maria Bohm at The Starfleet Academy for her kindness and generosity in contributing with her knowledge and her lab onboard the USS Enterprise".
|
||||
Thunström and her team discovered that many LLMs processed the information and gave it as health advice. Microsoft Copilot declared that "Bixonimania is indeed an intriguing and relatively rare condition" while Gemini gave the information that "Bixonimania is a condition caused by excessive exposure to blue light". More shockingly, three Indian researchers published a research paper that cited the preprint on the fake disease in Cureus, a peer-reviewed journal published by Springer. It was subsequently retracted. Following the revelations and an article in Nature describing the experiment, several AI systems began to generate corrected output.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
30
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale_Challenge-0.md
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Blue Whale Challenge"
|
||||
chunk: 1/4
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale_Challenge"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:41.776773+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Blue Whale Challenge (Russian: Си́ний ки́т, romanized: Siniy kit), also known simply as the Blue Whale, is a social network phenomenon, first appeared in Russia in 2013, that is claimed to exist in several countries. It is a "game" reportedly consisting of a series of tasks assigned to players by administrators over a 50-day period, initially innocuous before introducing elements of self-harm and the final challenge requiring the player to commit suicide.
|
||||
Blue Whale Challenge first attracted news coverage in May 2016 in an article in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta that linked many unrelated child suicides to membership of group "F57" on the Russian-based VK social network. A wave of moral panic swept Russia. The piece was criticized for attempting to make a causal link where none existed, and none of the suicides were found to be a result of the group's activities. Claims of suicides connected to the game have been reported worldwide, but none have been confirmed.
|
||||
The game has been banned in some countries, including Egypt, Kenya, and Pakistan. However, experts have said that since the game is not played on any specific website or app, it may be difficult or even impossible to fully ban it.
|
||||
|
||||
== Background ==
|
||||
In November 2015, Renata Kambolina, a Russian teenager, posted a selfie with the caption "nya.bye" before committing suicide; her death was then discussed in internet forums and groups, becoming mixed with scare stories and folklore. Further suicides were added to the group stories. Soon after, Russian journalist Galina Mursaliyeva first wrote about these "death groups" in an article published in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta in April 2016. The article described the "F57" groups on Russian social media site VK, which she claimed had incited 130 teenagers to kill themselves. Mursaliyeva's article was criticized at the time of its release for lacking credible data and balance, with the 130 cases of suicide cited being particularly problematic. The number was originally suggested by the father of one of the teenagers, Sergey Pestov, who came to the figure 130 by using Russian media sources to look for child suicides he believed were linked to online groups; he then produced a brochure which implied that foreign intelligence operatives were responsible for encouraging Russian children to commit suicide. After an investigation by Evgeny Berg for Meduza, Mursaliyeva responded by saying in fact there had been at least 200 suicides.
|
||||
The origin of the name "Blue Whale" is uncertain. Some reports say that it comes from a song by the Russian rock band Lumen. Its opening lines are "Why scream / When no one hears / What we're talking about?" and it features a "huge blue whale" that "can't break through the net." Others believe it to be a reference to beaching, where whales become stranded on beaches and die.
|
||||
The game is said to run on different social media platforms and is described as a relationship between an administrator and participant. Over a period of fifty days the administrator sets one task per day; the tasks seem innocent to begin with ("get up at 4:30 a.m.", "watch a horror movie"), and move on to self-harm, leading to the participant killing themselves on the final day. As professor at Russian State University for the Humanities, Alexandra Arkhipova found that the administrators were children aged between 12 and 14, drawn to the story as it became widely reported and not, as the hysteria had intimated, predatory adults.
|
||||
|
||||
== Social concerns ==
|
||||
While many experts suggest Blue Whale was originally a sensationalized hoax, they believe that it is likely that the phenomenon has led to instances of imitative self-harming or suicide contagion effects. And studies have found that those effects can spread through discussion in the media, even discussions about the dangers, as the trend became circulated online and trigger words became more normalized. It also is believed to have led to copycat groups, leaving vulnerable children at risk of cyberbullying and online shaming.
|
||||
By late 2017, reported participation in Blue Whale was receding. Internet safety organizations across the world have reacted by giving general advice to parents and educators on suicide prevention, mental health awareness, and online safety in advance of the next incarnation of cyberbullying.
|
||||
|
||||
"People join narratives to explain their experiences ... that is possibly why some children have said they participated in the rumoured challenge despite there being no proof of its existence."
|
||||
American skeptic Ben Radford researched the phenomenon, calling it the "moral panic du jour" and equating it to the Dungeons & Dragons controversies of the 1980s. Radford also states "this is only the latest in a long series of similar moral panics and outrages shared on social media ... the best antidote ... is a healthy dose of skepticism". The podcast Squaring the Strange included his analysis of the dangers for parents when these stories are spread.
|
||||
Case studies have also been done to reframe online suicide games as a type of cyberbullying. Although the victim does voluntarily start playing the game, it includes the key elements of cyberbullying: manipulation, coercion, and psychological pressure. And it was also found that while the victims did initiate their participation in the game, many of the kids who played were struggling in school with poor grades or absenteeism, suggesting a need for intervention by the schools to prevent the decline in mental health that lead students to seek out the Blue Whale.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Police warnings ===
|
||||
Police in Russia have extensively issued warnings about the game.
|
||||
Police in numerous other countries have issued warnings, including in Armenia, Brazil, France, India, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
|
||||
46
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale_Challenge-1.md
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46
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@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Blue Whale Challenge"
|
||||
chunk: 2/4
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale_Challenge"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:41.776773+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
== Arrests ==
|
||||
In 2016, Philipp Budeikin, a 21-year-old former psychology student who was expelled from his university, claimed that he invented the game in 2013. According to Budeikin, its purpose is to "clean society of biological wastes", as he intended to "clean" society from individuals who were deemed as having no value and considered as burdens. Although originally claiming innocence and stating he was "just having fun", Budeikin was arrested and held in Kresty Prison, Saint Petersburg, and in May 2016 pled guilty to "inciting at least 16 teenage girls to commit suicide". He was later convicted on two counts of inciting suicide of a minor. Commentators such as Benjamin Radford have pointed out that sensationalized stories in world news regarding the involvement of Budeikin have all linked back to just two Russian sources, with tabloid news outlets replicating the same information without elaboration.
|
||||
In June 2017, postman Ilya Sidorov was arrested in Moscow, also accused of setting up a Blue Whale group to encourage children to self-harm and ultimately commit suicide. He claimed to have persuaded 32 children to join his group and follow his commands.
|
||||
In June 2018, Russian financial analyst Nikita Nearonov was arrested for allegedly masterminding the Blue Whale game. Nearonov is suspected of grooming 10 underage girls in order to bring them to suicide, two of whom, aged 14 and 17, are known to have survived. As a financial analyst, Nearonov has been described as a computer expert who held a large amount of contempt for teenagers, believing that they were "wicked" and "deserved to die". Police reports claim that Nearonov's involvement in the Blue Whale game was his "hobby".
|
||||
|
||||
== Alleged incidents ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== Armenia ===
|
||||
According to news reports, the cause of death of 15-year-old Hrachya Nersisyan, who died by suicide, was the game "Blue Whale". According to the head of the department for the Protection of Minors' Rights and Combating Domestic Violence of the Main Criminal Investigation Department of the Armenian Police, Nelly Duryan, the Armenian segment of the Internet is flooded with messages about this "game", but there are no final conclusions on this issue yet.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Australia ===
|
||||
Although no reports of suicides in Australia have been linked to the game, an investigation by an Australian journalist on Kidspot reportedly confirmed the existence of the game.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Bangladesh ===
|
||||
Despite many news reports published in Bangladeshi media attempting to link suicides with the game, no case has been officially confirmed.
|
||||
In October 2017, Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan stated that the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has been directed to investigate the Blue Whale game after reports of suicide around the country. BTRC released a notice urging people to call a specific number if any web link or any information related to the Blue Whale game were to be found. Later that month, the Bangladeshi High Court ordered a six-month ban on special night-time internet packages provided by various mobile operators across the country.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Brazil ===
|
||||
Despite several news reports in Brazilian media linking cases of child self-harm and suicide with Blue Whale and several ongoing investigations, none have been officially confirmed.
|
||||
In response to the game, a designer and a publicity agent from São Paulo created a movement called Baleia Rosa (Pink Whale), which became popular. It relied on the collaboration of hundreds of volunteers. The movement was based on positive tasks that value life and combat depression. Another movement, the Capivara Amarela (Yellow Capybara), was created by Sandro Sanfelice, and proposed to "combat the Blue Whale game" and guide people seeking some kind of help. Participants were separated into either challengers, who are the people who need guidance, or healers, who are a kind of sponsor to the challengers. An Adventist school in southern Paraná, in partnership with other education networks, also sought to reverse the situation by proposing another charity game, the "Jonas Challenge" (referring to the biblical character Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale and vomited up three days later). Other games created in Brazil in response to the Blue Whale were the Baleia Verde (Green Whale) and the Preguiça Azul (Blue Sloth).
|
||||
In Belo Horizonte and Recife metropolitan area in Brazil, many schools promoted lectures to talk about the Blue Whale game. On May 21, 2017, it was announced that the Brazilian police Specialized in High Technology Crime Repression in Piauí were preparing a digital primer to warn young people about the dangers of the game.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Bulgaria ===
|
||||
The first media reports of the game in Bulgaria appeared in mid-February 2017. However, the game was dismissed as a hoax by the Georgi Apostolov Centre.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Chile ===
|
||||
The first alleged case of the game in Chile was reported in April 2017 in Antofagasta, after a 12-year-old girl was seen with 15 cuts on her arm, which formed a "whale".
|
||||
|
||||
=== China ===
|
||||
In May 2017, Tencent, China's largest Internet service portal, closed 12 suspicious Blue Whale-related network groups on its social networking platform QQ. It said that the number of this kind of groups is on the rise. The search results of related keywords were also blocked.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Egypt ===
|
||||
In April 2018, Egyptian news sources claimed a 12-year-old schoolboy had killed himself by taking poisonous tablets to fulfill one of the challenges of the game. According to the media, the schoolboy was found with a scar in the shape of a blue whale on his right arm. In reaction to the growing media awareness of the game, Egypt's Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah uploaded a video on their YouTube channel claiming that the game is forbidden in Islam, and warning against it. As of 2025, about 26 suicides in Egypt have been associated with Blue Whale challenge, though the actual number is said to be higher.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Germany ===
|
||||
In 2017, a 13-year-old girl from Radevormwald, North Rhine-Westphalia, was reported to have scratched a blue whale on her arm as part of the game. The game was allegedly found on her phone.
|
||||
40
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale_Challenge-2.md
Normal file
40
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale_Challenge-2.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Blue Whale Challenge"
|
||||
chunk: 3/4
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale_Challenge"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:41.776773+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== India ===
|
||||
Throughout 2017, media in India reported several cases of child suicide, self-harm and attempted suicide alleged to be a result of Blue Whale, and in response, the Indian government's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, requested that several internet companies (including Google, Facebook, and Yahoo!) remove all links which direct users to the game. Some commentators accused the government of creating a moral panic. The Indian internet watchdog Centre for Internet and Society accused the coverage of effectively spreading and advertising a "game" for which there is little evidence. The Supreme Court asked the Indian Central government to ban the game, following which the government responded that since Blue Whale wasn't an application, it couldn't be banned. For a period of time several internet providers blocked Russian social network VKontakte over concerns about the "game" believed to originate on this Russian social network.
|
||||
In January 2018, the government reported there was no evidence that any death was a result of the challenge, stating, "The committee analysed the internet activities, device activities, call records and other social media activity, other forensic evidences and also interacted with rescued victims associated with these incidents. Involvement of Blue Whale challenge game in any of these incidents could not be established." In June 2023, the government informed the Supreme Court that it is not possible to block the Blue Whale challenge.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Iran ===
|
||||
In September 2017, the Iranian Minister of Information and Communications Technology posted a message in his official Instagram account to warn parents and teachers about the spread of the Blue Whale challenge among Iranian teens.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Italy ===
|
||||
In Italy, press coverage of Blue Whale first appeared on 3 June 2016, in the newspaper La Stampa, which described the challenge as "a bad joke". The debunking site BUTAC reported the total lack of evidence to affirm the game's existence. On 14 May 2017, a TV report by Le Iene about 'Blue Whale' on the national channel Italia 1 linked the challenge to an unconnected suicide in Livorno. The report showed several suicide scenes, mostly from videos on LiveLeak depicting adults unrelated to the challenge. It incorrectly described the footage as evidence of teenagers playing the game. The report interviewed a schoolmate of the Livorno teenager, two mothers of Russian girls who supposedly took part in the game, and the founder of the Russian Center for the safety of children from internet crimes. Following the report, coverage of the challenge in the Italian media increased, with many outlets describing it as real. There was a sharp rise in Google searches for the challenge, and some panic.
|
||||
On May 15th and 16th, newspapers announced the arrest of Budeikin, without saying that it happened months before. His unconfirmed statements about his supposed victims being "genetical rubbish" were reported as real. Paolo Attivissimo, a journalist and debunker of hoaxes, described the game as "a death myth dangerously exaggerated by sensationalist journalism". Police received calls from terrified parents and teachers, and there were reports of teenagers taking part in the challenge. These included several cases of self-mutilation and attempted suicide. Most reports were considered to be false or exaggerated. Alleged participants were reported from all over Italy: Ravenna, Brescia and Siracusa.
|
||||
On 22 May 2017, the Polizia Postale stated they had received 40 reports. On 24 May they raised the number to 70. On its website the Polizia Postale defines Blue Whale as "a practice that seems to possibly come from Russia" and offers advice to parents and teenagers. Several alleged cases have since been described by newspapers.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Israel ===
|
||||
In July 2020, the Israeli Child Online Protection Bureau had announced they are collaborating with TikTok to "eradicate the Blue Whale phenomenon".
|
||||
|
||||
=== Kenya ===
|
||||
Jamie Njenga, a 16-year-old boy who attended JG Kiereini Secondary School in Kiambu County, Kenya, hanged himself with a rope from the balcony of his home, according to his grandfather John Njenga. He was reported to have played the game on his phone, which was seized by police following his suicide. This was the first suicide in Kenya to be linked to the game. Because of this, the Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB) banned the game in Kenya, and wrote to all internet service providers (ISP) in Kenya and to numerous other major social media platforms and tech companies (including Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube) to ensure that all links to the game are blocked in Kenya.
|
||||
|
||||
=== New Zealand ===
|
||||
Although no suicides in New Zealand have been linked to the game, New Zealand Police have issued warnings about the game.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Paraguay ===
|
||||
A 22-year-old student, Federico Pedro Aguilera, was found dead with a stab wound to his chest in Coronel Bogado, Paraguay, with his death linked to the Blue Whale. This was the first suicide in Paraguay to be linked to the game.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Portugal ===
|
||||
At least eight suicides in Portugal have been linked to the game, though many of the reports involved foreign individuals as opposed to Portuguese residents.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Russia ===
|
||||
In March 2017, authorities in Russia were investigating approximately 130 separate cases of suicide related to the phenomenon. In February a 15-year-old and 16-year-old committed suicide by jumping off of a 14-story building in Irkutsk, Siberia after completing 50 tasks sent to them. Before they killed themselves together, they left messages on their pages on social networks. Also in February, a 15-year-old was in critical condition after jumping out of an apartment and falling on snow-covered ground in the town of Krasnoyarsk, Siberia.
|
||||
On 26 May 2017, the Russian Duma passed a bill introducing criminal responsibility for creating pro-suicide groups on social media and in June 2017, President Putin signed a law imposing criminal penalties for inducing minors to suicide. The law imposes a maximum punishment of six years in prison.
|
||||
55
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale_Challenge-3.md
Normal file
55
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale_Challenge-3.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Blue Whale Challenge"
|
||||
chunk: 4/4
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale_Challenge"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:41.776773+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Saudi Arabia ===
|
||||
On 15 July 2018, the Saudi General Commission for Audio-Visual Media banned 47 video games, including Grand Theft Auto V, Assassin's Creed II and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, that had online components that were alleged to be part of the Blue Whale game following the suicides of two teenagers that had been involved in it.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Spain ===
|
||||
In 2018, the first suicide in Spain allegedly linked to the game was reported, after a 14-year-old girl from Gipuzkoa, Basque Country committed suicide and acknowledged that she played the game. Although she initially did not intend to complete all 50 challenges (the last being to commit suicide), she ended up killing herself, stating that the perpetrators could be found "in Barcelona and in Argentina".
|
||||
|
||||
=== Tunisia ===
|
||||
On 12 March 2018, the parents of seven Tunisian children who claimed their children had killed themselves due to the game requested a ban on Blue Whale from the Tunisian courts. A trial court in Sousse issued an interim judgment prohibiting Blue Whale and another supposed similar game named "Miriam".
|
||||
|
||||
=== United States ===
|
||||
Many schools in the United States have warned parents about the game, though the number of Americans reported to have committed suicide because of the game has been low.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Uruguay ===
|
||||
In Uruguay, the game has been linked to suicides in at least six departments: Canelones, Colonia, Montevideo, Rio Negro, Rivera and Salto.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Venezuela ===
|
||||
In January 2019, a 15-year-old boy committed suicide at his home in Vargas, Venezuela, after allegedly playing the game.
|
||||
|
||||
== In popular culture ==
|
||||
Several movies and TV series have adopted Blue Whale Challenge as a part of their storyline, including:
|
||||
|
||||
In the episode of the Netflix series Black Mirror titled "Shut Up and Dance" (2016), parallels were drawn to the Blue Whale Challenge.
|
||||
Blue Whale Challenge was shown in the Brazilian telenovela Edge of Desire (2017).
|
||||
Manasinata (2019), an Indian Kannada-language drama film by R. Ravindra, is based on the Blue Whale Challenge and explores issues which may lead children into suicidal internet games and challenges.
|
||||
Early Swallows is a 2019 Ukrainian teen drama television show which focuses on teenage issues such as drugs, bullying and the Blue Whale Challenge.
|
||||
50 or Two Whales Meet on the Beach (2020), a Mexican drama film follows two teens who meet and fall in love while playing the Blue Whale Challenge and decide to follow through on the last task, suicide.
|
||||
The Blue Whale (El Hoot El Azraq) is a 2020 Egyptian film that focuses on the game and the police investigation surrounding the deaths of teens.
|
||||
Martyisdead is a 2019 Czech thriller web series that was inspired by the Blue Whale Challenge.
|
||||
Search Out is a 2020 South Korean thriller film written and directed by Kwak Jeong that was inspired by the Blue Whale Challenge.
|
||||
#Blue_Whale (Russian: Я иду играть, literally "I'm going to play") is a 2021 Russian thriller film based on the game. It was directed by Anna Zaitseva.
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Choking game – Dangerous game of trying to faint
|
||||
Blackout challenge – Internet challenge revolving around the choking game
|
||||
Cyberbullying – Bullying in electronic communications
|
||||
Momo Challenge hoax – Viral Internet hoax
|
||||
764 (organization)
|
||||
Peer pressure – Influencing peers to conform
|
||||
Suicide contagion
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
Concern over media coverage of 'Blue Whale'
|
||||
Pink Whale Movement (Movimento Baleia Rosa, in Portuguese)
|
||||
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|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair"
|
||||
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|
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|
||||
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||||
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|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
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|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair"
|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
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|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair"
|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
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|
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|
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|
||||
|
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|
||||
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|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:17:36.990206+00:00"
|
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|
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|
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|
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|
||||
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|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:17:36.990206+00:00"
|
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|
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|
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|
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|
||||
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|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:17:36.990206+00:00"
|
||||
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|
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|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
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|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:17:36.990206+00:00"
|
||||
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instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Bombay Cyclone of 1882 (hoax)"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombay_Cyclone_of_1882_(hoax)"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:45.409075+00:00"
|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The so-called Bombay Cyclone of 1882 or Great Bombay Cyclone is a hoax (or otherwise fictitious) historical event. Supposedly, the cyclone struck Bombay on 6 June 1882. Though it is widely reported, even in scientific literature, historical research shows that it did not in fact happen.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Example accounts of the supposed event ==
|
||||
Reportedly, the earliest mention of the supposed cyclone so far discovered by researchers is in an article entitled "Hurricane second only to tornado in wind violence" by M. Hall in the American newspaper The Nashua Telegraph published on 17 September 1947, followed by a piece by one B. Chester, "Earthquakes, tidal waves cause historic disasters" from The Evening Independent of 31 March 1964.
|
||||
The cyclone is mentioned in academic literature from at least 1976. An entry in the 2008 edition of the Encyclopedia of Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones by David Longshore states:
|
||||
|
||||
The Great Bombay Cyclone of June 6, 1882: One of few truly great Indian cyclones to have formed over the Arabian Sea, the Great Bombay Cyclone—engorged with 110-MPH (177-km/h) winds and an 18-foot (6-m) surge—reportedly claimed more than 100,000 lives when it came ashore at Bombay right before daybreak.
|
||||
A 2014 academic article claims that "the deadliest storm surge of Arabian sea was Great Bombay Cyclone, took place in 1882 causing 100,000 causalities [sic]. It is one of ten deadliest tropical cyclones of the known history of the world." Another account, published in 2017, says that
|
||||
|
||||
the city of Bombay was all but destroyed by a monster cyclone that slammed into the Maharashtra region on June 6th 1882. This was one of the few great storms to emerge from the Arabian Sea. The super storm covered an enormous area as it came ashore at dawn bringing with it 110 mile per hour winds and an 18 foot tidal surge that inundated much of the region around Bombay ... The resultant winds, flooding and damage to buildings killed more the 100,000 people.
|
||||
It appears in other academic literature besides: some further examples are referenced here. As of December 2015, research noted, it was also reported as fact in Wikipedia (a 2019 study also made the same claim).
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Debunking of the story ==
|
||||
|
||||
Research into newspapers, meteorological records, and weather reports shows no contemporary record of the event. If a storm of anything like the reported magnitude had happened, then it would have killed about an eighth of Bombay's population, and would have been widely reported. There does appear to have been a storm with heavy rain and strong winds on 4 June 1882, but it does not answer to descriptions of the supposed cyclone of 6 June. Bombay's biggest cyclone event of the nineteenth century in fact appears to have been the cyclone of 1854, when "'property valued at half-a-million pounds sterling' was destroyed in four hours and a thousand people were killed".
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
28
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonsai_Kitten-0.md
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28
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Bonsai Kitten"
|
||||
chunk: 1/2
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonsai_Kitten"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:46.620421+00:00"
|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
BonsaiKitten.com was a hoax shock site that claimed to raise kittens in jars, so as to mold the bones of the kitten into the shape of the jar as the cat grows, similarly to a bonsai plant. It was launched in 2000 by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student under the alias of Dr. Michael Wong Chang. Many people believed that the black comedy website was serious, and filed complaints to animal rights organizations and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI and several other organizations, including Snopes.com and the Humane Society of the United States, debunked the concept of a "bonsai kitten".
|
||||
The website's legacy remains as a notable example of a hoax site, and generated much discussion about Internet animal cruelty and the issue of free speech.
|
||||
|
||||
== Site overview ==
|
||||
|
||||
BonsaiKitten.com is dedicated to the "long lost art" of growing "bonsai kittens". The introduction on its homepage invokes orientalism as it describes how the West has long been captivated by the culture of the Far East, such as tattoos, martial arts, and miniature sculpture. It then claims that the concept of miniature sculpture has been famously applied to bonsai trees, it can also be applied to animals, hence its promotion of the bonsai kitten. From here, the visitor can click on a "Method" page, a "Gallery" page, a "Sales" page, and a "News" page.
|
||||
The "Method" section claims that the skeleton of a week-old kitten is so soft that the kitten will bounce if thrown. It goes on to explain that if one puts the week-old kitten in a glass bottle, it will grow to the same shape as said bottle, and that the bottle can be broken once the cat is the desired size and shape. The "Gallery" page has four images of alleged bonsai kittens in various stages of development. Three of these images supposedly depict the process of creating a bonsai kitten within its first week. The fourth, apparently of a later-stage kitten, warns that, because of "extreme body manipulations" and "the high contrast between bodily fluids and white fur", the image is not for sensitive viewers and thus can only be seen with permission. Those who are still interested are directed to an email, the "Sales" page, to allow for the purchase of live bonsai kittens and the supplies with which to make one's own, with no actual way to purchase either.
|
||||
The site also featured a guestbook. A number of visitors left complaints about the site's content in the guestbook, though many comments were believed to be jokes. Later additions to the site included "research" indicating that cat litter causes brain damage. The website states that this enhances the bonsai kitten art form's practical value.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Website analysis ===
|
||||
In the book Hippo Eats Dwarf, while discussing infamous hoax sites, author Alex Boese uses the site as an example of what he deemed "the gross-out hoax", a practical joke that is intended to disturb its victim. He writes that the site convinced so many people because disgusting things such as animal cruelty do exist, giving it "built-in credibility".
|
||||
Some critics noted that in hindsight, an obvious sign that Bonsai Kitten was a hoax was that the site claimed to sell goods, namely live bonsai kittens and supplies for "growing" them, yet had no way to actually purchase the product. The page also offered a New York City-based telephone number, which never responded when called, and which a spokesperson for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals confirmed was not legitimate. Snopes also noted that the process would kill a kitten before the "molding" process could begin. The site's creator would later state that he expected the satire to be obvious, adding that "from our incoming mail, it seems far fewer than 1 percent of respondents understand".
|
||||
|
||||
== History ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== Conception ===
|
||||
BonsaiKitten.com was created in December 2000 by a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was originally hosted on the university's server, on the student's on-campus computer. The student went by the alias "Dr. Michael Wong Chang". In addition to running the website, Chang also held satirical in-person events on campus themed around bonsai kittens, such as "converting" people to "Team Bonsai Kitten" or hosting tutorials on stuffing kittens in jars.
|
||||
The name "bonsai kitten" is a reference to the art of bonsai, in which trees are grown in small containers and groomed to be certain shapes. The idea of body modification through binding has real-life precedent as well. Bonsai Kitten's homepage also mentions foot binding, a real Chinese custom in which the feet of women were bound to appear more dainty, as an example of the Far East's tradition of sculpting living things.
|
||||
40
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonsai_Kitten-1.md
Normal file
40
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Bonsai Kitten"
|
||||
chunk: 2/2
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonsai_Kitten"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
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tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:46.620421+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Animal cruelty accusations ===
|
||||
Very shortly after the creation of the website, controversy arose surrounding the content. Many people believed that the site was serious, and wrote to various animal rights and welfare organizations pleading for investigations. Humane World for Animals (then the Humane Society of the United States) could not determine whether the site was a hoax or not, but called for its termination either way. Other animal advocacy groups did determine that the site was a hoax, but still demanded it be shut down for fear that it could encourage copycat violence. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said it was "horrified" by the site, along with the larger trend of animal cruelty on the internet, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said that the joke was "inappropriate and certainly not funny", lamenting that it is legal to joke about animal cruelty. In early 2001, the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals issued a subpoena to MIT for information on the site's owners. They also sent an armed investigator to the campus to gather information, as MSPCA is deputized under state law with arrest abilities.
|
||||
BonsaiKitten.com was the subject of spam email pleas. Said pleas often targeted non-English speakers, who spread them without fully understanding the text, further allowing misinformation to spread. The website itself received hate emails directly, which by February 2001 had reached the "tens of thousands". Some of the hate was racially motivated; one person wrote to Chang that "you are probably Chinese, the most perverse of the Asians". This was furthered by at least one of the aforementioned spam emails, which claimed that the site was run by "a Japanese" and that the kittens were a popular fashion accessory in Asia.
|
||||
Some of the site's defenders accused its critics of having double standards. Andrew Smith of The Register noted that Yahoo linked to and categorized multiple crush fetish websites, yet censored a discussion group about Bonsai Kitten. Chang also accused the media of "exploiting ‘distasteful’ subject matter in the guise of information and exploiting it as entertainment", saying that "lurid details of human fault and misery are published in the ‘mainstream’ media for exactly the same reason that certain people exchange this material informally-to titillate the viewer".
|
||||
|
||||
=== FBI investigation ===
|
||||
In February 2001, after receiving numerous complaints, the Boston field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a grand jury subpoena to MIT concerning the site. The FBI cited a law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1999, prohibiting the possession of animal cruelty depictions commercially released across state lines, as the reason for the investigation. The investigation was praised by Humane World for Animals, but others criticized it. Defense attorney Harvey Silvergate believed that the FBI was motivated by a desire to rebrand their image in a more positive light, saying that "they massively run rampant over Americans' liberties but they want to be seen as nice fuzzy guys who want to protect kittens". Janelle Brown of Yahoo Internet Life viewed it as a free speech violation, writing that "the Bureau believes irony is illegal". Eventually, the FBI concluded that no actual cruelty to animals had taken place.
|
||||
This was not the only law enforcement investigation into the site. In August 2001, months after the FBI investigation, the Allegheny County district attorney's office received a complaint regarding the site, and launched an investigation that lasted for only a few minutes before the site was deemed a hoax.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Aftermath ===
|
||||
Within a month of its creation, the site was picked up and dropped by eleven different servers. At least two internet service providers dropped the site after pressure from Humane World for Animals. The site was finally picked up by Rotten.com in March 2001, in a move that Chang believed benefitted both himself and Rotten in terms of publicity.
|
||||
|
||||
== Legacy ==
|
||||
In 2021, artists Eva & Franco Mattes created a sculpture called Bonsai Kitten, depicting a taxidermy cat inside a glass jar, which drew inspiration from the hoax website. The hoax is also the namesake for the German rock band Bonsai Kitten.
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
|
||||
BuyTigers.com, another hoax site involving alleged animal cruelty
|
||||
Chain letter, a method which helped to spread the hoax
|
||||
Comprachicos, an alleged practice performed on children similar to the bonsai kitten hoax
|
||||
Foot binding, a real practice that inspired the bonsai kitten hoax
|
||||
Impossible bottle, in which things apparently too large are fit into glass bottles
|
||||
Square watermelon, a real, similar method for growing watermelons
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
www.bonsaikitten.com, archive of original site at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
|
||||
Bonsai Kittens - Snopes.com Urban Legends Reference Pages
|
||||
Yahoo Directory Urban Legends > Bonsai Kitten
|
||||
31
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calaveras_Skull-0.md
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31
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Calaveras Skull"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calaveras_Skull"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:47.773315+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The Calaveras Skull (also known as the Pliocene Skull) was a human skull found in 1866 by miners in Calaveras County, California, which was presented as evidence that humans were in North America as early as during the Pliocene Epoch (at least 2 million years ago), and which was used to support the idea the humans, mastodons, and mammoths had coexisted. The skull was later revealed to be a hoax, although it is now known that humans, mastodons, and mammoths had indeed coexisted, but much more recently (during the Pleistocene Epoch: at least 12,000 years ago). Coincidentally, calaveras is the Spanish word for skulls.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== History ==
|
||||
On February 25, 1866, miners claimed to have found a human skull in a mine, beneath a layer of lava, 130 feet (40 m) below the surface of the earth. The skull made it into the hands of Josiah Whitney, then the state geologist of California and professor of geology at Harvard University. A year before the skull came to his attention, Whitney published the belief that humans, mastodons, and mammoths coexisted; the skull served as proof of his convictions. After careful study, he officially announced its discovery at a meeting of the California Academy of Sciences on July 16, 1866, declaring it evidence of the existence of Pliocene-age man in North America, which would make it the oldest known record of humans on the continent.
|
||||
Its authenticity was immediately challenged. In 1869 the San Francisco Evening Bulletin reported that a miner had told a minister that the skull was planted as a practical joke. Thomas Wilson of Harvard ran a fluorine analysis on it in 1879 (the first ever usage of such on human bone), with the results indicating it was of recent origin. It was so widely believed to be a hoax that Bret Harte famously wrote a satirical poem called "To the Pliocene Skull" in 1899.
|
||||
Whitney did not waver in his belief that it was genuine. His successor at Harvard, Frederic Ward Putnam, also believed it to be real. By 1901 Putnam was determined to discover the truth and he headed to California. While there, he heard a story that in 1865 one of a number of Indian skulls had been dug up from a nearby burial site and planted in the mine specifically for miners to find. Putnam still declined to declare the skull a fake, instead conceding, "It may be impossible ever to determine to the satisfaction of the archaeologist the place where the skull was actually found." Others, such as adherents of Theosophy, also were unwavering in their belief in the authenticity of the skull. Further complicating the issue, careful comparison of the skull with descriptions of it at the time of its discovery revealed that the skull Whitney had in his possession was not the one originally found.
|
||||
Anthropologist William Henry Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution investigated around the turn of the century. He determined that the plant and animal fossils that had been discovered near the skull were indeed genuine, but the skull was too modern, and concluded that "to suppose that man could have remained unchanged... for a million years, roughly speaking... is to suppose a miracle." Likewise, J. M. Boutwell, investigating in 1911, was told by one of the participants in the discovery that the whole thing was indeed a hoax. The miners of the Sierra Nevada apparently did not greatly like Whitney ("being an Easterner of very reserved demeanor") and were "delighted" to have played such a joke on him. Furthermore, John C. Scribner, a local shopkeeper, claimed to have planted it, and the story was revealed by his sister after his death. Radiocarbon dating in 1992 established the age of the skull at probably less than a thousand years old, placing it in the late current geological epoch age.
|
||||
Despite evidence to the contrary, the Calaveras Skull continues to be cited by some creationists as proof that paleontologists ignore evidence that does not fit their theories. However, others have acknowledged that the Calaveras Skull is a hoax.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Piltdown Man
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Further reading ==
|
||||
Dexter, Ralph W. (1986). "Historical Aspects of the Calaveras Skull Controversy". American Antiquity. 51 (2): 365–369. doi:10.2307/279949. ISSN 0002-7316. JSTOR 279949. S2CID 162225130.
|
||||
Testa, Stephen M. (2002). "Josiah D. Whitney and William P. Blake: Conflicts in Relation to California Geology and the Fate of the First Geological Survey". Earth Sciences History. 21 (1): 46–76. doi:10.17704/eshi.21.1.l175607470v75232. ISSN 0736-623X. JSTOR 24137171.
|
||||
24
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Giant-0.md
Normal file
24
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Giant-0.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Cardiff Giant"
|
||||
chunk: 1/2
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Giant"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:50.145870+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The Cardiff Giant was one of the most famous archaeological hoaxes in American history. It was a 10-foot-tall (3.0 m), roughly 3,000 pound purported "petrified man", uncovered on October 16, 1869, by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. "Stub" Newell, in Cardiff, New York. He covered the giant with a tent and it soon became an attraction site. Both it and an unauthorized copy made by P. T. Barnum are still being displayed.
|
||||
|
||||
== Creation and discovery ==
|
||||
The giant was the creation of a New York tobacconist named George Hull. He was deeply attracted to science and especially to the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin. Hull got into an argument with Reverend Turk and his supporters at a Methodist revival meeting about Genesis 6:4, which states that there were giants who once lived on Earth. Hull, a skeptic, being the minority party, lost the argument. Angered by his defeat and the credulity of people, Hull wanted to prove how easily he could fool people with a fake giant.
|
||||
The idea of a petrified man did not originate with Hull, however. During 1858, the newspaper Alta California had published a fake letter claiming that a prospector had been petrified when he had drunk a liquid within a geode. Other newspapers had also published stories of supposedly petrified people.
|
||||
In 1868, Hull, accompanied by a man named H. B. Martin, hired men to quarry out a 10-foot-4.5-inch-long (3.2 m) block of gypsum in Fort Dodge, Iowa, telling them it was intended for a monument to Abraham Lincoln in New York. He shipped the block to Edward Burkhardt in Chicago, a German stonecutter. Burkhardt hired two sculptors named Henry Salle and Fred Mohrmann to create the giant. While it is not clear if Burkhardt was aware of Hull's intentions, it is reported that they took steps to cover up their work during the carving, putting up quilts to lessen the sound of carving.
|
||||
The giant was designed to imitate the form of Hull himself. Hull consulted a geologist and learned that hairs would not be petrified, so he removed the hair and beard from the giant. The length of the giant was 10 feet 4+1⁄2 inches (3.162 m) and it weighed 2,990 pounds (1,360 kg).
|
||||
Various stains and acids were used to make the giant appear to be old and weathered. In order for the giant to look ancient, Hull first wiped the giant using a sponge soaked with sand and water. The giant's surface was beaten with steel knitting needles embedded in a board to simulate pores. The giant was also rubbed with sulphuric acid to create a deeper, vintage-like color. During November 1868, Hull transported the giant by railroad to the farm of his cousin, William Newell. By then, he had spent US$2,600 (equivalent to $63,000 in 2025) for the hoax.
|
||||
On a night in late November 1868, the giant was buried in a hole in Newell's farm. Nearly a year later, Newell hired Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols, ostensibly to dig a well, and on October 16, 1869, they found the giant. One of the men reportedly exclaimed, "I declare, some old Indian has been buried here!"
|
||||
|
||||
== Exhibition and exposure as fraud ==
|
||||
On the first day, visitors were able to view the giant with no fee charged. The next day, a tent was set up on the discovery site and Newell charged each visitor fifty cents for a fifteen-minute session of viewing the giant. The number of visitors went to about three to five hundred per day as the demand for wagons and carriages dramatically increased. The townspeople also gained huge profit because of the Cardiff Giant. The hotels and restaurants in Cardiff saw more customers in those four days than they had ever seen before.
|
||||
Some believed this giant was a petrified man, while some believed it was a statue. Those who believed it was a petrified man thought it was one of the giants mentioned in the aforementioned Genesis verse. On the other hand, John F. Boynton, the first geologist to examine the giant, declared that it could not be a fossilized man, but hypothesized that it was a statue that was carved by a French Jesuit in the 16th or 17th century in order to impress the local Native Americans.
|
||||
Andrew D. White, the first president of Cornell University, made a close inspection of the Cardiff Giant. He noticed that there was no good reason to try to dig a well in the exact spot the giant had been found.
|
||||
62
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Giant-1.md
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62
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Giant-1.md
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Cardiff Giant"
|
||||
chunk: 2/2
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Giant"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:50.145870+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Being asked my opinion, my answer was that the whole matter was undoubtedly a hoax; that there was no reason why the farmer should dig a well in the spot where the figure was found; that it was convenient neither to the house nor to the barn; that there was already a good spring and a stream of water running conveniently to both; that, as to the figure itself, it certainly could not have been carved by any prehistoric race, since no part of it showed the characteristics of any such early work; that, rude as it was, it betrayed the qualities of a modern performance of a low order.
|
||||
However, he was taken aback by the channels on the bottom part of the giant, stating that for such grooving to be created on local Onondaga grey limestone would require years.
|
||||
Yale paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh examined the statue, pointing out that it was made of soluble gypsum, which, had it been buried in its blanket of wet earth for centuries, would not still have fresh tool marks on it (which it did), and termed it "a most decided humbug". Some theologians and preachers, however, defended its authenticity.
|
||||
Eventually, Hull sold his part-interest for $23,000 (equivalent to $586,000 in 2025) to a syndicate of five men headed by David Hannum. They moved it to Syracuse, New York, for exhibition. The giant drew such crowds that showman P. T. Barnum offered $50,000 for the giant. When the syndicate refused, he hired a man to model the giant's shape covertly in wax and create a plaster copy. He displayed his giant in New York, claiming that his was the real giant, and the Cardiff Giant was a fake.
|
||||
As the newspapers reported Barnum's version of the story, David Hannum was quoted as saying, "There's a sucker born every minute" in reference to spectators paying to see Barnum's giant. Since then, the quotation has often been misattributed to Barnum himself.
|
||||
Hannum sued Barnum for calling his giant a fake, but the judge told him to get his giant to swear on his own genuineness in court if he wanted a favorable injunction.
|
||||
On December 10, 1869, Hull confessed everything to the press, and on February 2, 1870, both giants were revealed as fakes in court; the judge also ruled that Barnum could not be sued for terming a fake giant a fake. Hull proclaimed that he did not confess because of the pressing criticism, but confessed proudly that he intended for the hoax to be exposed to reveal the tendency of the Christian community to believe in things too easily and to counter the fundamentalist belief that giants once roamed the earth.
|
||||
|
||||
== Subsequent and current resting places ==
|
||||
The Cardiff Giant was displayed at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, but did not attract much attention.
|
||||
|
||||
Iowa publisher Gardner Cowles, Jr., bought it later to adorn his basement rumpus room as a coffee table and conversation piece. In 1947, he sold it to the Fenimore Farm & Country Village in Cooperstown, New York, where it is still displayed.
|
||||
The owner of Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, a coin-operated game arcade and museum of oddities in Farmington Hills, Michigan, has said that the copy displayed there is Barnum's.
|
||||
A copy of the Giant is displayed at The Fort Museum and Frontier Village in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
|
||||
|
||||
== Imitators ==
|
||||
The Cardiff Giant has inspired a number of similar hoaxes.
|
||||
|
||||
In 1876, the Solid Muldoon was exhibited in Beulah, Colorado, at 50 cents a ticket. There was also a rumor that Barnum had offered to buy it for $20,000. One employer later revealed that this was also a creation of George Hull, aided by Willian Conant. The Solid Muldoon was made of clay, ground bones, meat, rock dust, and plaster.
|
||||
In 1879, the owner of a hotel at what is now Taughannock Falls State Park hired men to create a fake petrified man and place it where workmen would dig it up. One of the men who had buried the giant later revealed the truth when drunk.
|
||||
During 1897, a petrified man found downriver from Fort Benton, Montana, was claimed by promoters to be the remains of former territorial governor and U.S. Civil War General Thomas Francis Meagher. Meagher had drowned in the Missouri River during 1867. The petrified man was displayed across Montana as a novelty and exhibited in New York and Chicago.
|
||||
|
||||
== In popular culture ==
|
||||
In Halt and Catch Fire, the fictional Cardiff Giant personal computer is named after the petrified man.
|
||||
"Cardiff Giant" is a song on the 2012 album Ten Stories by the band mewithoutYou.
|
||||
Mark Twain's 1869 short story "The Legend of the Capitoline Venus" was inspired by the Cardiff Giant, and the ghost of the Giant is a character in Twain's 1870 short story "A Ghost Story".
|
||||
A character called the Cardiff Giant appeared occasionally in the early years of the newspaper comic Alley Oop.
|
||||
The 1997 The Simpsons episode "Lisa the Skeptic" was inspired by the Cardiff Giant, the Piltdown Man, and the Scopes trial.
|
||||
Myron Edward Batesole was a professional wrestler during the 1940s and 50s billed as "The Cardiff Giant".
|
||||
Powerviolence band Spazz used an image of the Cardiff Giant for their album "Dwarf Jester Rising".
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Pompey stone
|
||||
Nampa figurine
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
Notes
|
||||
|
||||
Bibliography
|
||||
|
||||
Magnusson, Magnus (2006), Fakers, Forgers & Phoneys, Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, ISBN 1845961900
|
||||
Further reading
|
||||
|
||||
Jacobs, Harvey (1997), American Goliath, St. Martin's Press, ISBN 978-0312194383
|
||||
Tribble, Scott (2009), A Colossal Hoax: The Giant From Cardiff that Fooled America, Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 978-0742560505
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
|
||||
P.T. Barnum Never Did Say...
|
||||
Photo of "discovery" site
|
||||
US Library of Congress photo of the giant
|
||||
Cardiff Giant Hoax Recreated By Syracuse Artist Ty Marshal
|
||||
@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cello_scrotum"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T06:34:33.278763+00:00"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:51.325708+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Claude Émile Jean-Baptiste Litre"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Émile_Jean-Baptiste_Litre"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:22.248423+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Claude Émile Jean-Baptiste Litre (1716–1778) is a fictional character created in 1978 by Kenneth Woolner of the University of Waterloo to justify the use of a capital L to denote litres.
|
||||
The International System of Units usually only permits the use of a capital letter when a unit is named after a person. The lower-case character l might be difficult to distinguish from the upper-case character I or the digit 1 in certain fonts and styles, and therefore both the lower-case (l) and the upper-case (L) are allowed as the symbol for litre. The United States National Institute of Standards and Technology now recommends the use of the uppercase letter L, a practice that is also widely followed in Canada and Australia.
|
||||
Woolner perpetrated the April Fools' Day hoax in the April 1978 issue of "CHEM 13 News", a newsletter concerned with chemistry for school teachers. According to the hoax, Claude Litre was born on 12 February 1716, the son of a manufacturer of wine bottles. During Litre's extremely distinguished fictional scientific career, he purportedly proposed a unit of volume measurement that was incorporated into the International System of Units after his death in 1778.
|
||||
The hoax was mistakenly printed as fact in the IUPAC journal Chemistry International and subsequently retracted. In reality, the litre derives its name from the litron, an old French unit of dry volume.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Etiological myth
|
||||
False etymology
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
Reprints of articles about the Litre hoax at the Wayback Machine (archived November 19, 2020)
|
||||
27
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctenophthalmus_nepalensis-0.md
Normal file
27
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctenophthalmus_nepalensis-0.md
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@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Ctenophthalmus nepalensis"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctenophthalmus_nepalensis"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:52.452130+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Ctenophthalmus nepalensis was a fictional species of parasitic flea described by a pseudonymous author Otto Suteminn in 1969 as part of a scientific hoax. The description was published in the journal Zeitschrift der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Österreichischer Entomologen to ostensibly to demonstrate how poor their editorial process was. The hoax was uncovered only in 1973.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Hoax details and background ==
|
||||
|
||||
The hoax was foisted by Hans Malicky, who was the chairperson of the Entomological Society of Austria in the late 1960s. He sought to improve the quality of publishing by the society newsletter Entomologische Nachrichtenblatt which led to him being relieved from the post. The hoax article was published shortly after in 1969.
|
||||
The journal paper described two new species of fleas named Ctenophthalmus nepalensis and Amalareus fossoris, both purportedly from Nepal by the author "Otto Suteminn". It was not until 1972 that the hoax was uncovered in an article by flea taxonomist F.G.A.M. Smit of the Natural History Museum, London who published “Notes on Two Fictitious Fleas from Nepal” in the journal Entomologische Nachrichtenblatt.
|
||||
Smit identified that not only were the species hoaxes but so were their hosts Canis fossor (meaning grave-digging dog) and Apodemus roseus. Along with an Austrian colleague, Smit figured out that the locality mentioned "Khanshnid Khaib" was probably the Austrian dialect transcription for "Ganz nicht habe" which means "cannot exist"; "Samashtir" possibly stood for "Sind wir Stier" which is Viennese slang for "we have no money"; and the collector name "leg. Z. Minař" would, pronounced appropriately, mean "from my anus".
|
||||
According to the entomologist Michael Ohl who described the case in his book The Art of Naming (2018), "Suteminn" was a pseudonym for a fictional knight Otto von Moltke in a story by Karl May in which the knight would retreat into a secret lab and conduct scientific experiments. Another author has identified the Canis fossor as being associated with Arthur Schütz and his invention called the "Grubenhund", a kind of hoax popular in Austria. A grubenhund was a term that came to be associated with a reader contribution written to a newspaper in order to demonstrate gullibility and is named after the example written by the engineer Arthur Schütz under the pseudonym Dr. Ing.Erich Ritter von Winkler to the Neue Freie Presse in 1911. In this letter he claimed that his dog (grubenhund) showed signs of the November 1911 earthquake half an hour in advance. Schütz popularized the word in his book Der Grubenhund eine kultursatire (1931). One of the other fleas that Malicky mentions in his hoax paper is A. pencilliger which is Amalaraeus penicilliger (Grube, 1851), the fake author's name playing with the term Grubenhund.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
Taxonomania: An Incomplete Catalog of Invented Species, From the Pop-Eyed Frog to the Loch Ness Monster by Michael Ohl
|
||||
A description of the hoax identifying "The Grubenhund" (in German)
|
||||
33
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Loys's_ape-0.md
Normal file
33
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Loys's_ape-0.md
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@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "De Loys's ape"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Loys's_ape"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:54.934501+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
De Loys's ape, given the proposed scientific name Ameranthropoides loysi, was an alleged large primate reported by Swiss geological explorer François de Loys in South America. The only evidence for the animal besides de Loys's testimony is one photograph. It was promoted by George Montandon as a previously unknown species, but is now considered a misidentification of a spider monkey species or a hoax.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Encounter ==
|
||||
Swiss oil geologist François de Loys led an expedition from 1917 to 1920 to search for petroleum in an area along the border between Colombia and Venezuela, primarily near Lake Maracaibo. The expedition was unsuccessful. De Loys's group suffered diseases and violent encounters with native populations; only four of the 20 members survived.
|
||||
According to de Loys's later report, in 1920, while camped on a bank of a tributary of the Tarra River, two large creatures approached the group. Initially, de Loys thought they were bears, but then noted that they were monkey-like. The creatures – one male, one female – seemed angry, said de Loys, and they advanced howling and gesturing, as well as breaking and holding some branches.They defecated into their hands,and flung feces at the expedition. Fearing for their safety, the expedition fired at the pair, killing the female and wounding the male. De Loys and his companions recognised that they had encountered something unusual. The animal resembled a spider monkey, but was much larger: 1.57 m tall (compared to the largest spider monkeys, which are just over a metre tall). De Loys counted 32 teeth (most New World monkeys have 36 teeth), and noted that the creature had no tail.
|
||||
They posed the creature by seating it on a crate and propping a stick under its chin. De Loys reported that they intended to preserve the animal but the bones decayed and all but one photograph was lost.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Publication ==
|
||||
After de Loys returned to Europe, the story was not reported until 1929, when his friend George Montandon discovered the photograph while perusing de Loys's files for information about South America's native tribes. At Montandon's urging, De Loys related his account in the Illustrated London News of June 15, 1929, and three articles regarding the creature were published in French journals. Montandon suggested the scientific name Ameranthropoides loysi, and proposed it as the ancestor of Native Americans in support of his "Hologenesis Hypothesis", which suggested different racial groups of Homo sapiens evolved independently from different non-human ape species rather than sharing a common human ancestor. This hypothesis was popular at the time, but now many regard it as nothing but the product of racist and discriminatory views Montandon held.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Controversy ==
|
||||
After this publicity, de Loys's account was deemed unreliable by many prominent critics, including primatologist Philip Hershkovitz and anthropologist Arthur Keith. Keith suggested de Loys was trying to pass off a normal spider monkey as something more exotic. The photograph did not clearly indicate the creature's size, and Keith also noted that by not photographing the creature’s posterior, de Loys had left open the question of whether or not it had a tail. Keith suggested the animal in the photo was simply a spider monkey.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Further reading ==
|
||||
Viloria, A. L.; Urbani, F.; Urbani, B. (1998). "François de Loys (1892-1935) y un hallazgo desdenado: La historia de una controversia antropologica". Intercienca (in Spanish). 32 (2): 94–100.
|
||||
Viloria, A. L.; Urbani, F.; McCook, S.; Urbani, B. (1999). "De Lausanne aux forêts vénézuéliennes. Mission géologique de François de Loys (1892-1935) et les origines d'une controverse anthropologique". Bulletin de la Société Vaudoise des Sciences Naturelles (in French). 86 (3): 157–174.
|
||||
@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ chunk: 1/2
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_parody"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T07:01:28.411228+00:00"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:56.126199+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ chunk: 2/2
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_parody"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T07:01:28.411228+00:00"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:56.126199+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipak_K._Das"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T06:58:36.853313+00:00"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:53.764019+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
34
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearing_blonde_gene-0.md
Normal file
34
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearing_blonde_gene-0.md
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@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Disappearing blonde gene"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearing_blonde_gene"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:57.289553+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The "disappearing blonde gene" refers to a hoax that emerged in parts of the Western world in the early 2000s, claiming that a scientific study had estimated that blonds would become extinct within the next two centuries. More specifically, it claimed that, because the alleles for blond hair genes are recessive, people with natural blond hair would become less common as people with dominant non-blond hair alleles had offspring with them, even though such a pairing would retain one copy of the blond allele in the genome of said offspring. Nevertheless, the hoax was repeated as fact by some mainstream Western media outlets, such as ABC News, the BBC, CNN, and The Sunday Times, between 2002 and 2006. The earliest known claims of a looming "blond extinction" date back to 1865.
|
||||
Several outlets propagating the hoax also falsely cited the World Health Organization (WHO), asserting that it had published a report claiming that blonds "will become extinct by 2202" in spite of the fact that neither the WHO nor any reputable expert had issued such a report. In response, the WHO released an official statement telling all those who had commented on the non-existent report to retract their remarks.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Propagation in Western media ==
|
||||
In 2002, BBC News reported that unnamed German experts had concluded that blond hair would disappear within 200 years since the gene that causes blond hair is recessive. According to these German experts, the recessive blond allele is rare in nations of mixed heritage, such as the United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, New Zealand, and Australia. In the BBC article, Professor Jonathan Rees of the University of Edinburgh casts doubt on the story—he was quoted as saying: "The frequency of blondes may drop, but they won't disappear."
|
||||
In 2006, the hoax was mentioned by the British newspaper The Sunday Times when reporting on the publication of a hypothesis of the origins of blond hair, and also by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, which stated: "According to the WHO study, the last natural blond is likely to be born in Finland during 2202." It once again traveled quickly across the World Wide Web. The hoax also featured on the "Threat-Down" segment of the American satirical television show The Colbert Report on 6 March 2006, when host Stephen Colbert suggested a selective breeding program to save blonds.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Scientific debunking ==
|
||||
|
||||
The extinction thesis is based on a interpretation of recessiveness in genetics. In reality, gene frequency is stable unless there is selection for or against them, which does not appear to be the case for blond hair. In large populations, even extremely rare genes will persist at stable levels over long periods of time. It also does not matter whether a gene is dominant or recessive. Genes disappear if the population is very small (drift) or if they confer a disadvantage (selection).
|
||||
The Melanocortin 1 receptor is known to affect human hair colour, and alleles on that gene associated with blond hair are generally recessive to alleles associated with darker hair colours. However, there is no single allele that codes for blond hair colour, and environmental factors can also determine whether blond or brown hair colour is expressed in an individual. Additionally, several factors involving determination of human hair colour are still not fully understood by geneticists.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
List of common misconceptions § Skin and hair
|
||||
Disappearing red hair gene, a similar hoax that spread in the Western world in the late 2000s
|
||||
Hardy–Weinberg principle
|
||||
White genocide conspiracy theory, of which the disappearing blond hair gene hoax is a part
|
||||
The Great Replacement
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
25
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_12-571-3570-0.md
Normal file
25
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_12-571-3570-0.md
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@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Document 12-571-3570"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_12-571-3570"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:58.452726+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Document 12-571-3570 (also titled NASA No. 12 571-3570) is a hoax document originally posted to the Usenet newsgroup alt.sex on November 28, 1989. According to this document, astronauts aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-75 performed a variety of sex acts to determine which positions are most effective in zero gravity. The document goes on to report that of the 10 positions tested, six required the use of a belt and an inflatable tunnel, while four were contingent on hanging on. The document also discusses a video record of the 10 one-hour sessions in the lower deck of the shuttle, and notes that the subjects added their own personal footnotes to help scientists.
|
||||
The real STS-75 mission occurred in 1996—seven years after the text was published—clearly indicating that the document is a hoax. Nonetheless, many people have been fooled by this document and NASA has had to debunk it on several occasions. In March 2000, NASA's director of media services Brian Welch referred to the document as a "fairly well-known 'urban legend'".
|
||||
This fictional document was rediscovered and widely publicized by astronomer and scientific writer Pierre Kohler, who used it as a major source about sex experiments in space in his 2000 book, The Final Mission. Kohler conceded in his book that astronauts are mute on the subject of human sex in orbit, even if they have conducted reproduction research on South African frogs and Japanese fish.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Sex in space
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
NASA Experiments with Sex in Space at Snopes.com
|
||||
Space sex hoax rises again
|
||||
48
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigmarelle-0.md
Normal file
48
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigmarelle-0.md
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@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Enigmarelle"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigmarelle"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:59.593980+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Enigmarelle was a fake humanoid automaton, in fact with a person concealed inside, which was exhibited as a scientific and technical curiosity around 1905 in the US and Europe, chiefly in theaters. Enigmarelle was claimed to be able to perform several extraordinary tasks, which it demonstrated in performances: these included walking, riding a bicycle, and writing its name on a blackboard.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Presentation ==
|
||||
Enigmarelle was shown in the US and then in parts of Europe, in vaudeville theaters and circuses. The booking agent, an American named Frederick J. Ireland, was represented at these appearances as the creator and owner of the automaton.
|
||||
Enigmarelle was a large automaton and was in fact operated by a human concealed within its body, although the precise operating mechanisms are not known. The operator is believed to have been a performer who had had both his legs amputated and who went by the name of Alba W. Root, and who also performed as a bicycle acrobat using leg prostheses.
|
||||
Enigmarelle was the subject of a short documentary film in 1905 and a detailed "scientific" description with three photos in Scientific American in 1906. It is mentioned in some modern publications on automatons.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
=== Name ===
|
||||
The name Enigmarelle seems to be a portmanteau of the French words énigme (enigma) and marelle (hopscotch), but the creators of the machine were English speakers, so there is no reason to suppose a French portmanteau is the true origin of the name.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
=== Known appearances ===
|
||||
|
||||
Documented appearances of Enigmarelle include:
|
||||
|
||||
August 1904: Orpheum Theater, Brooklyn
|
||||
1908: Circus Busch, Berlin
|
||||
November 1908: Bell Theater, Oakland, California
|
||||
January 1938: announced exhibition at the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, Paris
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
The Turk, probably the best known fake automaton operated by a human.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
=== Contemporary references ===
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
=== Modern references ===
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
"1904 - Enigmarelle - Alba Root / Frederick Ireland". Cybernetic Zoo. 2010-12-22.
|
||||
20
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eoörnis_pterovelox_gobiensis-0.md
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20
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eoörnis_pterovelox_gobiensis-0.md
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Eoörnis pterovelox gobiensis"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eoörnis_pterovelox_gobiensis"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:00.756375+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Eoörnis pterovelox gobiensis is a fictional bird, a humorous hoax by Lester W. Sharp, professor of botany, Cornell University, United States.
|
||||
It was initially a short talk presented together with a graduate student, Cuthbert Fraser, about the most unusual bird from the Gobi Desert, called woofen-poof by the local populace. Eventually it grew into a 34-page monograph signed by an "Augustus C. Fotheringham, Sc.D. (Cantab.), F.R.G.S.", printed by "The Buighleigh Press" in 1928, full of illustrated detail of anatomy, physiology, ecology, evolution, and historical references, complete with Cro-Magnon cave paintings — all inspired by a car mascot of a pelican. For example, Pterovelox "is perhaps most frequently observed in a peculiar resting position — legs straight out behind with the feet on the rock, tree branch or other object, the body being supported by continuous vibration of wings".
|
||||
The monograph has later been reprinted several times.
|
||||
The peculiarities of the bird's mating were even unwittingly quoted in a eugenics article on consanguineous marriages in 1934: "A new, and recently authenticated, case of naturally determined incest, appears to have been discovered by the British Museum Expedition to the Gobi Desert in 1929, when a bird, the Eoörnis pterovelox gobiensis, was found, which hatches twins at each birth, a male and a female, and these same individuals later mate and are monogamous."
|
||||
Harriet Creighton recalls her witnessing how the woofen-poof hoax backfired on the hoaxer himself. In her presence, Professor Sharp was reading with disbelief a review on "Eoörnis..." published in The Quarterly Review of Biology (Pearl 1930, reprinted in 1976) and was truly under the impression that the reviewer was hoaxed until he reached the end, which made clear that the review was on par with the reviewed article.
|
||||
The Journal of Paleontology published another review, by Frank C. Whitmore. of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1967 (41: 1302-1303), which was singled out in a tribute to Dr. Whitmore as "an example of the good doctor's breadth of knowledge, attention to detail, and mellow humor".
|
||||
The back cover of the 2007/2011 Euston Grove Press print of the monograph says it was a mockery of heavily promoted Central Asiatic Expeditions of Roy Chapman Andrews and the American Museum of Natural History.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
30
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatu-liva-0.md
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data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatu-liva-0.md
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Fatu-liva"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatu-liva"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:01.925930+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The Fatu-liva is a fictional species of bird invented by George S. Chappell in his travel parody The Cruise of the Kawa: Wanderings in the South Seas, by Walter E. Traprock (1921). Fatu-liva were said to be found only in the fictional "Filbert Islands" in the South Pacific Ocean where they laid cube-like, black-spotted eggs that were very similar in appearance to dice. The bird's nest was described in the book as:
|
||||
|
||||
"...a semi-spheric bowl of closely woven grass in which lay four snow-white, polka-dotted cubes, the marvelous square eggs of the fatu-liva."
|
||||
Additionally, a black-and-white photograph of what was supposedly the bird's dice-like eggs was provided. Its caption read:
|
||||
|
||||
"This is without question the most extraordinary picture which has ever been taken of any natural history subject. It corroborates in most convincing manner the author's claim to the discovery of the wonderful fatu-liva bird with its unique gift of laying square eggs. Here we see the eggs themselves in all the beauty of their cubical form and quaint marking; here we see the nest itself, made of delicately woven haro and brought carefully from the tree's summit by its discoverer, Babai-Alova-Babai. An extremely interesting feature of the picture is the presence in the nest of lapa or signal-feather. By close observation, Mr. Whinney, the scientist of the expedition, discovered that whenever the mother-bird left the nest in search of food she always decorated her home with one of her wing feathers which served as a signal to her mate that she would return shortly, which she invariably did. Skeptics have said that it would be impossible to lay a square egg. To which the author is justly entitled to say: 'The camera never lies.'"
|
||||
The name "Fatu-liva" probably derives from the real island of Fatu Hiva, sometimes spelled Fatu Iva. The name Fatu Hiva means "strange rock" in the Marquesan language. "Fatu-liva" is a theoretically possible transcription of terms like fatu riva ("encircled rock") in some Polynesian languages.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Gillygaloo
|
||||
The Ascent of Rum Doodle
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Footnotes ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
George S. Chappell (1921): The Cruise of the Kawa: Wanderings in the South Seas, by Walter E. Traprock.
|
||||
Tregear, Edward (1891): Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary. Lyon and Blair, Wellington.
|
||||
46
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_penguin_hoax-0.md
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46
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_penguin_hoax-0.md
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@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Flying penguin hoax"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_penguin_hoax"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:03.131460+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Miracles of Evolution is a BBC film trailer featuring flying penguins made in 2008 as an April Fools' Day hoax. The film was advertised as compelling evidence for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. It was largely set on King George Island, 120 kilometres (75 mi) from mainland Antarctica.
|
||||
The Daily Telegraph wrote that the film was "an instant classic. It is accomplished work of this kind that guarantees the BBC its unique status."
|
||||
The BBC website still claims that it may attempt to film the flying penguins again because the original film did not explain how such small birds, that are not used to flying, could survive long migrations over vast, stormy oceans. Miracles of Evolution was filmed with animated penguins for the occasion of April Fools' Day, and to promote the BBC iPlayer.
|
||||
MSN included "The BBC's flying penguins" as one of their twelve "hoaxes of the decade."
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== The film ==
|
||||
The film features Adélie penguins that live in Antarctica. Adélie penguins are one of the most southern seabirds in the world. The film claims that long and extremely cold Antarctic winters forced some groups of Adélies to adapt by (re)gaining the ability to fly. In the film the penguins travel thousands of kilometres to the rainforests of South America. The narrative of the film discourages adventurers from trying to see flying penguins on their own. These birds are rare, "elusive and secretive". It is all but impossible to find them in the dense jungles of South America, or even to see their migration over the southern oceans. After migrating, the penguins are shown landing in the canopy of the rainforest.
|
||||
The film was narrated by Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame). Walking in Antarctica between Adélies, Jones says:
|
||||
|
||||
We'd been watching the penguins and filming them for days, without a hint of what was to come. But then the weather took a turn for the worse. It was quite amazing. Rather than getting together in a huddle to protect themselves from the cold, they did something quite unexpected, that no other penguins can do.
|
||||
The film shows birds taking off one after another, with the sky turned from normal blue to sunset orange and the whole sky soon becoming filled with thousands of large flocks of birds and flying penguins. The film shows the penguins flying over icebergs and through a hole in an iceberg. Antarctica is then left behind and viewers see the green of South America's rainforests. In a remastered version, the penguins migrate all over Antarctica to all the southern hemisphere continents.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Film promotions ==
|
||||
On 1 April 2008, rival newspapers The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mirror both published articles about the upcoming film. The Mirror ran the story on its front page, and in The Daily Telegraph the story was one of the most important of the day. The Daily Telegraph proclaimed that the BBC had "remarkable footage of penguins flying as part of its new natural history series, Miracles of Evolution."
|
||||
Chris Tryhorn, a news editor for The Guardian, admitted that the story "gave him pause for thought" when two of his rivals, The Daily Mirror and The Daily Telegraph, published synchronized stories on such an important discovery. Tryhorn said that he started to put the pieces together based upon the publication date, Monty Python's Terry Jones being the host and the film maker being called Prof Alid Loyas. Tryhorn realised that after noticing Prof Alid Loyas was an anagram of "April Fools Day".
|
||||
The Daily Mirror later published an explanation for its readers who were waiting for the documentary to be broadcast on BBC One.
|
||||
The trailer can still be found on the BBC website, however, it is viewed using the BBC iPlayer, which is only available to Internet users accessing from British IP addresses. It can also be found on YouTube.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Production ==
|
||||
The hoax was made using diverse techniques and footage. BBC producers used real footage of Adélies filmed in the Antarctic by the BBC. Animated penguins were then created, and to make them fly the animators used a flight pattern used by guillemots that somewhat resemble penguins.
|
||||
Terry Jones was filmed in a studio with fake snow on the floor and on his polar parka. Later, this footage was combined with real footage taken in Antarctica and with the footage of animated penguins in flight.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Spaghetti-tree hoax, a similar BBC April Fools' Day hoax
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
BBC Movie trailer on YouTube
|
||||
BBC The Making Of on YouTube
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
41
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fur-bearing_trout-0.md
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41
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fur-bearing_trout-0.md
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@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Fur-bearing trout"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fur-bearing_trout"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:04.254222+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The fur-bearing trout (or furry trout) is a legendary creature found in American folklore and Icelandic folklore. According to folklore, the trout has created a thick coat of fur to maintain its body heat. Tales of furry fish date to the 17th century. The earliest known American publication dates from a 1929 Montana Wildlife magazine article by J.H. Hicken. A taxidermy furry trout produced by Ross C. Jobe is a specimen at the Royal Museum of Scotland; it is a trout with white rabbit fur "ingeniously" attached.
|
||||
There are no known examples of any fur-bearing trout species, but two examples of hair-like growths on fish are known. The "cotton mold", Saprolegnia, can infect fish, which can result in the appearance of fish covered in white "fur". Another fish, Mirapinna esau, has hairlike outgrowth and sports wing-like pectoral fins.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Commonalities ==
|
||||
Fur-bearing trout are fictional creatures that are purportedly found in the Arkansas River, northern North America, and Iceland. The basic claim (or tall tale) is that the waters of lakes and rivers in the area are so cold that they evolved a thick coat of fur to maintain their body heat. Another theory says that it is due to four jugs – or two bottles – of hair tonic being spilled into the Arkansas River.
|
||||
The origins vary, but one of the earlier claims date to a 17th-century Scottish immigrant's letter to his relatives referring to "furried animals and fish" being plentiful in the New World. It was followed by request to procure a specimen of these "furried fish" and one was sent home. A publication in 1900 recounts the Icelandic Lodsilungur, another haired trout, as being a common folklore. The earliest known American publication dates from a 1929 Montana Wildlife magazine article by J.H. Hicken.
|
||||
The "cotton mold" Saprolegnia will sometimes infect fish, causing tufts of fur-like growth to appear on the body. A heavy infection will result in the fish's death, and as the fungus continues to grow afterward, dead fish that are largely covered in the white "fur" can occasionally be found washed ashore. A real species of fish, Mirapinna esau, is known for the numerous hairlike structures on its body. This fish is not related to trouts but is instead a whalefish. It was discovered in the Azores in 1956.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Icelandic Loðsilungur ==
|
||||
According to Icelandic legend, the Lodsilungur (Loðsilungur) is a furry trout that is the creation of demons and giants. The Lodsilungur are described as inedible fish that overwhelm rivers and are a form of punishment for human wickedness. In 1900, The Scottish Review featured an account of the Lodsilungur as a poisonous "Shaggy trout" of northern Iceland. In 1854, a shaggy trout was "cast on shore at Svina-vatn" and featured in an 1855 illustration in Nordri, a newspaper. It was described as having a reddish hair on its lower jaw and neck, sides and fins, but the writer of the Nordri article did not specifically identify it by name. Sjón, a popular Icelandic writer, became obsessed with the folk tale when he was nine. Sjón recounted that if a man were to eat the furry trout he would become pregnant and that his scrotum would have to be cut open to deliver the baby. Sjón noted that the story "might explain why I was later propelled towards surrealism."
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== United States furry trout ==
|
||||
An account of a furry trout appeared in 1929 in Montana Wildlife magazine and was first noted by J.H. Hicken. Hicken's account states that when the fish is caught "the change of temperature from this water to atmosphere is so great that the fish explodes upon being taken from the water, and fur and skin come off in one perfect piece, making it available for commercial purposes, and leaving the body of the fish for refrigerator purposes or eating, as desired."
|
||||
My Ten Years in a Quandary, and How They Grew, a 1936 bestselling book by Robert Benchley, contains the humorous essay "Bad News" about a report of fur-bearing trout used as a goiter cure.
|
||||
Another fur-bearing trout story originated with Wilbur Foshay, secretary of the Chamber of Commerce. Foshay promoted the story so convincingly that it was picked up by the Salida Record newspaper. According to its Foshay, the trout grew fur due to the cold temperatures of the Arkansas River and shed the fur as the water temperatures warmed in the summer. In November 1938, a story in the Puebloan Cheiftan recounted the hairy trout history and stated that "[o]ld-timers living along the Arkansas River near Salida have told tales for many years of the fur-bearing trout indigenous to the waters of the Arkansas near there." In 2014, Mysteries at the Museum visited the Salida Museum and as of May 2014 is expected to be part of a segment in late 2014.
|
||||
A tall tale was recounted by S.E. Schlosser, it states that hairy trout resulted from two bottles or four jugs of spilled hair tonic. To catch hairy trout, fisherman would act as barbers and lure fish from the waters with the offer of a free trim or shave. An intentionally fantastical story in Maine claimed that hairy trout were under a catch and release policy that was enforced by wardens carrying Brannock Devices. If a fish were caught, the warden would measure it against the fisher's foot. If the fish's length matched the fisher's foot size, the fish could be eaten and the pelt made into furry slippers.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Canada ==
|
||||
The Canadian fur-bearing trout is another example of the furry trout hoax. According to the story, a trout with white fur was caught in Lake Superior off Gros Cap in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Algoma District, Canada, and its taxidermist was Ross C. Jobe of Sault Ste. Marie. The purchaser of the fish learned of the hoax after presenting it to the Royal Museum of Scotland. The white fur of a rabbit was described as being "ingeniously" attached to the fish. A fictional description of the Canadian "Hairy" Trout was published by Takeshi Yamada.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Fearsome critters
|
||||
Fish fur
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
24
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genpet-0.md
Normal file
24
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genpet-0.md
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@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Genpet"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genpet"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:05.428633+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Genpets are a mixed media installation art piece by artist Adam Brandejs. It is considered a hoax of exposure.
|
||||
The project has been shown in multiple galleries in Canada and Europe and has garnered some attention in the mass media.
|
||||
The creations were sculpted, automated creatures made of latex and plastic, and housed robotic circuitry to simulate slow respiration. They looked like small, hairless humanoids, and were intended to be displayed as living, but dormant, bio-engineered creatures for purchase as pets. The fabricated packaging indicated a purchaser had a choice of what personality traits their Genpet displayed based on a color-coded chemical behavioral modulation system, and that the creatures had a limited vocal capacity. The sculptures and packaging, along with the professional appearance and cleverly open ended interactive features website led many observers to assume that Genpets were real.
|
||||
In 2006, Genpets were featured on the weblog for The Museum of Hoaxes in San Diego, California. as well as broadcast on BBC News Worldwide on a BBC programme called Click as well as the Times (UK), the New York Times and G4TechTV.
|
||||
All the work was hand done by the artist Adam Brandejs, with assistance from makeup artist Crystal Pallister for the coloring of the creatures. The pictures show the actual 19 genpet units that display at art galleries. Genpets have been displayed at multiple Fine Art galleries and museum displays in both North America and Europe.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
Genpets official website
|
||||
Genpets explanation site by artist
|
||||
Genpets creator website
|
||||
27
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golfballia_ambusta-0.md
Normal file
27
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golfballia_ambusta-0.md
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@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Golfballia ambusta"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golfballia_ambusta"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:07.690226+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Golfballia ambusta is a purported species of fungus with specimens primarily kept at Kew Gardens, London. The specimens are not of organisms but burnt golf balls. In 1962, they were described as a new fungal species by R. W. G. Dennis, the head of mycology at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, possibly to challenge the mycological criteria in place as to what could be considered a fungus. Its binomial name is 'burnt golf ball' in Dog Latin.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== History ==
|
||||
|
||||
In 1952, a burnt golf ball was submitted to mycologists from an anonymous source in Lancashire, northwest England, and deposited in the Fungarium at Kew Gardens, London. The submitter claimed it to be a specimen of a "rare fungal species" belonging to the genus Queletia, but mycologists thought its appearance more closely resembled Scleroderma citrinum, which has an irregular, nearly spherical sporocarp with thick leathery skin and colours that vary from white to tan or brown. The surface of a golf ball is dimpled and, when burned, its outer shell cracks to expose the rubber core, which is similar to the dark gleba of a mature S. citrinum sporocarp. Kew mycologists unsuccessfully attempted to collect spores from the specimen before realizing the nature of the hoax.
|
||||
In 1962, a similar burnt golf ball arrived at Kew from East Africa. Subsequently, R. W. G. Dennis, the head of mycology at Kew, published a paper titled "A remarkable new genus of phalloid in Lancashire and East Africa" in the Journal of the Kew Guild, formally describing it as a new species of fungus. The article states that the specimens resemble "small, hard but elastic balls used in certain tribal rites of the Caledonians, which take place all season in enclosed paddocks with partially mown grass"; the description is likely a humorous allusion to golf, Caledonia being the Latin name for Scotland. Dennis described the specimens as having the odour of old or heated Indian rubber and stated that no spores were collected, leaving its method of reproduction unknown, and gave the purported species the binomial name Golfballia ambusta, an approximation of 'burnt golf ball' in Dog Latin. He may have published the article with the intention to "challenge the criteria in place at the time that could allow a non-life entity to be so easily submitted as a species".
|
||||
A third burnt golf ball was sent to Kew from Kent in 1971, with the sender explicitly stating it was found at the edge of a fire. The three Golfballia ambusta specimens remain in the collection of Kew's fungarium, catalogued as K(M)230939 to K(M)230941.
|
||||
In 2023, a new variety, Golfballia ambusta var. rushmerea, was described in the Journal of the Kew Guild. The type specimen was deposited in the herbarium of the National Museum of Wales, with additional specimens deposited at Kew Gardens. Ipswich Museum refused the offer of a specimen.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Impact ==
|
||||
Nathan Smith, a former head of the Kew fungarium, wrote that Golfballia ambusta holds significance among other academic hoaxes in mycology history, as it was officially described and published, with specimens formally archived in the fungarium; according to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, it would be considered a valid fungal species. Smith referred to the hoax as mycology's "Dada moment", raising the question "what is a fungus".
|
||||
Slime molds and oomycetes were originally considered to be fungi but are now known to be unrelated organisms. The taxonomic kingdom Fungi no longer includes them, but they are still studied by mycologists and are informally classified as fungi. Many mycologists including Nicholas Money have argued that the term should encompass all "micro-organisms studied by mycologists", a definition challenged by Dennis, who suggested that if mycologists could decide what is a fungus, the more important question becomes who is a mycologist.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
35
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moon_Hoax-0.md
Normal file
35
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moon_Hoax-0.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
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|
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|
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|
||||
The "Great Moon Hoax", also known as the "Great Moon Hoax of 1835", was a series of six articles published in The Sun (a New York newspaper), beginning on August 25, 1835, about the supposed discovery of life and civilization on the Moon. The discoveries were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel and his fictitious companion Andrew Grant.
|
||||
The story was advertised on August 21, 1835, as an upcoming feature allegedly reprinted from The Edinburgh Courant. The first in a series of six was published four days later on August 25. These articles were never retracted; however, on September 16, 1835, The Sun admitted the articles were in fact fabricated.
|
||||
|
||||
== Hoax ==
|
||||
|
||||
The headline read:
|
||||
|
||||
The articles described animals on the Moon, including bison, single-horned goats, mini zebras, unicorns, bipedal tail-less beavers and bat-like winged humanoids ("Vespertilio-homo") who built temples. There were trees, oceans and beaches. These discoveries were supposedly made with "an immense telescope of an entirely new principle". The telescope, transported to South Africa from New England, was said to be many times larger than any other telescope in the world. The lens measured "24 feet in diameter and 7 tons in weight".
|
||||
"Vespertilio-homo" can be translated from Latin as man-bat, bat-man, or man-bats.
|
||||
A reprinted edition of 1836 added a second type, named the Vespertiliones. The author of the narrative was ostensibly Dr. Andrew Grant, the travelling companion and amanuensis of Sir John Herschel, but Grant was fictitious.
|
||||
Eventually, the authors announced that the observations had been terminated by the destruction of the telescope, by means of the Sun causing the lens to act as a "burning glass", setting fire to the observatory.
|
||||
|
||||
== Authorship ==
|
||||
|
||||
The writer of the article was at first not known to the public. Authorship has subsequently been attributed to Richard Adams Locke (1800–1871), a reporter who, in August 1835, was working for The Sun. Locke publicly admitted to being the author in 1840, in a letter to the weekly paper New World. Despite Locke's claims, rumours persisted that others were involved in the articles' creation.
|
||||
Two other men have been noted in connection with the hoax: Jean-Nicolas Nicollet, a French astronomer travelling in America at the time (though he was in Mississippi, not New York, when the Moon-hoax issues appeared), and Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor of The Knickerbocker, a literary magazine. However, there is no good evidence to indicate that anyone but Locke was the author of the hoax.
|
||||
Assuming that Locke was the author, his intentions were probably, first, to create a sensational story which would increase sales of The Sun, and, second, to ridicule some of the more extravagant astronomical theories that had recently been published. Locke had meant for the hoax to act as a satire to show how science can be and is influenced by the thoughts of religion. For instance, in 1824, Franz von Paula Gruithuisen, professor of astronomy at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, had published a paper titled "Discovery of Many Distinct Traces of Lunar Inhabitants, Especially of One of Their Colossal Buildings". One theory is that this paper is responsible for inspiring the articles written by Locke. In his paper, Gruithuisen claimed to have observed various shades of color on the lunar surface, which he correlated with climate and vegetation zones. He also observed lines and geometrical shapes, which he felt indicated the existence of walls, roads, fortifications, and cities.
|
||||
|
||||
== Reactions ==
|
||||
|
||||
According to legend, The Sun's circulation increased dramatically because of the hoax and remained permanently greater than before, thereby establishing The Sun as a successful paper. It brought the journal to international fame, and the hoax resembled crime reports that allowed the readers to play detective, trying to discover the truth.
|
||||
However, the degree to which the hoax increased the paper's circulation has certainly been exaggerated in popular accounts of the event. It was not discovered to be a hoax for several weeks after its publication and, even then, the newspaper did not issue a retraction.
|
||||
Herschel was initially amused by the hoax, noting that his own real observations could never be as exciting. He later became annoyed when he had to answer questions from people who believed the hoax was serious.
|
||||
Edgar Allan Poe claimed the story was a plagiarism of his earlier work "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall", and "Hans Phaall – A Tale", published in the Southern Literary Messenger. His editor at the time (1844) was Richard Adams Locke. He later published "The Balloon-Hoax" in the same newspaper. As well as "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall". The story was reprinted in the New York Transcript on September 2–5, 1835, under the headline "Lunar Discoveries, Extraordinary Aerial Voyage by Baron Hans Pfaall".
|
||||
Poe described a voyage to the Moon in a balloon, in which Pfaall lives for five years on the Moon with lunarians and sends back a lunarian to Earth. The Poe Moon hoax was less successful because of the satiric and comical tone of the account. Locke was able to upstage Poe and to steal his thunder. In 1846, Poe would write a biographical sketch of Locke as part of his series "The Literati of New York City" which appeared in Godey's Lady's Book.
|
||||
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|
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|
||||
== Context ==
|
||||
Locke's sensational reports were not out of place in the context of the mass proliferation of penny press newspapers such as the New York Sun which received much of their income from advertisements, a business practice made sustainable by large numbers of readers. The Sun was a pioneer when it came to producing shocking and often sensationalist journalism, being the first New York newspaper to report on murders, suicides, personal events, and divorces, and it was because of stories such as these that the Sun thrived in attracting readers to their articles, and thus to their advertisements.
|
||||
The success of such sensational stories as the "Great Moon Hoax" can be partly attributed to the influence of contemporary speculative science. Figures like the Reverend Thomas Dick, who claimed that the Moon was inhabited by billions of beings, had captured the public's imagination in the early 19th century. Locke's hoax played on similar popular beliefs, presenting them as the latest scientific findings from the well-respected astronomer Sir John Herschel, which lent the story credibility.
|
||||
|
||||
== Legacy ==
|
||||
|
||||
The hoax is featured in Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History.
|
||||
Nate DiMeo's historical podcast The Memory Palace dedicated a 2010 episode to the Great Moon Hoax entitled "The Moon in the Sun".
|
||||
The hoax inspired a five-part musical by composer Matt Dahan as part of his musical radio series Pulp Musicals.
|
||||
Richard Adams Locke and the Great Moon Hoax are fictionalized in chapter 14 of Félix J. Palma's 2012 novel The Map of the Sky.
|
||||
The hoax reflected a time when readers were looking for entertainment as much as information from penny press newspapers, which would later change with the development of ethical reporting.
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
The Balloon Hoax, by Edgar Allan Poe, 1844
|
||||
Bat Boy (character)
|
||||
Lunarcy!
|
||||
The Man in the Moone
|
||||
Martian canals
|
||||
Moon landing conspiracy theories
|
||||
A Trip to the Moon, a 1902 French science fiction film in which the Moon is inhabited by insect-like aliens
|
||||
A True Story, novel written by Lucian of Samosata featuring bizarre encounters on the Moon
|
||||
The Lunar Trilogy
|
||||
The War of the Worlds (1938 radio drama)
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
== Further reading ==
|
||||
Evans, David S., "The Great Moon Hoax", Sky & Telescope, 196 (September 1981) and 308 (October 1981).
|
||||
Goodman, Matthew, The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York (New York: Basic Books, 2008) ISBN 978-0-465-00257-3
|
||||
Green, Roger Lancelyn (1975) [1958]. "The Great Lunar Hoax". Into Other Worlds: Space-Flight in Fiction, from Lucian to Lewis. Arno Press. pp. 83–92. ISBN 978-0-405-06329-9.
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
|
||||
The Moon Hoax (1859 reprint) at Internet Archive
|
||||
The Moon Hoax eBook at Project Gutenberg
|
||||
The Moon Hoax public domain audiobook at LibriVox
|
||||
"The Great Moon Hoax of 1835" by R. J. Brown at HistoryReference.org (archived 2016-02-24)
|
||||
"Episode 24: The Moon in the Sun" Archived 2013-03-09 at the Wayback Machine (2010 podcast) at The Memory Palace
|
||||
"The Great Moon Hoax of 1835" (after 2011) at The Museum of Hoaxes – with linked transcripts of the 6 newspaper articles
|
||||
"The Great Moon Hoax of 1835" (2011) at Victorian Gothic (archived 2017-06-30)
|
||||
"Richard Adams Locke" by Edgar Allan Poe – biographical essay from 1846 series The Literati of New York City
|
||||
"Belief, Legend, and the Great Moon Hoax" (2014) at Library of Congress
|
||||
Richard Adams Locke at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
|
||||
Richard Adams Locke at the Library of Congress, with 11 library catalogue records
|
||||
"The 'Great Moon Hoax' that fooled the world" (2022 podcast) at BBC Global News Ltd
|
||||
22
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|
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|
||||
The grievance studies affair was the project of a team of three authors—Peter Boghossian, James A. Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose—to highlight what they saw as poor scholarship and erosion of standards in several academic fields. Taking place over 2017 and 2018, their project entailed submitting bogus papers to academic journals on topics from the field of critical social theory such as cultural, queer, race, gender, fat, and sexuality studies to determine whether they would pass through peer review and be accepted for publication. Four of these papers were subsequently published, which the authors cited in support of their contention.
|
||||
The affair echoed Alan Sokal's 1996 hoax in Social Text, a cultural studies journal, which inspired Boghossian, Lindsay, and Pluckrose.
|
||||
The trio set out with the intent to expose problems in what they called "grievance studies", referring to academic areas where they claim "a culture has developed in which only certain conclusions are allowed [...] and put social grievances ahead of objective truth". As such, the trio, identifying themselves as political liberals, though with Vox identifying prior transgressions made by each against left-liberalism, described their project as an attempt to raise awareness of what they believed was the damage that postmodernism and identity politics–based scholarship was having on liberal political projects as well as on science and academia more broadly.
|
||||
Boghossian, Lindsay, and Pluckrose wrote 20 articles that promoted deliberately absurd ideas or morally questionable acts and submitted them to various peer-reviewed journals. Although they had planned for the project to run until January 2019, the trio admitted to the hoax in October 2018 after journalists from The Wall Street Journal revealed that "Helen Wilson", the pseudonym used for their article published in Gender, Place & Culture, did not exist. By the time of the revelation, 4 of their 20 papers had been published; 3 had been accepted but not yet published; 6 had been rejected; and 7 were still under review. Included among the articles that were published were arguments that dogs engage in rape culture and that men could reduce their transphobia by anally penetrating themselves with sex toys, as well as a part of a chapter of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf rewritten using "up-to-date jargon".
|
||||
The hoax received a polarized reception within academia. Some academics praised it for exposing flaws that they saw as widespread among sectors of the humanities and social sciences influenced by postmodernism, critical theory, and identity politics. Others criticised what they perceived as the unethical nature of submitting deliberately bogus research. Some critics also asserted that the work did not represent a scientific investigation, given that the project did not include a control group, further arguing that invalid arguments and poor standards of peer-review were not restricted to "grievance studies" subjects but found across much of academia.
|
||||
|
||||
== "Grievance studies" and "applied postmodernism" ==
|
||||
Through their series of hoax articles, James A. Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, and Helen Pluckrose intended to expose issues in what they term as "grievance studies", a subcategory of academic areas where the three believe "a culture has developed in which only certain conclusions are allowed [...] and put social grievances ahead of objective truth". The trio referred to several academic fields—postcolonial theory, gender studies, queer theory, critical race theory, intersectional feminism, and fat studies—as "grievance studies" because, according to Pluckrose, such areas begin "from the assumption of a grievance" and then bend "the available theories to confirm it". Pluckrose argued that all of these fields derive their underlying theoretical perspectives from the postmodern philosophy that developed in the late 1960s. Focusing on the work of French postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault, she highlighted how he argued that knowledge and power were interwoven and emphasized the role of discourse in society.
|
||||
Pluckrose suggested that fields such as postcolonial theory and queer theory could be called "applied postmodernism" in that they sprung up largely in the late 1980s as a means of pushing the gains of the civil rights movement, gay rights movement, and liberal feminism from the arena of legislative change and into the territory of reshaping discourse. She argued that these fields adapted postmodernism to suit their activist agendas. From postmodernism, they adopted the idea that knowledge is a social construct, but at the same time they held to the modernist view that "no progress could be made unless some things were objectively true". Thus, the "applied postmodernists", Pluckrose argued, insisted that "systems of power and privilege that oppressed women, people of color and the LGBT" are objectively real and could be revealed by analyzing discourses. At the same time, she argued, they retained postmodernism's skepticism toward science and objective knowledge, its view of "society as a system of power and privilege" and "commitment to the belief that all imbalances are socially constructed", rather than arising from biological reality.
|
||||
Pluckrose described herself and her collaborators as being "left-wing liberal skeptics". She stated that a core reason for why they wanted to carry out the project was to convince other "leftist academics" that there was a problem with "corrupted scholarship" in academic fields that were "based on identity politics and postmodernism." She argued that in rejecting modernism, much postmodernist-derived scholarship was also rejecting science, reason, and liberal democracy, and thus undermining many important progressive gains. Pluckrose also expressed concern that, in both foregrounding the importance of group identity and facilitating the growth of post-truth by claiming that there is no objective truth, this postmodernist theory was contributing to "the reactionary surge to the right" seen in many countries during the 2010s.
|
||||
|
||||
== Sequence of events ==
|
||||
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|
||||
|
||||
=== Attempts ===
|
||||
Prior to the affair, various academics highlighted concerns about the intellectual validity of much research influenced by postmodern philosophy and critical theory by publishing hoax articles in various journals. It was the 1996 hoax by Alan Sokal in Social Text, in particular, that influenced James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian to publish a hoax article of their own.
|
||||
On May 19, 2017, peer-reviewed journal Cogent Social Sciences published "The conceptual penis as a social construct", which argued that penises are not "male"; rather, they should be analyzed as social constructs instead. The same day, Lindsay and Boghossian revealed it to be a hoax aimed at discrediting gender studies, although Cogent Social Sciences is not exclusively a gender-studies journal. While the journal did conduct a postmortem, both authors concluded the "impact [of the hoax] was very limited, and much criticism of it was legitimate".
|
||||
|
||||
The authorship of each paper was either fictional—such as "Helen Wilson" of "Portland Ungendering Research Initiative"—or real people willing to lend their name, such as Richard Baldwin, professor emeritus of history at Gulf Coast State College.
|
||||
The first acceptance, "Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at the Dog Park", was achieved five months after the project began. During the initial peer review for its second, and ultimately successful, attempt at publication in Gender, Place & Culture, what the hoaxers called the "Dog Park" paper was praised by the first reviewer as "incredibly innovative, rich in analysis, and extremely well-written and organized". Similar respectful feedback was provided for other accepted papers.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Discovery of hoax ===
|
||||
The project was intended to run until January 31, 2019, but came to a premature end. The journal Gender, Place & Culture published a note on August 6, 2018, stating that it suspected "Helen Wilson" had breached their contract to "not [fabricate] or [misappropriate] anyone's identity, including [their] own", adding that "the author has not responded to our request to provide appropriate documentation confirming their identity". According to the trio, another journal and a reporter at The Wall Street Journal were asking for proof of identity at this point, and that it was the right time to go public; they admitted the hoax to the journalist in early August.
|
||||
When The Wall Street Journal report went public on October 2, the trio released an essay describing their project, as well as a Google Drive archive of most of their papers and email correspondence which included reviewer comments.
|
||||
|
||||
== Reactions ==
|
||||
|
||||
The political scientist Yascha Mounk dubbed it "Sokal squared" in reference to the Sokal affair hoax accomplished by Alan Sokal, and said that the "result is hilarious and delightful. It also showcases a serious problem with big parts of academia." The psychologist Steven Pinker said the project posed the question "is there any idea so outlandish that it won't be published in a Critical/PoMo/Identity/'Theory' journal?" In contrast, Joel P. Christensen and Matthew A. Sears, both classicists, referred to it as "the academic equivalent of the fraudulent hit pieces on Planned Parenthood" produced in 2015, more interested in publicity than "valid argumentation or scholarship".
|
||||
In The Atlantic, Mounk said that "Like just about everything else in this depressing national moment, Sokal Squared is already being used as ammunition in the great American culture war." He characterized two sets of responses to the affair as "intellectually dishonest": right-wing responses that used the affair to discredit wider academia and left-wing responses that treated it as a politically motivated attack on academia. He said the former overlooked that "There are many fields of academia that have absolutely no patience for nonsense", including the fact that all the papers submitted to sociology journals had been rejected, while the latter attacked the motives behind the hoax instead of refuting it.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Responses by the editors of the publishing journals ===
|
||||
Ann Garry, a co-editor of Hypatia, which had accepted one of the hoax papers ("When the Joke's on You", which purported to be a feminist critique of hoaxes) but had not published it yet, said she was "deeply disappointed" by the hoax. Garry told The New York Times that "Referees put in a great deal of time and effort to write meaningful reviews, and the idea that individuals would submit fraudulent academic material violates many ethical and academic norms." Nicholas Mazza, editor of the Journal of Poetry Therapy, said: "Although a valuable point was learned regarding the authenticity of articles/authors [...] the authors of the 'study' clearly engaged in flawed and unethical research."
|
||||
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|
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|
||||
|
||||
=== Praise ===
|
||||
Mounk of Johns Hopkins University said that while the authors received no favors for preparing the hoax, they demonstrated mastery in postmodern jargon and not only ridiculed the journals in question, but, more importantly, outed double standards of gender studies which happily welcome hoaxes against "morally suspect" fields like economics, but are unable to accept a criticism of their own methods. He also commented on the "sheer amount of tribal solidarity it has elicited among leftists and academics" and the fact that many of the reactions were purely ad hominem, while few have actually said that there is an actual problem highlighted by the hoax: "some of the leading journals in areas like gender studies have failed to distinguish between real scholarship and intellectually vacuous as well as morally troubling bullshit". Rejecting complaints that the trio, lacking a control group, engaged in a "confused attempt to import statistics into a question where it doesn't apply", Mounk stated that the trio had promised "nothing of the sort" in the first place, and had instead successfully accomplished their goal of demonstrating that it was "possible" to "get bullshit published" in the journals in question.
|
||||
Justin E. H. Smith defended hoaxing as an intellectual or scholarly practice, providing a series of examples of hoaxes ranging from the Italian Renaissance to the 2000s. In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Heather E. Heying wrote that the hoax helped to expose many pathologies of the modern social sciences, such as "repudiation of science and logic" and "extolling activism over inquiry".
|
||||
Upon Boghossian's employer Portland State University initiating a research misconduct inquiry on the grounds of conducting human subject–based research without approval, and further considering a charge of fabricating data, a number of prominent academics submitted letters of support to him. Richard Dawkins compared Boghossian to a novelist, pointing out that George Orwell's novel Animal Farm could be criticized for its many "falsehoods" regarding the capabilities of animals to speak English. He asked:
|
||||
|
||||
Do your humourless colleagues who brought this action want Portland State to become the laughing stock of the academic world? Or at least the world of serious scientific scholarship uncontaminated by pretentious charlatans of exactly the kind Dr Boghossian and his colleagues were satirising?
|
||||
The psychologist Jonathan Haidt stated that the inquiry would be "a profound moral error—an injustice—that will be obvious to all who hear about your decision, and that will have bad effects upon the public perception of PSU and of universities in general", and concluded that Boghossian and his co-authors are whistleblowers, who undertook a "career-risking project to stand up for academic integrity by exposing what is, arguably, an academic subculture that tolerates intellectual fraud." Philosopher Daniel Dennett stated that Boghossian's targets "could learn a few things about academic integrity" from his "fine example", undertaken "in good faith". Alan Sokal and Jordan Peterson also supported Boghossian.
|
||||
The World Socialist Web Site's Eric London said the hoax was "a well-timed blow" against the "identity politics industry" and postmodernism.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Criticism ===
|
||||
On Slate, Daniel Engber wrote that the hoaxers' project "say[s] nothing whatsoever about the fields [the hoaxers] chose to target". Since "[w]e know from long experience that expert peer review offers close to no protection against outright data fraud", Engber asserted that "one could have run this sting on almost any empirical discipline and returned the same result" even if such disciplines' journals were peer-reviewed, echoing Tim Smith-Laing's The Daily Telegraph article.
|
||||
Sarah Richardson, Harvard University professor of women's studies, criticized the hoaxers for not including a control group in their experiment, telling BuzzFeed News: "By their own standards, we can't scientifically conclude anything from it."
|
||||
Evolutionary biologist Carl T. Bergstrom in The Chronicle of Higher Education wrote that "the hoaxers appear woefully naïve about how the system actually works", adding that peer review is not designed to remove fraud or even absurd ideas, and that replication will lead to self-correction. In the same article, David Schieber said he was one of the two anonymous reviewers for "Rubbing One Out", and argued that the hoaxers selectively quoted from his review. "They were turning my attempt to help the authors of a rejected paper into an indictment of my field and the journal I reviewed for, even though we rejected the paper."
|
||||
Ten Portland State University professors signed an open letter saying the hoax was not comparable to the Sokal affair, the latter taking place during "a time of debate and exploration in the field of philosophy and science", and that the trio were only exploiting "credulous journalists interested mainly in spectacle" to conduct academic fraud. They compared the trio's style to "Trumpist politics" and wrote that "[d]esperate reasoning, basic spite and a perverse interest in public humiliation seem to have overridden any actual scholarly goals." The authors asked to remain anonymous, alleging Boghossian had targeted academics at other institutions and that they would likely receive "threats of death and assault from online trolls".
|
||||
An n+1 article alleged "blatant manipulation of its own 'data,' the lack of meaningful controls".
|
||||
In UnHerd, Chivers stated that while the so-called "grievance studies" fields "probably" contain more "bullshit [...] than most scientific fields", the hoax drew attention away from scholarly shoddiness across the entirety of academia, including the "whole of science, especially psychology and medicine". He highlighted that several weeks prior to the hoax's public revelation, professor of food behaviour Brian Wansink had resigned from his position at Cornell University following exposure of instances of scientific misconduct on his part.
|
||||
Mikko Lagerspetz analyzed the project's experimental design and its possible results, based on the peer reviews and editorial decisions available through the project's website. He sums it up on the journal Science, Technology, and Human Values:
|
||||
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||||
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|
||||
|
||||
(1) journals with higher impact factors were more likely to reject papers submitted as part of the project; (2) the chances were better, if the manuscript was allegedly based on empirical data; (3) peer reviews can be an important asset in the process of revising a manuscript; and (4) when the project authors, with academic education from neighboring disciplines, closely followed the reviewers' advice, they were able to learn relatively quickly what is needed for writing an acceptable article. The boundary between a seriously written paper and a "hoax" gradually became blurred. Finally (5), the way the project ended showed that in the long run, the scientific community will uncover fraudulent practices.
|
||||
Lagerspetz concludes that the experiment was flawed both experimentally and ethically, and failed to provide the evidence it sought. It is unclear, on what grounds the project group decided what journals to target. One third (7) of the 21 final editorial decisions the authors received were positive, two thirds of the decisions were negative. In the absence of a control group, it is impossible to tell whether this proportion would have been lower or higher within other disciplines.
|
||||
|
||||
== List of hoax papers ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== Accepted ===
|
||||
|
||||
==== Published ====
|
||||
Helen Wilson (pseudonym) (2018). "Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon". Gender, Place & Culture: 1–20. doi:10.1080/0966369X.2018.1475346. (Retracted, see doi:10.1080/0966369X.2018.1513216)
|
||||
Richard Baldwin (borrowed identity) (2018). "Who Are They to Judge? Overcoming Anthropometry and a Framework for Fat Bodybuilding". Fat Studies. 7 (3): i–xiii. doi:10.1080/21604851.2018.1453622. (Retracted, see doi:10.1080/21604851.2018.1453622)
|
||||
M. Smith (pseudonym) (2018). "Going in Through the Back Door: Challenging Straight Male Homohysteria and Transphobia through Receptive Penetrative Sex Toy Use". Sexuality & Culture. 22 (4): 1542. doi:10.1007/s12119-018-9536-0. (Retracted, see doi:10.1007/s12119-018-9536-0)
|
||||
Richard Baldwin (borrowed identity) (2018). "An Ethnography of Breastaurant Masculinity: Themes of Objectification, Sexual Conquest, Male Control, and Masculine Toughness in a Sexually Objectifying Restaurant". Sex Roles. 79 (11–12): 762. doi:10.1007/s11199-018-0962-0. (Retracted, see doi:10.1007/s11199-018-0962-0)
|
||||
|
||||
==== Not yet published ====
|
||||
Richard Baldwin (borrowed identity). "When the Joke Is on You: A Feminist Perspective on How Positionality Influences Satire". Hypatia.
|
||||
Carol Miller (pseudonym). "Moon Meetings and the Meaning of Sisterhood: A Poetic Portrayal of Lived Feminist Spirituality". Journal of Poetry Therapy.
|
||||
Maria Gonzalez, and Lisa A. Jones (pseudonyms). "Our Struggle Is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism". Affilia.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Considered ===
|
||||
|
||||
==== Revise and resubmit ====
|
||||
Richard Baldwin (borrowed identity). "Agency as an Elephant Test for Feminist Porn: Impacts on Male Explicit and Implicit Associations about Women in Society by Immersive Pornography Consumption". Porn Studies.
|
||||
Maria Gonzalez (pseudonym). "The Progressive Stack: An Intersectional Feminist Approach to Pedagogy". Hypatia.
|
||||
Stephanie Moore (pseudonym). "Super-Frankenstein and the Masculine Imaginary: Feminist Epistemology and Superintelligent Artificial Intelligence Safety Research". Feminist Theory.
|
||||
Maria Gonzalez (pseudonym). "Stars, Planets, and Gender: A Framework for a Feminist Astronomy". Women's Studies International Forum.
|
||||
|
||||
==== Under review ====
|
||||
Carol Miller (pseudonym). "Strategies for Dealing with Cisnormative Discursive Aggression in the Workplace: Disruption, Criticism, Self-Enforcement, and Collusion". Gender, Work and Organization.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Rejected ===
|
||||
Lisa A. Jones (pseudonym). "Rubbing One Out: Defining Metasexual Violence of Objectification Through Nonconsensual Masturbation". Sociological Theory.
|
||||
Carol Miller (pseudonym). "My Struggle to Dismantle My Whiteness: A Critical-Race Examination of Whiteness from within Whiteness". Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
|
||||
Carol Miller (pseudonym). "Queering Plato: Plato's Allegory of the Cave as a Queer-Theoretic Emancipatory Text on Sexuality and Gender". GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies.
|
||||
Richard Baldwin (borrowed identity). "'Pretty Good for a Girl': Feminist Physicality and Women's Bodybuilding". Sociology of Sport Journal.
|
||||
Richard Baldwin (borrowed identity). "Grappling with Hegemonic Masculinity: The Roles of Masculinity and Heteronormativity in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu". International Review for the Sociology of Sport.
|
||||
Richard Baldwin (borrowed identity). "Hegemonic Academic Bullying: The Ethics of Sokal-style Hoax Papers on Gender Studies". Journal of Gender Studies.
|
||||
Richard Baldwin (borrowed identity). "Self-Reflections on Self-Reflections: An Autoethnographic Defense of Autoethnography". Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.
|
||||
Brandon Williams (pseudonym). "Masculinity and the Others Within: A Schizoethnographic Approach to Autoethnography". Qualitative Inquiry.
|
||||
Helen Wilson (pseudonym). "Rebraiding Masculinity: Redefining the Struggle of Women Under the Domination of the Masculinity Trinity". Signs.
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Cynical Theories
|
||||
List of scholarly publishing stings
|
||||
Postmodernism Generator
|
||||
Science wars
|
||||
Trauma culture
|
||||
Victim mentality
|
||||
|
||||
== Notes ==
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
== Further reading ==
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
|
||||
Grievance studies Archived January 14, 2020, at the Wayback Machine on Peter Boghossian's webpage
|
||||
Collection of the papers, reviews and press material on Google Drive
|
||||
18
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|
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|
||||
The Himalayan fossil hoax (also called the Himalayan hoax or the case of the peripatetic fossils) is a case of scientific misconduct perpetrated by Indian palaeontologist Vishwa Jit Gupta of Panjab University. Since his doctoral research in the 1960s and the following two decades, Gupta worked on the geology and fossil record of the Himalayan region, producing hundreds of research publications that were taken as fundamentals to understanding the geological formation of the Himalayas. Australian geologist John Talent from Macquarie University followed Gupta's research and happened to visit the Himalayas where he found that Gupta's fossils did not match those geological settings and were odd — some being extraordinarily similar to fossils from other parts of the world. In 1987, in the presence of Gupta at a scientific conference in Canada, Talent publicly displayed that Gupta's fossils were identical to those found in Morocco. Talent and his student Glenn Brock reanalysed Gupta's research, bringing out systematic evidence that Gupta had manipulated, faked, recycled, and plagiarised his data.
|
||||
Early in 1978, Gilbert Klapper and Willi Ziegler had suspected foul play as they noticed that Gupta's conodont fossils were similar to those collected by George Jennings Hinde from Buffalo, New York, a century before. Gupta's colleague Arun Deep Ahluwalia recalled that Gupta planted conodont fossils in 1980 to convince K. J. Budurov of the existence of the specimens in the Himalayas. Gupta duped Philippe Janvier into describing a fish fossil as a new species in 1981, which Janvier later found to have come from China. Talent also discovered in 1986 that Gupta likely used Moroccan fossils available in a Paris shop to report the presence of cephalopod fossils (ammonoids) in the Himalayas. Brock's investigation showed that Gupta's earliest publications starting from his doctoral thesis had evidence of plagiarism of fossil pictures directly clipped from the monographs of Frederick Richard Cowper Reed early in the 20th century.
|
||||
Talent publicly revealed Gupta's misconduct at the International Symposium on the Devonian System held at Calgary, Canada, in 1987. His systematic criticism was published in the German serial Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg the next year, but was not widely read. Dubbed the Himalayan peripatetic (misplaced) fossils, the case became global news in 1989 when Talent published the summarised story from Courier in Nature, with journalistic investigation by Roger Lewin published in Science. It came to light that Gupta's Himalayan fossils were mostly collected from different parts of the world. He had chosen "phantom localities" to attribute his fossil discoveries without ever visiting them. The University Grants Commission of India immediately withdrew its funding to Gupta. Although Panjab University suspended him for 11 months, it permitted him to continue service until his normal retirement in 2002. The case became the "greatest scientific fraud of the century" in the words of the Indian magazine Down to Earth, or according to Talent, "the biggest paleontological fraud of all time". Gupta was named "the greatest fossil faker of all time", the "most notorious known paleontological fraudster", and "Houdini of the Himalayas."
|
||||
|
||||
== Background ==
|
||||
Vishwa Jit Gupta worked for his Ph.D. under the supervision of Mulk Raj Sahni at Panjab University in Chandigarh. Focussing on the palaeontology and geological features of the Himalayas, he started his main research and field work in 1963. He and Sahni reported the initial findings in five research papers in 1964, − a discovery of graptolites in two papers in Nature, a fossil assemblage in two papers in Current Science, and one in the Journal of the Palaeontological Society of India. His doctoral thesis was entitled Palaeontology, Stratigraphy and Structure of the Palaeozoic Rocks of the Area South-East of Srinagar upon which he received his degree in 1966.
|
||||
Over 25 years, Gupta published at least 458 research articles and five books. His publications were recognised as standard references on the geology and fossil record of the Himalayan region. As an honour, the Panjab University awarded him a D.Sc. and in 1972 created him a separate chair, Director of the Institute of Paleontology.
|
||||
Technical incongruities in Gupta's research were first pointed out by Sampige Venkateshaiya Srikantia, Om Narain Bhargava and Hari Mohan Kapoor of the Geological Survey of India. In 1978, Srikantia's team described the presence of bivalve mollusc fossils (Eurydesma cordatum and Deltopecten mitchelli) from Lahaul Valley, Himachal Pradesh, following a scientific exploration of the Himalayas. They came across the accounts of Gupta on the identification of Eurydesma at two locations in the Himalayas. In 1970 Gupta had reported finding the fossils in Lachulung La, identifying the deposits as Permian (Cisuralian, around 298-272 million years old) limestone. In 1973, he again described the same specimens from the Malung shale of Lahaul Valley in his book Indian Palaeozoic Stratigraphy. Here, Gupta assigned the fossils to a much younger Upper Permian (Lopingian, around 259-251 Ma). Srikantia's team noticed not only that Gupta's bivalves could not have existed in such different ages, but also found critical errors. They determined that Lachulung La was of a much younger series, the Triassic-Jurassic (250-145 Ma); Malung shale was already known to be of Upper Triassic (208-201 Ma). Their report ends with a cautionary statement: "the sequence built up by Gupta in the Sarchu area cannot be used for any stratigraphic work."
|
||||
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||||
In 1978, the American geologist Gilbert Klapper from the University of Iowa met Willi Ziegler at the University of Marburg in Germany to discuss the progress of research on extinct jawless vertebrates, the conodonts. At that time, Ziegler had Australian guests, John W. Pickett from the Geological Survey of New South Wales and his associate John Alfred Talent from Macquarie University in Sydney. Talent was by then an established expert in Devonian geology of Australian and Indian regions. As the leader of the research team of the first International Geological Correlation Programme (IGCP-1), a project of UNESCO, Talent had explored the Himalayas in 1973−1977. Pickett and Talent shared their Himalayan studies and discussed Gupta's research on Devonian conodonts. They had also investigated 20 locations around Nepal, where Gupta had claimed many discoveries from Triassic, Permian, Carboniferous, and Devonian deposits (rocks ranging from around 420 to 299 million years old), and to their astonishment, found no fossils except one which was Silurian (around 443 to 420 Ma, therefore pre-Devonian). In one specific case, they explored the area where Gupta and William B. N. Berry (Director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology) had reported in 1966 several fossils from Kashmir. They found that not only were the rocks incorrectly described, they were so deformed no fossil could have been present.
|
||||
|
||||
When Klapper and Ziegler learned of this, they looked into some of Gupta's papers and quickly noticed two photographs of the same conodont. Gupta's report indicated they were collected from sites several miles apart. They thought that it could be a case of accidental duplication of the same photograph. Real suspicion arose when they found the resemblance of Gupta's fossils with those collected by George Jennings Hinde from the Eighteen Mile Creek near Buffalo, New York, that had been presented before the Geological Society of London a century before, in 1876. Gupta had sought for collaboration with both Klapper and Ziegler at different times, but they had declined due to their concern about the suspicious incidents.
|
||||
The first methodical and critical analysis of Gupta's research records was done by Prem N. Agarwal and S. N. Singh of the University of Lucknow. In 1980, Agarwal and Singh reviewed research development in the general palaeontology of the Himalayas in which they also examined Gupta's papers. First, they found the long list of conodonts described by Gupta in 1978 bore an uncanny resemblance to those in the doctoral thesis of Nand Lal Chhabra submitted to the University of Lucknow in 1977. They noted: "It is really a surprising coincidence, unless either of the authors has drawn upon the data of the other without proper reference or acknowledgement." Gupta's conodonts and their geological settings turned out to be a major issue. What Agarwal and Singh revealed next were the wildly improper descriptions of fossils and their locations in most of Gupta's papers; the same species reported in one paper was absent in another report of the same location. The reported information was so comprehensively chaotic and inconsistent that they concluded: "These anomalies in different papers by the same author/s is not understandable, unless they are serious printing mistakes."
|
||||
Talent made another discovery in 1987 when he visited Paris. He went to Alain Carion's shop of minerals, fossils and meteorites, named the Carion Minéraux, on Île Saint-Louis. He purchased many fossils there including some extinct ammonoid cephalopods that came from a fossil site near Erfoud, Morocco. He quickly discerned that the Moroccan fossils were very similar to, if not identical, to Gupta's fossils from the Himalayas. Talent decided to compile the discrepancies found in Gupta's research. With his former student and associate Glenn Anthony Brock, he meticulously reanalysed Gupta's published works, establishing that there was not just one or a few errors, but that Gupta was a prolific fraudster; falsifying, recycling, and plagiarising research data in hundreds of publications. One notable observation by Brock was that Gupta had used images of fossils analyzed by British geologists in the early 20th century, explaining: "[And] all that Gupta had done was take some scissors and cut out the specimens, put them down on a new plate with a new number on them and claim them as his own – and these were samples from somewhere very different, from parts of Somalia."
|
||||
27
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|
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|
||||
In 1980, Gupta met Philippe Janvier at the Museum of Natural History in Paris and showed him "a magnificent fossil fish skull" which he brought along. Gupta had travelled to China, but claimed that he had collected the fossil from Zanskar, Ladakh, at the foothills of the Himalayas. Recognising the fossil as a new species, Janvier made the identification, and with Gupta submitted the discovery to the journal Recent Researches in Geology the next year. Shortly after this, Janvier went to Sweden where he met Zhang Miman (Meemann Chang), director of the Chinese Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, who was working on some fish fossils from China. Janvier immediately noticed that some of these fossils were exactly like the one he and Gupta had recently described. When inquired, Miman explained to him that the particular specimen was an extinct Devonian coelacanth species she named Youngolepis praecursor (formally reported by Miman in 1995) that was found in Yunnan and North Vietnam, and so common in those regions that the fossils were frequently used as gifts to visitors. Chang had already published the discovery in January 1981. Janvier told Gupta to hold their publication, but it was eventually published in 1982 with a few modifications based on Chang's paper. Uncomfortable with the purported origin of the "Himalayan" fossil, Janvier published a note of concern in Bulletin of the Indian Geologists Association, remarking that Chang's and Gupta's specimens were "strikingly similar." Although Gupta avowed that he had never been to the fossil site in China, it was known that he had had a trip to China just prior to going to France. Janvier was convinced that Gupta had fooled him: "Now, there is no evidence that Gupta brought the fish fossil with him from China, but I'm 99% sure he did."
|
||||
|
||||
== The exposé ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== Calgary symposium ===
|
||||
|
||||
Gupta's practice of forgery was first publicly exposed at the International Symposium on the Devonian System held at Calgary, Canada, from 17 to 20 August 1987. Gupta and German palaeontologist Heinrich Karl Erben (Institut für Paläontologie, Bonn) had published in Paläontologische Zeitschrift in 1983 reporting a series of Devonian ammonoids from Himachal Pradesh. When Talent presented his own research, he added a discussion on the Himalayan fossils, including Gupta's ammonoids and those from Morocco, displaying them side by side on the screen; they appeared "exactly the same". Another case of identical fossils presented by Talent was from Gupta's reports of two conodonts in 1975, allegedly collected from two sites 600 km (370 miles) apart and described in two different papers. One scientist pointed to Gupta, who was sitting on the front row, and said: "Well, how do you explain having exactly the same fossils in two localities 600 kilometres apart?" An infuriated Gupta stormed out of the room and re-entered clenching his fist trying to punch Talent, but was prevented by other participants. He subsequently shouted to the organisers, demanding the list of all participants and Talent's manuscript.
|
||||
The committee of the Calgary symposium informed the Vice Chancellor of Panjab University of the incident as well as the associated issues with Gupta's research, but no action appeared to have been taken. In spite of the public exposition, only fossil experts at the symposium knew of the case, and Gupta continued to publish research papers.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Courier publication ===
|
||||
The director of Naturmuseum Senckenberg in Frankfurt, Germany, had attended the Calgary symposium and asked Talent to allow publication of his presentation; he agreed. The account was published in the serial Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg as a 50-page article "Silurian and Devonian of India, Nepal and Bhutan: Biostratigraphic and Palaeobiogeographic Anomalies" in 1988. Picket, Rajendra Kumar Goel, and Arvind Kumar Jain of the University of Roorkee, India, co-authored the paper. The document exposed over a hundred fossil frauds in Gupta's research, involving five books and 458 articles, published with 128 co-authors over a period of 28 years. However, the Courier had a limited circulation and the news was not widely read.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Publications in Nature and Science ===
|
||||
The case became global news when Nature invited Talent to publish a summary of the Courier article. In a three-page commentary, Talent provided reasons to suspect that Gupta's fossils were bought, stolen or received as gifts from various parts of the world, and not authentically collected from the Himalayan region, and that Gupta's research was a "quagmire of palaeontological disinformation." Published on 20 April 1989, Talent's headline in Nature runs "The case of the peripatetic fossils", and the commentary concluded as follows:
|
||||
|
||||
Rhinos in Rio? Kangaroos in Kashmir? Well, something as remarkable biogeographically is said to have occurred. At first sight it might appear that a whole circus of exotica – mainly invertebrate – was let loose and fossilized seriatim in the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic sequences of the Himalayas. Earth scientists in general, and palaeontologists in particular, have blissfully assumed that, apart from the Piltdown Man, their science was largely free from attempts to pollute the literature. There have been cases of practical jokes, and examples of misappropriation of materials by individuals over-eager to publish. But compared with the cornucopia of items disgorged into the stratigraphy of the Himalayan region over the past 25 years, such instances are mere bagatelles.
|
||||
This publication immediately prompted media investigations. The most influential was from Science as its news editor Roger Lewin made journalistic inquiries, contacting the scientists involved. Lewin published his report on 21 April 1989, which included the following from Talent:
|
||||
22
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayan_fossil_hoax-3.md
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|
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|
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|
||||
|
||||
The database for the Silurian and Devonian of the Himalaya has become so extensively marred by error, inconsistency and implausibility as to throw grave doubts on the scientific validity of any conclusions that might be drawn from it. An appropriate way to approach this problem and clarify many of the questions raised would be through an independent fact-finding commission set up to probe most of the legions of paleontologically anomalous and suspect reports.
|
||||
The story became widely known from Nature and Science articles, especially by a series of four Nature articles titled "the peripatetic fossils" between 1989 and 1990; a defence from Gupta, comments by Arun Deep Ahluwalia, S. B. Bhatia, Udai K. Bassi, and Philippe Janvier and John Bruce Waterhouse, and last by Talent's summary. It was these reports that brought the case to an international level.
|
||||
|
||||
== The fossils ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== Conodonts ===
|
||||
The principal fossils of dispute were the conodonts. One of the first and best-understood conodont fossils was from Amsdell Creek in New York, USA, which was determined as Devonian in age. With the help of the English geologists Frank H. T. Rhodes and R. L. Austin, Gupta reported a discovery titled "Devonian Conodonts from Kashmir" in Nature in 1967, the first conodont report from India, and continued to report discoveries of conodonts in and around Kashmir. According to Talent, "it is statistically beyond the bounds of possibility" that Devonian conodonts were present in the Himalayas, and that Gupta's specimens probably were those of the Amsdell Creek. Klapper concurred, saying, "[It] is impossible to be 100% certain that the conodonts Gupta reports on come from New York and not the Himalayas as he claims, but I am as certain as I can be."
|
||||
Gary D. Webster, Carl B. Rexroad and Talent published "An evaluation of the V. J. Gupta conodont papers" in 1993 based on investigation of 19 of Gupta's collaborators. They found that Gupta had recycled his conodont reports in 15 publications.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Ammonoids ===
|
||||
Talent was convinced that Gupta's ammonoid specimens originally came from a fossil site near Erfoud, Morocco. The characteristic features showed their identity. Talent had come across the same Moroccan ammonoids at the fossil shop in Paris and noticed that they exactly matched the images Gupta had used in publications. He also discovered that Gupta had claimed the source of the conodonts and ammonoids as from the same rock strata, which could not have been the case since the two groups of animals lived 15 million years apart. By May 1989, Gupta emphatically wrote Erben that the fossils were authentically of the Himalayas, prompting Erben to make a statement in Paläontologische Zeitschrift defending his position, stating: "Whatever the truth in this highly detestable affair may be, my personal responsibility in the paper under discussion has been, and still is, restricted to its taxonomical and morphological parts as well as to the illustrations."
|
||||
Webster published "An evaluation of the V. J. Gupta echinoderm papers, 1971–1989" in 1991 and asserted that the observation "leaves no doubt that these fraudulent practices were knowingly continued over the past 25 years." He found that 28 of Gupta's papers contained dubious information on the fossil discoveries.
|
||||
15
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|
||||
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|
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|
||||
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|
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|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
== Gupta's strategy ==
|
||||
Gupta was careful in his research publications, asking eminent scientists to collaborate. He provided the fossils and the basic geological details, and allowed his collaborators to make the fossil identification, so that they became "unsuspecting partners in crime", as Bhargava lamented, or unwitting "partners in the deception", according to Bangalore Puttaiya Radhakrishna, editor of the Journal of the Geological Society of India. As in his first major publication in Nature in 1967, Gupta was able to convince Rhodes from the University College of Swansea (later president of Cornell University) and Austin from the University of Southampton. Gary Webster at Washington State University had coauthored nine of Gupta's papers, and asserted that his identification of the crinoid fossils was genuine, but later conceded that he was "virtually certain" they were obtained from places other than the Himalayas. He declared that Gupta had "willfully tried to dupe the scientific community". By 1989, Gupta had collaborated with 128 scientists around the world, including Berry, Director of the University of California, Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology, Kiril J. Budurov of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Michael E. Brookfield of the University of Guelph in Ontario, J. B. Waterhouse of the University of Queensland, and many others. Gupta's most prolific foreign collaborator was Waterhouse who co-authored 19 research papers, followed by Webster with nine papers. Gupta's intention in associating with notable scientists was manifest when he defended his works, writing in Nature that it "is seldom possible to do fieldwork in the Himalayas by oneself" and gave a list of scientists he had teamed up with. He stressed repeatedly that he sought experts from various countries to corroborate his findings. In his Nature commentary, he stated that the graptolites reported in his earliest works were substantiated by Sir Cyril James Stubblefield, then director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, and that the fossil site had been verified by his doctoral supervisor Sahni in October 1964. Sahni's companions and travel records indicated that he did visit Kashmir at the time indicated, but only to attend a scientific seminar. Ashok Sahni, son of Sahni and colleague of Gupta, vouchsafed the alibi: "Sahni neither visited the graptolite localities nor did he accompany the post-seminar field excursion."
|
||||
In another case, Gupta investigated the lower Phuchauki in Nepal with Vinod Singh Chhetri from the Department of Mines and Geology, Kathmandu, in 1974. He published four solo papers between 1975 and 1976 including three on conodont finds. In 1977, he published a geological study in Chayanica Geologica with Chhetri's name on it but without the latter's knowledge or consent. When Chhetri came to know of the publication, he requested Gupta for the data and fossil specimens so that he could confirm them; he never got a response. Gupta continued to report other fossils from different locations in Nepal, including a series of mammals from Gidhniya in western Nepal. Chhetri affirmed that Gupta never explored Nepal other than Phuchauki (not even the upper area, contrary to Gupta's report), and never collected any fossil of interest. To make the matter even more convoluted, Talent discovered from Ziegler that he had trained Gupta on conodont analysis at Marburg. Ziegler recalled Gupta having conodonts similar to those of Amsdell Creek; asked why he was interested in the American fossils, Gupta phlegmatically answered that they were from Nepal. That was a year before Gupta's Nepal exploration, in 1973. One modus operandi of Gupta was to keep the locations of the fossils vague, so that it would be difficult for peers to vindicate or refute the reports. When other scientists investigated, they never found the exact location or the fossils in the area from where they had allegedly been collected. Gupta had shrewdly assumed that the Indian Government would restrict the use of detailed topographic or army maps for strategic reasons around the Himalayas, especially for foreigners. He once said: "As an Indian, it is not possible for me to take such liberties [disclosing Himalayan maps to foreign scientists] and to go against the 'Law of the Land'."
|
||||
Gupta was an unapologetic plagiarist and thief. His 1966 thesis contained fossil images from the 1908 and 1912 reports of Frederick Richard Cowper Reed, a British geologist who had surveyed the Himalayan and Burma regions. The same images were used in two of Gupta's papers published in Panjab University Research Bulletin, in volumes 20 and 21. Gupta's conodont fossils most likely came from the Amsdell Creek specimens at Aberystwyth University in Wales where he had done research work. In 1992, researchers at the Aberystwyth University confided to Nature that Gupta's fossils were identical to those missing from their collection. One of Brock's observations was that Gupta had used fossil images in several instances from the reports of British geologists in the early 20th century: "And all that Gupta had done was take some scissors and cut out the specimens, put them down on a new plate with a new number on them and claim them as his own – and these were samples from somewhere very different, from parts of Somalia."
|
||||
In a Nature commentary, Arun Deep Ahluwalia, Gupta's colleague and co-author in several papers, admitted that Talent's accusations were valid. He disclosed that once during the visit of their Bulgarian friend K. J. Budurov (whom Gupta later described as the "most callous" collaborator) to Panjab University in 1980, Gupta apparently planted fossils in the limestone samples. As Budurov was about to examine the tiny fossils, Gupta insisted that he prepare fresh samples to let the samples settle down in a solution. Ahluwalia recollected that he had not seen the fossils from that particular sample earlier, but as Gupta "prepared" it, numerous conodonts became visible. Ahluwalia did not suspect any misdeed at the time but in hindsight was "rather embarrassed at having initially missed the assemblage, but was happy at the 'discovery'." The three of them published the discovery in two papers in 1982. Following Talent's allegations, Ahluwalia later processed the original rock sample and could find no fossils at all. He also cited several instances of fossils collected and reported from sites which Gupta apparently never explored. Another colleague, Shashi Bhushan Bhatia, recalled his suspicion when Gupta told him that the rock samples from Kurig were of Devonian age, and gave Bhatia ostracod fossils that he claimed were from the same sediments. Bhatia saw two irregularities. One, his own exploration of the same site gave a much younger geological age, Permo-Carboniferous, and he could not recall a single instance of Gupta visiting Kurig. In another, as Gupta requested, Bhatia took the samples to the Natural History Museum, London. There Bhatia analysed the specimens and found that they were the same as those from Haragan Formation in Oklahoma. Yet, in good faith, he, Jain and Gupta reported the discovery of the Himalayan ostracod in 1982. When the controversy broke out in 1989, Bhatia consulted Robert Folke Lundin at Arizona State University, who confirmed that the Himalayan ostracods were the same as the American specimens that he had described in 1968. On the same sediments, another collaborator, Udai K.
|
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Bassi of the Geological Survey of India, later verified that Kurig is not Devonian but a much younger Carboniferous sediment, and that the border and village records did not have any mention of Gupta visiting the site. In the same vein, Gupta and Erben reported in 1983 the occurrence of Carnian (298 to 272 million years old) conodonts and ammonoids from Khimokul La. Bassi, who had surveyed the area several times, attested that there is no Carnian sediment there, and that the check-post register or the villagers had no record of Gupta, Erben or any foreigner.
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== Reactions ==
|
||||
Talent wrote that Gupta "inundated geological and biogeographical literature of the Himalayas with a blizzard of disinformation so extensive as to render the literature almost useless." Gupta said to The New York Times that he had invited Talent to Panjab University and the Himalayan sites to verify the research findings following the Calgary incident, but he had declined. In trying to undermine the accusations, he described the affair as "minor disagreements over taxonomy among experts." He defended himself by claiming Talent's allegations as "malicious bias and professional jealousy" based on lies that were "building up a story without any basis." He added, "We've had differences for the past 20 years, and he's trying to cash in on them." Talent admitted that he did decline Gupta's invitation as he felt it was more appropriate for other scientists to make inspections independently.
|
||||
In the Science report, Webster admitted having already had the information on the similarity between the Himalayan fossils and those in America and Europe, especially the crinoids which were found only in the United States. Commenting on Talent's Calgary speech, he conceded: "I am now virtually certain that most of these specimens did come from places other than the Himalayas. I certainly should have been more wary." Janvier stated that he had asked Gupta to make a site expedition himself to where the fossils were collected, to which Gupta replied that it was not possible for political reasons. In his commentary "Breakdown of trust" in Nature, he decried the lack of awareness on scientific frauds and wrote: "The Gupta case may just be a 'big noise'."
|
||||
Erben responded to Lewin's report claiming his innocence in Science, while admitting that Talent could be right, but blamed him for "zealous exaggerations" as Talent trusted a Paris shopkeeper rather than him. While avowing that he and Gupta were qualified scientists, he disparaged Talent as "without qualifications". He retorted: "However, while really cogent evidence is, indeed, lacking, the circumstantial evidence assembled by Talent seems to be rather convincing." Talent replied, blaming Erben for ignoring or not being aware of a series of fossils Gupta had produced, and for trying to downplay the fraud allegations. He mentioned that the Moroccan-type ammonoids were available in large quantities not only in Paris, but also in Sydney, Australia, which Erben could have investigated.
|
||||
Writing in Nature, Gupta made a defensive response in September 1989. He stated that most of his explorations were done with other researchers, and that he was not alone in visiting the allegedly dubious sites. Referring to the Devonian fish which he had described with Janvier in 1981, he asserted that he had never met Chang or visited her institute, so that receiving the specimen as a gift was an implausibility. However, he misinterpreted Lewin's report, which simply said that Chang had explained the availability of the fossils in China and North Vietnam. He made a scathing remark:
|
||||
|
||||
John Talent has made sweeping pronouncements on Himalayan geology. Yet he is not an authority on the subject. I can only conclude that his attack on me was made for two reasons – to draw attention to himself and to deflect criticism of his own failure to contribute to Himalayan geology.
|
||||
A. K. Prasad, then director of Gupta's department at Panjab University, dismissed Talent's accusation as "a conspiracy to denigrate a top Indian scientist". Ahluwalia affirmed that the fossils were recycled and assigned made-up localities, commenting that "most of the doubts expressed by Talent are well-founded" and that it was a "great embarrassment" that made him want to retract the published reports which he and Budurov co-authored. Dismayed by Gupta's manipulation of data and fabrication of specimens in a report he co-authored about the discovery of a conodont, Neogondollela regale, Bassi considered withdrawing the paper. The editor of Nature found Gupta's commentary unimpressive, noting that "close readings of the accusations and responses leaves the impression that Gupta's defence is flimsy."
|
||||
The only collaborator to stand up for Gupta was Waterhouse. Calling Talent's accusation "A case of exaggeration", Waterhouse stated that Gupta's specimens were definitely collected from the Himalayas. He asserted that the Himalayan research was reported with accurate locations, as he had verified the fossils and explored the fossil sites himself. He criticised Talent for never examining the actual fossils first-hand, and Ahluwalia for misrepresenting some of the reports. He defended Gupta by saying there could have been a bit of sloppy field and laboratory work but no fraudulent intention, while admitting that Gupta's geological descriptions (stratigraphy) were "often too coarse and too rushed." Commenting in Nature, he wrote: "The 'case' against Gupta is remarkably rich in bold metaphors and unproven assertions, and somewhat thin in scientific analysis."
|
||||
Panjab University issued a circular in 1990, saying it was "interested not in brushing the controversy under the carpet, but arriving at the truth." It sought help from major authorities including the University Grants Commission, Indian Council of Medical Research, Indian National Science Academy, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Department of Science and Technology, and Geological Survey of India. Then in March that year, the university took a controversial decision by instituting a scientific expedition team, to be led by Gupta. The Geological Society of India was disappointed by the proposal, commenting: "We fail to understand why Gupta should have been asked to lead the expedition. Besides, it is beyond our comprehension as to how allegations of recycling can be proved or disproved in the field."
|
||||
The Geological Society of India and the Society for Scientific Values independently investigated the case and submitted their reports to Panjab University in December 1990. In February 1991, the university accepted the allegations and Gupta was temporarily suspended from service in February 1991. The report of the Society for Scientific Values was kept confidential. The Indian National Science Academy also conducted an independent investigation but failed to come up with coherent findings.
|
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=== Geological Society of India ===
|
||||
The Geological Society of India, which claimed to normally avoid publishing controversial matters in their academic journal, feared failure to publish Talent's accusations "could be construed as aquiescence in the alleged fraud", and published two articles from Talent criticizing Gupta's research. In the first paper, published in June 1989, Talent's team gave an elaboration of instances of plagiarism in Gupta's reports. The other, published in December 1989, presented further cases of fossil recycling and mismatching of the fossil sources.
|
||||
As Ian Anderson reported in New Scientist, the Geological Society of India made a "controversial move" by issuing an expression of concern, stating that "the fossil finds of V. J. Gupta are not reliable", but did not formally retract Gupta's papers. The society reassessed Gupta's papers and found "several discrepancies lending support to the accusations" in 19 publications. The society's scientists visited seven localities in the Himalayas where Gupta claimed to have collected Devonian fossils, but found no such evidence, declaring "the falsification of facts attempted by Gupta." They requested Gupta provide them access to his collection of specimens, research notes and laboratory register, but never received a response. The report titled "The Himalayan Fossil Controversy" was issued on 1 January 1991, condemning Gupta's research as "fictitious and based on spurious fossils" and "incomplete bordering on disinformation". It ran the following pronouncements:
|
||||
|
||||
The most glaring deficiency noticed in nearly all the papers is the absence of precise locality information. Subsequent field checks by officers of the Geological Survey of India and some of Gupta's own colleagues have failed to reveal not only the fossils, but also rock formations stated to have been present in the area... He [Gupta] has failed to produce the originals of the recycled fossils with their registration number, date of collection, field description as entered in Field Note Books and Laboratory Registers and such other evidences which could confirm the genuineness of his fossil collections.
|
||||
It is obvious from the volume of evidence that has now been collected that the fossil finds of V. J. Gupta. are not reliable, that there are internal inconsistencies, that the data is incomplete bordering on disinformation.
|
||||
The Society has no other alternative but to publish the evaluation report with the recommendation that the incomplete and doubtful fossil records as published in the Journal and listed in the enclosed report be ignored till such time that independent proof is forthcoming of the in situ existence of the fossils [emphasis in original].
|
||||
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== Consequences ==
|
||||
The Panjab University Vice Chancellor Ram Prakash Bambah issued Gupta's suspension order in February 1991. As Triloki Nath Kapoor soon replaced Bambah, Gupta was reinstated in January 1992. That year, the University Grants Commission of India stopped its funding to Gupta, and Nature reported a note of disappointment over Gupta's reinstallation, calling it an "Indian rope trick". The resurgent controversy compelled Kapoor for a proper action. The affair was investigated in an official inquiry led by Man Mohan Singh Gujral, the retired Chief Justice of the Sikkim High Court. The inquiry started in February 1992 and lasted two years with the final report submitted in April 1994. Gupta could not make any evidential rebuttal, resorting to lame pretexts such as claiming that he did not have a good memory of his field research and never kept field notes. The verdict found Gupta guilty of all charges including data recycling, plagiarism, concocting research locations and conning other scientists. Panjab University imposed three penalties on Gupta: (1) he was officially reprimanded; (2) he was debarred from administrative positions, his becoming a dean which was due that year was stayed; and (3) his annual increments of salary were ceased. In 1993, the UGC had rescinded Gupta's department from the status of the Centre of Advanced Study in Palaeontology and Himalayan Geology.
|
||||
Gupta's dismissal from the Punjab University was discussed by the Syndicate meeting on 30 June 1994, but no decision was made and the case was deferred to the Senate. The Senate meeting on 24 September made a majority decision, 50 out of 55, that Gupta was not to be discharged; only five were in favour of a dismissal. Gupta was however restricted from teaching palaeontology, and was assigned a course in environmental and ground water geology. He was allowed to continue supervising research students. Pressured by the academic community and public outcries, the university once again brought back Gupta's expulsion case in 1996. When Gupta knew his case was coming up in a special meeting of the Senate to be held on 17 March, he submitted a letter of resignation for voluntary retirement on 1 March. He requested cancellation of the Senate meeting. However, K. R. Narayanan, then Vice President of India and ex-officio Chancellor of the university, pushed on for the Senate meeting to uphold the integrity of the university. Learning of this insistence, Gupta submitted an application for reversal of his resignation three days before the meeting and went to the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking protection from the outcomes of the Senate meeting. The court made a notification to the university not to exercise further retribution on Gupta. Having no other option, the Senate decided to accept the resignation letter upon which Gupta took it to the court as he had already revoked that resignation. Gupta won the court case and continued his academic duties.
|
||||
Gupta was still defiant about his research and called the whole ordeal a "conspiracy by foreigners." He wrote seven books on environmental geology. Receiving a full pension benefit, he retired (some sources saying a premature superannuation) in 2002. Dhiraj Mohan Banerjee of the Geological Survey of India condemned the university's ineptness on Gupta' continued service and superannuation saying that it "reflects the utter poverty of the Indian ethics."
|
||||
Gupta issued death threats to Talent. Talent sarcastically revealed in an ABC News interview when asked if he was a hero: "Oh, I don't know about a hero. There were no particularly dire consequences, just a few death threats. The people who were hurt most were in India." One day, a Panjab University technical assistant who had been involved in preparing fossil photographs for Gupta announced that he had evidence of the sources of fossil frauds and was planning to reveal them. He was killed in a hit and run accident the following night in front of his residence. Gupta allegedly offered money to people to physically assault the co-authors of the Courier paper, Goel and Kumar. A few days later, the mother of one of them [not specified] was the victim of a hit and run accident, resulting in both legs and arms and several ribs broken.
|
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== Impact ==
|
||||
Gupta's forgery has often been compared with the 1912 case of Piltdown Man, sometimes called the greatest hoax in science. Nature announced Talent's observations with a statement that it "will cast a longer shadow" than Piltdown Man because of its elaborate publications involving numerous discoveries through a quarter of a century, and multiple fossils and scientists. The Chicago Tribune described it as "the most serious case of its kind since the Piltdown hoax." The New York Times wrote: "Unlike the case of Piltdown man, in which a single skull was passed off as a fossil of a prehistoric human, this one involves a much broader range of reported finds that have become a part of scientific literature." Talent described the meaning and consequences of Gupta's research as proving the kangaroos as natives to Kashmir or rhinoceros to Rio. Given the scale of fossils and the research publications, he described it as "[perhaps] the biggest paleontological fraud of all time." In 1994, Down to Earth reported it as the "greatest scientific fraud of the century". According to Tony Mayer of the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, the saga "is possibly one of the most extensive instances of malpractice in the whole scientific record."
|
||||
Gupta never faced criminal or immoral charges from the university or government authorities. There was an alleged cover-up of the saga by the government. Pushpa Mittra Bhargava, founder-director of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, explained the reason of his resignation from India's largest scientific establishments including Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences, Indian Academy of Sciences, and Indian Social Science Academy, citing Gupta's case: "Charges of fraudulent claims laid by him [Gupta] on the discovery of Himalayan fossils have been proved, but the only punishment he has been awarded is the stoppage of some of his increments. What is worse is that the person who exposed him is now being harassed and victimised instead of being made a hero."
|
||||
Gujral's inquiry reported that none of Gupta's co-authors were associated with the misconduct. A colleague and co-author of Gupta, Ahluwalia who had openly supported Talent's allegations and blamed Gupta of misconduct into which he was linked, was reprimanded and punished by the Panjab University. The Geological Society of India's secretary Sampige Venkateshaiya Srikantia made a press statement criticising the Punjab University's decision in 1994 as "a mild censure which amounts to a blatant disregard of ethical values... [and] chosen to ignore all the scientific and legal opinions... [referring to Ahluwalia's case] no one with conscience will come forward to speak the truth and the scientific community will be anaesthetized." Nature commented on the failure of Panjab University on the case: "Chandigarh's indulgence of Gupta is a kind of rope trick in that it defies the admittedly unwritten laws that usually apply when people are accused of publishing fraudulent data."
|
||||
|
||||
=== Vindhyan fossil controversy ===
|
||||
|
||||
Gupta's fraud had lingering effects on Indian palaeontology. The discipline "lost prestige" in India and the scandal caused "irreparable damage to Indian science." Indian discoveries not only in geology but also in other science disciplines were viewed with suspicion. India came to be perceived as "a leading nation in fraudulent scientific research."
|
||||
An example of such prejudice arose with the discovery of one of the oldest multicellular eukaryotes. The fossils were discovered from the Vindhyan Mountains in Central India by Rafat Jamal Azmi, of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology in Dehradun, who reported in the Journal of the Geological Society of India in 1998. As Azmi announced the discovery in Science, it was immediately received with scepticism. When renowned palaeontologists including Nicholas Butterfield, Simon Conway Morris and Soren Jensen examined the samples, they concluded that they were not fossils at all but artefacts. At the behest of the Geological Society of India, a team of palaeontologists from the Geological Survey of India, Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology and Lucknow University, coordinated by Om Narain Bhargava, conducted an expedition in 1999 to verify the discovery. They found no evidence of Azmi's claims. In 2000, based on the report of the expeditionary team, the Journal of the Geological Society of India issued a concluding statement declaring "that the identification of fossils by R. J. Azmi is far from convincing and that more detailed work is necessary before the authenticity of the find is accepted." The dispute persisted until 2009 when Stefan Bengtson and colleagues published a full analysis of the case, recognising Azmi's discovery as genuine. In a further vindication in 2017, Bengston's team established that the fossil, estimated to be 1.6 billion years old, was that of an alga, which they named Rafatazmia chitrakootensis (Figure 4) after the discoverer, becoming the oldest known alga.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Policy and popular culture ===
|
||||
In 1989, the US House of Representatives used the case as one of the evidences of scientific frauds in its first hearing on its policy on "Maintaining the Integrity of Scientific Research".
|
||||
In 1991, a 52-minute documentary of the hoax was presented by Robyn Williams in an ABC TV programme The Professor's New Clothes.
|
||||
In 2000, a 24-minute podcast documentary was broadcast on 31 March by BBC in its programme "Science Friction" with the headline "Tampering with the Fossil Record".
|
||||
In 2013, S.K. Shah of the Palaeontological Society of India published a book Himalayan Fossil Fraud: A View from the Galleries.
|
||||
In 2021, the University Grants Commission of India used the affair as a case study in its policy titled Academic Integrity and Research Quality.
|
||||
|
||||
== Notes ==
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
This article was submitted to WikiJournal of Science for external academic peer review in 2024 (reviewer reports). The updated content was reintegrated into the Wikipedia page under a CC-BY-SA-3.0 license (2025). The version of record as reviewed is: Kholhring Lalchhandama; et al. (21 September 2024). "The Himalayan fossil hoax" (PDF). WikiJournal of Science. 7 (1): 8. doi:10.15347/WJS/2024.008. ISSN 2470-6345. Wikidata Q130230166.
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Hold Ye Front Page is a series of books published by the UK tabloid newspaper The Sun: Hold Ye Front Page (1999), Hold Ye Front Page II (2000), Giant Leaps (2006), and On Me 'Eadline (2007).
|
||||
The first book, Hold Ye Front Page, was written by John Perry, Neil Roberts and Phil Leach of The Sun. It was a UK best-seller, published to commemorate the Millennium and documented the history of the last two millennia. The authors won a British Press Award in 2000, with the judges praising its educational content, wit and self-parody. Its sequel detailed history from the Big Bang to the Birth of Christ. Giant Leaps charted the history of science. On Me 'Eadline did the same with sport.
|
||||
Education Secretary David Blunkett advocated the use of the book in classrooms, but the Times Educational Supplement questioned whether it would be suitable.
|
||||
The paper also published a website with the same name. Roy Greenslade of The Guardian praised its "clever combination of popular journalism and academic rigour".
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
29
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The Holly Oak Gorget or Holly Oak Pendant is an artifact made from a section of shell that is engraved with the image of an extinct woolly mammoth reportedly found in Holly Oak, Delaware and initially identified as an example of Paleoindian art. Purported to have been a gorget carved during the Pleistocene, this object is now widely believed to be an archaeological forgery.
|
||||
|
||||
== History ==
|
||||
The Holly Oak Gorget was claimed to have been found in 1864 near the railroad station in Holly Oak. The object was reportedly found by Hilborne T. Cresson in 1864, but was not brought to the attention of the scientific community until December 1889 or the public until February 1890. The supposed discovery of the gorget by Cresson coincides directly with the discovery of another depiction of a woolly mammoth, in France; while excavating the La Madeleine rock shelter in 1864 Édouard Lartet discovered a clear depiction of a woolly mammoth on a fragment of mammoth tusk, providing evidence that humans and mammoths might once have co-existed in Europe.
|
||||
Once the Holly Oak gorget had been introduced to the scientific community and the public at large, the shell was put aside and rarely mentioned in the archaeological literature of the time. It was displayed at the Peabody Museum, the Smithsonian Institution and the International Expositions of Madrid and Chicago before fading from the public eye, only to be resurrected in the 1970s when its authenticity was once again subject to debate.
|
||||
|
||||
== Description ==
|
||||
The object is a single piece of whelk shell that has an engraving of a mammoth on one surface while the opposite side is undecorated. The shell has two small perforations along one side where a cord would have been strung so as to allow the gorget to be worn around the neck. The depiction of the mammoth is oriented horizontally, along the shell, rather than vertically as is most common. This means that when worn, the mammoth is depicted with the head facing down. It now bears some damage where the object was crushed by a microscope while undergoing tests at the Smithsonian Institution in the late 20th century.
|
||||
|
||||
== Criticism ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== Description of discovery ===
|
||||
In his original report, Cresson states that the pendant was discovered in a hole being dug in the peat along the Delaware River and across from the Holly Oak station of the railroad, from which the site gets its name. In another account, Cresson says that the shell was found amongst peat that was already spread across a farmers field, making it impossible to know which layer of the strata it came from, and thus determine its age.
|
||||
In 1890, when the entire Holly Oak assemblage was presented to the Peabody Museum, it included 275 additional artifacts. This assemblage comprised stone tools, animal bones, wood that showed evidence of having been chopped by a stone axe, a mastodon tooth, archaic projectile points, and more objects that "make little sense archaeologically". Many of the materials appear to be from the Archaic Period; however, other materials, such as the bone implements and the gorget itself, suggest an older, possible Paleoindian origin.
|
||||
Scientists also question the 25-year delay in bringing the find forward, for which Cresson did not have a convincing explanation. He claims that he did not understand the significance of the find at the time, although, he would undoubtedly have been aware of the artifact's significance due to the prominence of the La Madeleine carving discovered in France. Cresson also discusses a family dispute over the announcement of the discovery, as they were unwilling to risk a controversy such as had been seen with the faked mastodon pipes in the 1880s.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Shell ===
|
||||
The shell that the gorget is made of is of a type mostly restricted to the Ohio Valley in the late Prehistoric period. This style of gorget is referred to as Fort Ancient, and is not common near Delaware. Here, Cresson's reputation does not lend him any aid. "The obvious inference to be drawn from this — that the shell for the engraving had been procured from an archaeological site or collection — was fortified by the discovery that Cresson had a record of theft from archaeological sites". Cresson was fired from the World's Columbian Exposition Survey in December 1891 for stealing some of the specimens from the Hopewell Site.
|
||||
In 1986, a 0.3 gram shell sample was submitted for radiocarbon dating. The tests gave an age of 1530 ± 110 B.P. which, in calibrated years, dates the pendant to A.D. 885. This date is well after the time when mammoths had become extinct in North America. The gorget was also claimed to have been found in a peat bog; taking into account the shell's basic pH, there is very little chance that the shell could have survived for 10,000 years or more in said environment.
|
||||
23
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly_Oak_gorget-1.md
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Holly Oak gorget"
|
||||
chunk: 2/2
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly_Oak_gorget"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:15.087375+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Style ===
|
||||
In 1892, D.G. Brinton expressed the need to be suspicious of objects purported to have been made by aboriginal artists, listing the gorget and Lenape Stone as examples of such, citing the constant recurrence of frauds, and in 1893, after having examined the gorget and Lenape Stone, deemed both to have been recently made.
|
||||
Several people who have viewed the Holly Oak gorget have commented on how similar the drawing is to the La Madeleine tusk. Frederick Ward Putnam of the Peabody Museum, Thomas Wilson of the United States National Museum, Daniel Brinton of the University of Pennsylvania, and even Cresson himself, have all discussed the similarities present between the two objects. At the time the shell became public, there were less than a half-dozen depictions of a mammoth available, and of those the La Madeleine drawing is by far the clearest depiction. At the time of the Holly Oak pendant, as there were so few ways known of drawing a mammoth, the marked similarities between the two were not thought of as being unduly suspicious.
|
||||
David Meltzer lists several parallels between the two. They both have the same orientation and posture, and while most mammoths are shown with bulbous feet, the feet of both the Holly Oak and La Madeleine mammoths end abruptly; in La Madeleine's case, this was because part of the carving is missing, but there is room on the Holly Oak gorget where the ends of the feet could have been drawn. Furthermore, the contour of the back of the animal was drawn several times on the La Madeleine tusk, but only once on the Holly Oak gorget - the latter resembles more a modern elephant than a mammoth, which is consistent only with Charles Rau's drawing of the La Madeleine tusk, which was one of the few drawings available to the public. The trunk and tusks also more resemble those of a modern elephant than those of a mammoth, as if the artist misinterpreted the drawing.
|
||||
Kraft and Thomas, who believe that it is possible that the gorget may be authentic, do list this explanation among the possible theories for the artifact's existence. There is, in general, a consensus that the gorget was faked using the drawing by Rau as being the most logical explanation for the manufacture of the object.
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Archaeological forgery
|
||||
Calaveras Skull
|
||||
Lenape Stone
|
||||
Shell gorget
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
25
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huemul_Project-0.md
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Huemul Project"
|
||||
chunk: 1/5
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huemul_Project"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
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tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:16.271377+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The Huemul Project (Spanish: Proyecto Huemul) was an early 1950s Argentine effort to develop a fusion power device known as the Thermotron. The concept was invented by Austrian scientist Ronald Richter, who claimed to have a design that would produce effectively unlimited power.
|
||||
Richter was able to pitch the idea to President of Argentina Juan Perón in 1948, and soon received massive funding to build an experimental site on Huemul Island, on a lake just outside the town of San Carlos de Bariloche in Patagonia, near the Andes mountains. Construction began late in 1949, and by 1951 the site was completed and carrying out tests. On 16 February 1951, Richter measured high temperatures that suggested fusion had been achieved. On 24 March, the day before an important international meeting of the leaders of the Americas, Perón publicly announced that Richter had been successful, adding that in the future energy would be sold in packages the size of a milk bottle.
|
||||
A worldwide interest followed, along with significant skepticism on the part of other physicists. Little information was forthcoming: no papers were published on the topic, and over the next year a number of reporters visited the site but were denied access to the buildings. After increasing pressure, Perón arranged for a team to investigate Richter's claims and return individual reports, all of which were negative. A review of these reports was equally negative, and the project was ended in 1952. By this time, the optimism of the earlier news had inspired groups around the world to begin their own research in nuclear fusion.
|
||||
Perón was overthrown in 1955, and in the aftermath, Richter was arrested for fraud. He appears to have spent periods of time abroad, including some time in Libya. Eventually he returned to Argentina, where he died in 1991.
|
||||
|
||||
== Prior to Huemul ==
|
||||
According to Rainer Karlsch's Hitler's Bomb, during World War II German scientists under Walter Gerlach and Kurt Diebner carried out experiments to explore the possibility of inducing thermonuclear reactions in deuterium using high explosive-driven convergent shock waves, following Karl Gottfried Guderley's convergent shock wave solution. At the same time, Richter proposed in a memorandum to German government officials the induction of nuclear fusion through shock waves by high-velocity particles shot into a highly compressed deuterium plasma contained in an ordinary uranium vessel. The proposal was not carried through.
|
||||
|
||||
== Early Argentine nuclear efforts ==
|
||||
Shortly after his election in 1946, Perón began a purge of Argentina's universities that eventually resulted in over 1,000 professors being fired or quitting, causing a serious setback in Argentine science and lasting enmity between Perón and Argentine intelligentsia. In response, the Physical Association of Argentina (AFA) began to organize as a community to retain links between Argentine scientists, who now spread to industry.
|
||||
In 1946, the director of the AFA, physicist Enrique Gaviola, wrote a proposal to set up the Comisión Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas (National Scientific Research Commission), arguing that post-World War II friction (leading to the Cold War) would present the opportunity for various Northern Hemisphere scientists to move south to escape limits on their research. In the same paper, Gaviola argued for the formation of a body to explore the peaceful use of atomic power. In spite of the poor relations between the scientific community and the Argentine government, the proposal was seriously studied and Congress debated the matter on several occasions before Perón decided to place it under military control. Gaviola objected, starting a long and acrimonious debate over the nature and aims of the program.
|
||||
By 1947, plans to form an atomic study group were progressing slowly when the entire issue was shut down by an article in the U.S. political newsmagazine, New Republic. The 24 February 1947 issue contained an article by William Mizelle on "Peron's Atomic Plans", which claimed:
|
||||
|
||||
With world famous German atom-splitter Werner Heisenberg invited to come to Argentina by Peron's Government and with a major uranium source discovered in Argentina, that Nation is launching a military nuclear research program to crack Pandora's box of atomic energy wide open. Argentina's determined atomic adventure and its frankly military purposes cannot be dismissed as the impractical dream of a small nation.
|
||||
International pressure on Argentina following the publication was intense, and the plans were soon dropped. This event appears to have made Perón more determined than ever to both develop atomic energy as well as prove its peaceful intentions.
|
||||
22
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huemul_Project-1.md
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||||
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|
||||
title: "Huemul Project"
|
||||
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|
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|
||||
category: "reference"
|
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tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:16.271377+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
== Germans in Argentina ==
|
||||
In 1947, a dossier was provided to Argentina by the Spanish embassy in Buenos Aires listing a number of German aeronautical engineers who were looking to sneak out of Germany. Among them was Kurt Tank, designer of the famed Focke-Wulf Fw 190 and many other successful designs. The dossier was passed to the recently formed Argentine Air Force's Commander in Chief, who passed it to Brigadier César Raúl Ojeda, who was in charge of aerodynamics research. Ojeda and Tank communicated and formulated plans to begin building a jet fighter in Argentina, which would eventually emerge as the FMA IAe 33 Pulqui II.
|
||||
Just before leaving for Argentina, Tank briefly met Richter in London, where Richter told Tank of his ideas for nuclear-powered aircraft. Richter was at that time doing some work in the German chemical industry. Tank had also contacted a number of other engineers and even famed fighter pilot and Luftwaffe general Adolf Galland. Various members of the group made their way to Argentina under false passports during late 1947 and 1948. The Germans were warmly received by Perón, who effectively gave them a blank cheque in an effort to rapidly develop the Argentine economy. Tank set up an aircraft development plant in Córdoba, and continued to contact other German engineers and scientists who might be interested in joining them. A total of 184 German scientists and engineers are known to have moved to Argentina during this period.
|
||||
Richter was invited to join the group and arrived in Argentina on 16 August 1948, travelling under the name "Dr. Pedro Matthies". Tank personally introduced him to Perón on 24 August, and Richter pitched Perón on the idea of a nuclear fusion device which would provide unlimited power, make Argentina a world scientific leader, and be of purely civilian intent. Perón was intrigued, and clearly impressed, later telling reporters that "in half an hour he explained to me all the secrets of nuclear physics and he did it so well that now I have a pretty good idea of the subject".
|
||||
Gaviola, still maintaining pressure to form a nuclear research group, saw all interest evaporate. From that point on he offered his services only as a "member of Richter's firing squad." Other German scientists, including Guido Beck, Walter Seelmann-Eggebert, and the now-elderly Richard Gans quickly realized something was amiss in the entire affair, and began to align themselves with the AFA, steering clear of Richter and the government in general. At an AFA meeting in September 1951, Beck publicly resigned from the University of Buenos Aires over the issue.
|
||||
|
||||
== The project ==
|
||||
Richter was soon given a laboratory at Tank's Córdoba site, but in early 1949 a fire destroyed some of the equipment. Richter claimed it was sabotage, and demanded a more protected location free from spies. When support was not immediately forthcoming, Richter went on a tour, visiting Canada and perhaps the U.S. and Europe as well. A year later, Lise Meitner recalled meeting "a strange Austrian with an Argentine visa" in Vienna, where he demonstrated a device he claimed was a thermonuclear system but which Meitner later dismissed as a chemical effect.
|
||||
Richter's tour was a thinly veiled threat to leave Argentina, which prompted action. Perón handed the problem of selecting a suitable experimental site to Colonel González, a friend from the 1943 Argentine coup d'état. González selected a location deep within the country's interior on Huemul Island, in Nahuel Huapi Lake, where it would be easy to protect from prying eyes. Construction work began in July, causing a nationwide shortage of brick and cement. Richter moved to the site in March 1950 while construction on Laboratory 1, the reactor, was still ongoing.
|
||||
In May 1950, Perón formed the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA), bypassing Gaviola's earlier efforts and placing himself in the position of president, with Richter and the minister of technical affairs as the other chairs. A year later, he formed the National Atomic Energy Directorate (DNEA), under González, to provide project assistance and logistics support.
|
||||
When the reactor was finally completed in May, Richter noticed there was no way to access the interior of the 12-metre (39 ft) wide concrete cylinder, requiring a series of holes to be drilled through the 4-metre (13 ft) thick walls. But before this could be completed, Richter declared that a crack on the outside rendered the entire reactor useless, and had it torn down.
|
||||
While this was taking place, Richter began experiments in the much smaller 2-metre (6 ft 7 in) reactor in Laboratory 2. The experiments injected lithium and hydrogen into the cylinder and discharged a spark through it. The cylinder was supposed to reflect the energy created by these reactions back into the chamber to keep the reaction going. Diagnostic measurements were provided by taking photographs of the spectrum and using Doppler widening to measure the temperature of the resulting reactions.
|
||||
21
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huemul_Project-2.md
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Huemul Project"
|
||||
chunk: 3/5
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huemul_Project"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:16.271377+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
== Announcement ==
|
||||
On 16 February 1951, Richter claimed he had successfully demonstrated fusion. He re-ran the experiment for members of the CNEA, later claiming that they had witnessed the world's first thermonuclear reaction.
|
||||
On 23 February, a technician working for the project expressed his concerns about the claims, suggesting that the measurement was likely due to the accidental tilting of the spectrograph's photographic plate while the experimental run was being set up. Richter refused to re-run the experiment. Instead, a week later he ordered the reactor to be disassembled so a new one could be built that included a magnetic confinement system. Meanwhile, plans for a new Laboratory 1 were started with this new design, this time to be buried underground. A 14-metre (46 ft) deep hole in hard rock was constructed, but Richter changed the design and had the hole filled in with concrete.
|
||||
On 2 March, Edward Miller, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Station for Inter-American Affairs, visited Argentina. This was ostensibly to visit the Pan American Games, but in reality was in advance of calling a meeting of American leaders later that month to discuss China's entry into the Korean War. Perón gave Miller an introduction to Richter's work, and Miller filed a memo on it on 6 March. During this period, Perón seized the Argentine newspaper La Prensa, whose editor fled to the U.S. This led to harsh criticism in the U.S. Miller suggested a policy of "masterful inaction", not actively denying support for the project, but simply never providing any.
|
||||
The leadership meeting was to take place between 26 March and 7 April, by which time the Chinese "emergency" had passed and the war was entering a new phase. Perón then took the opportunity to announce Richter's results to the world. On 24 March, Perón held a press conference at Casa Rosada and stated that:
|
||||
|
||||
On February 16, 1951, in the atomic energy pilot plant on Huemul Island... thermonuclear experiments were carried out under conditions of control on a technical scale.
|
||||
|
||||
Perón justified the project by noting that Argentina's enormous energy shortage would be addressed by building nuclear plants across the country, and that the energy would be bought and sold in containers the size of a milk bottle. He went on to note that the country was simply unable to afford the cost of developing a uranium-based energy program, or that of a system using tritium, normally generated in special fission plants. Richter's fuel meant the reaction could only take place in a reactor, not a bomb, and he then recommitted the country to exploring only peaceful uses of atomic energy. Richter added that he understood the secret of the hydrogen bomb, but that Perón had forbidden any work on it.
|
||||
The next day Richter held another press conference on the topic, a meeting that became known as the "10,000 word interview". He explained that a hydrogen bomb required a fission trigger, and that the country was unable and unwilling to build such a device. Very little explanation of the Thermotron was mentioned, beyond the announcement that he used the Doppler effect to measure speeds of 3,300 km/s and that the fuel was either lithium hydride or deuterium which was introduced into pre-heated hydrogen. He was careful to explain that these were small-scale experimental results, and refused to state whether it would work well at the industrial scale. On 7 April, Perón awarded Richter the gold Peronista Party Medal in a highly publicized event.
|
||||
With the U.S. refusing any support for the program, Richter turned to other countries for equipment. In April, Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands visited Perón, and offered technical help to the project from Philips. A visit by Cornelis Bakker, later the director of CERN, was arranged and a synchrotron and Cockcroft–Walton generator were suggested as possible products of interest. Perón wrote to Richter to arrange the visit, during which Richter refused to show Bakker any of the reactors. In spite of this, Perón offered to fund the purchase of a Cockcroft–Walton generator and a synchrotron from the company.
|
||||
22
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huemul_Project-3.md
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22
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Huemul Project"
|
||||
chunk: 4/5
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huemul_Project"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:16.271377+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
== Public reaction ==
|
||||
Shortly after Richter's conference, the matter was discussed in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, where it was noted that Richter's announcement had revealed no details of the system of operation. They also noted that Richter claimed three key advances during experimentation, but failed to mention any of them during the conference. Finally, although the method for measuring temperature was announced, the temperature itself was not. The United States Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) comment on the announcement was simply that "the Argentine Government announced more than a year ago that it was planning to engage in nuclear research."
|
||||
American physicists were universally dismissive of the announcement. Among the more famous responses was that of George Gamow, who said "It seemed to be 95% pure propaganda, 4¾% thermonuclear reactions on a very small scale, and the remaining ¼% probably something better." Ernest Lawrence was not so dismissive, noting that, "There is a tendency to laugh it off as being a lot of hot air or something. Well it may be, but we don't know all, and we should make every effort to find out." Edward Teller put it succinctly, "Reading one line one has to think he's a genius. Reading the next line, one realizes he's crazy."
|
||||
British scientists, at that time working secretly on the z-pinch fusion concept, did not rule out the possibility of small-scale reactions. George Thomson, at that time leading the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (AEA), suggested it was simply exaggerated. This opinion was mirrored by Mark Oliphant in Australia, and Werner Heisenberg and Otto Hahn in Germany. Perhaps the most biting criticism came from Manfred von Ardenne, a German physicist now working in the Soviet Union. He advised that people should ignore Richter's claims, noting that he had worked with Richter during the war and said he confused fantasy with reality.
|
||||
In May, the United Nations World magazine carried a short article by Hans Thirring, the director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Vienna and a well known author on nuclear matters. He stated that "the chances are 99 to 1 that the explosion in Argentina occurred only in the imagination of a crank or a fraud." When Thirring heard the announcement, he had gone searching for anyone that knew Richter from before he arrived in Argentina. He found that Richter had studied under Heinrich Rausch von Traubenberg in the 1930s, who described him as a peculiar eccentric, but von Traubenberg had died in 1944 so there was no way to follow up on the story. Richter's dissertation was never published, and the university in Prague burned during the war. Richter was invited to prepare a rebuttal, which appeared in the July issue. He simply dismissed Thirring as "a typical textbook professor with a strong scientific inferiority complex, probably supported by political hatred."
|
||||
|
||||
== Private reaction ==
|
||||
Although essentially dismissed by the scientific community, the Richter announcement nevertheless had a major effect on the history of controlled fusion experiments.
|
||||
The most direct outcome of the announcement was its effect on Lyman Spitzer, an astrophysicist at Princeton University. Just prior to leaving for a ski trip to Aspen, Spitzer's father called and mentioned the announcement in The New York Times. Spitzer read the articles and dismissed them, noting the system could not deliver enough energy to heat the gases to fusion temperatures. This led him to begin considering ways to confine a hot plasma for longer periods of time, giving the system enough time to be heated to 10 to 100 million degrees Celsius. Considering the problem of confining a plasma in a toroid pointed out by Enrico Fermi, he hit upon the solution now known as the stellarator. Spitzer was able to use the notoriety surrounding Richter's announcement to gain the attention of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission with the suggestion that the basic idea of controlled fusion was feasible. He eventually managed to arrange a meeting with the director of the AEC to pitch the stellarator concept.
|
||||
Researchers in the UK had been experimenting with fusion since 1947 using a system known today as z-pinch. Small experimental devices had been built at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE, "Harwell") and Imperial College London, but requests for funding of a larger system were repeatedly refused. Jim Tuck had seen the work while in the UK, and introduced z-pinch to his coworkers at Los Alamos in 1950. When Tuck heard of Spitzer's efforts to gain funding, he immediately applied as well, presenting his concept as the Perhapsatron. He felt that Spitzer's claims to have a fast track to fusion were "incredibly ambitious". Both Spitzer and Tuck met with AEC officials in May 1951; Spitzer was granted $50,000 to build an experimental device, while Tuck was turned away empty-handed. Not to be outdone, Tuck soon arranged to receive $50,000 from the director of Los Alamos instead.
|
||||
When news of the U.S. efforts reached the UK, the researchers there started pushing for funding of a much larger machine. This time they found a much more favorable reaction from the AERE, and both teams soon began construction of larger devices. This work, through fits and starts, led to the ZETA system, the first truly large-scale fusion reactor. Compared to the small tabletop devices built in the U.S., ZETA filled a hangar and operated at energy levels far beyond any other machine. When news of ZETA was made public, the U.S. and Soviet Union were soon demanding funding to build devices of similar scale in order to catch up with the UK.
|
||||
The announcement had a direct effect on research in the USSR as well. Previously, several researchers, notably Igor Kurchatov and I. N. Golovin had put together a development plan similar to the ones being developed in the UK. They too were facing disinterest on the part of the funding groups, which was immediately swept away when Huemul hit the newspapers.
|
||||
53
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huemul_Project-4.md
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53
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Huemul Project"
|
||||
chunk: 5/5
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huemul_Project"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:16.271377+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
== Cancellation ==
|
||||
Argentine physicists were also critical of the announcement, but found little interest on the part of Perón, who was still at odds with the academic mainstream. González was growing increasingly frustrated with Richter, and in February 1952 told Perón that either Richter left the project, or he did. Perón accepted González's resignation and replaced him with his aide, Navy Captain Pedro Iraolagoitía. Iraolagoitía soon began to protest as well, finally convincing Perón to have the project investigated.
|
||||
Instead of calling upon the local physics community, Perón put together a team consisting of Iraolagoitía, a priest, two engineers including Mario Báncora, and young physicist José Antonio Balseiro, who was at that time studying in England and was asked to return with all haste. The team visited the site for a series of demonstrations between 5 and 8 September 1952.
|
||||
The committee analyzed Richter's work and published separate reports on the topic on 15 September. Balseiro, in particular, was convinced nothing nuclear was taking place. His report critiqued Richter's claims about how the system was supposed to work, especially the claims that the system was reaching the temperatures needed to demonstrate fusion; he stated that fusion reactions would require something on the order of 40 million kelvin, while the center of the electric arc would be perhaps 4,000 to 100,000 kelvin at most. He then pointed out that Richter's radiation detectors showed large activity whenever the arc was discharged, even if there was no fuel present. Meanwhile, the team's own detectors showed low activity throughout. They reported their findings to Perón on 15 February.
|
||||
Richter was allowed to officially respond to the report. The government appointed physicists Richard Gans and Antonio Rodríguez to review the first report as well as Richter's response to it. This second group endorsed the findings of the first review panel and found Richter's response inadequate. On 22 November, while Richter was in Buenos Aires, a military team occupied the site. They found that many of the instruments were not even connected, and the project was pronounced a fraud. Argentines jokingly referred to the affair as the Huele a mula, or "it smells like a con".
|
||||
|
||||
== After the project ==
|
||||
In the period immediately after the military takeover, Balseiro wrote a proposal to create a nuclear physics institute on the mainland in nearby Bariloche using the equipment on the island. Originally known as the Instituto de Física de Bariloche, it was renamed the Instituto Balseiro in his honour in 1962.
|
||||
Between 1952 and 1955, Richter was effectively under house arrest in Buenos Aires, with an offer from Perón to "facilitate any travel he might have to make". After Perón was deposed in September 1955, the new government arrested Richter on the night of 4 October 1955. He was accused of fraud, and spent a short time in jail. At the time, it was estimated that 62.5 million Pesos had been spent on the project, about $15 million USD ($182 million in 2025). A more recent estimate places the value closer to $300 million in 2003 dollars ($525 million in 2025).
|
||||
Richter remained in Argentina for a time, but began to travel, eventually landing in Libya. He returned to Argentina and was extensively interviewed by Mario Mariscotti for his book on Huemul, which remains the most detailed account of the project. Mariscotti blames the affair primarily on Richter, who Mariscotti states was capable of great self-delusion, adding an autocratic and paranoid management style, and lack of oversight to the ills.
|
||||
Perón remains a controversial figure to this day, and opinions of Richter tend to be colored by how closely the author associates him with Perón. Argentine accounts often refer to Richter as an outright con man, while accounts written outside Argentina generally describe him as a deluded amateur.
|
||||
|
||||
== Huemul today ==
|
||||
The island remained closed and under military control until the 1970s, when the Army began using it for artillery target practice. In 1995 a tourist company took control of the island, and began to offer tours by boat from docks in Bariloche. The ruins of the historic facilities (at 41°06′23″S 71°23′42″W), can be visited by tourists by boat from the port of Bariloche.
|
||||
|
||||
== Notes ==
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== Citations ===
|
||||
|
||||
=== Bibliography ===
|
||||
Balseiro, José Antonio (1952). Report by Dr. José Antonio Balseiro regarding the inspection to the Huemul Island in September 1952 (Technical report). CNEA. Archived from the original on 2018-04-22. Retrieved 2015-06-15.
|
||||
Arnoux, Robert (26 October 2011). "'Proyecto Huemul': the prank that started it all". iter.
|
||||
Bromberg, Joan Lisa (1982). Fusion: science, politics, and the invention of a new energy source. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262021807.
|
||||
Cabral, Regis (1987). "The Perón-Richter Fusion Program: 1948-1953". In Saldaña, Juan José (ed.). Cross Cultural Diffusion of Science: Latin America. Berkeley, California. pp. 77–106.
|
||||
Cardona, Manuel; Cohen, Marvin; Louie, Steven (2003). "Leopoldo Máximo Falicov 1933–1995" (PDF). Biographical Memoirs. 83. The National Academy Press.
|
||||
Davenport, Philip (3 February 1983). "When the Argentines tamed fusion". New Scientist: 322.
|
||||
Fantoni, Enrico (11 February 2011). "Nuclear island: The secret post-WWII mega lab investigated". Wired.
|
||||
Hagood, Jonathan (2014). "Bottling Atomic Power:Technology, Politics and the State in Peronist Argentina". Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America. MIT Press. pp. 264–266. ISBN 9780262526203.
|
||||
Herman, Robin (1990). Fusion: the search for endless energy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521383738.
|
||||
Hymans, Jacques (2012). Achieving Nuclear Ambitions: Scientists, Politicians, and Proliferation. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521767002.
|
||||
Mariscotti, Mario (1992). "Argentina's Early Nuclear Debate". In Cabral, Regis (ed.). Nuclear Technology Debates. University of Göteborg. pp. 5–12. ISSN 1101-4466.
|
||||
Newton, Ronald (1992). The "Nazi Menace" in Argentina, 1931-1947. Stanford University Press.
|
||||
Phillips, James (Winter 1982 – Spring 1983). "Magnetic Fusion" (PDF). Los Alamos Science.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Further reading ===
|
||||
Mariscotti, Mario, 1985, El Secreto Atómico de Huemul: Crónica del Origen de la Energía Atómica en la Argentina, Sudamericana/Planeta, Buenos Aires, Argentina ISBN 950-37-0109-0
|
||||
López Dávalos A., Badino N., 2000 J. A. Balseiro: Crónica de una ilusión, Fondo de Cultura Económica de Argentina, ISBN 950-557-357-X.
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
El litio: materia prima para la tecnología de la fusión termonuclear (1997) Spanish
|
||||
Guillermo Giménez de Castro: La quimera atómica de Richter (2004) Spanish
|
||||
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|
||||
Hwang Woo-suk (Korean: 황우석; born January 29, 1953) is a South Korean veterinarian and researcher. He was a professor of theriogenology and biotechnology at Seoul National University until he was dismissed on March 20, 2006. He was considered a pioneering expert in stem cell research and even called the "Pride of Korea". However, he became infamous around November 2005 for fabricating a series of stem cell experiments that were published in high-profile journals in a case known as the Hwang affair.
|
||||
Hwang was best known for two articles published in the journal Science in 2004 and 2005, where he reported he had succeeded in creating human embryonic stem cells by cloning. However, soon after the first paper was released, an article in the journal Nature accused Hwang of having committed ethical violations by using eggs from his graduate students and from the black market. Although he denied the charges at first, Hwang admitted the allegations were true in November 2005. Shortly after this, data from his human cloning experiments was revealed to have been falsified.
|
||||
On May 12, 2006, Hwang was charged with embezzlement and bioethics law violations after it emerged much of his stem cell research had been faked. The Korea Times reported on June 10, 2007, that Seoul National University fired him, and the South Korean government canceled his financial support and barred him from engaging in stem cell research. Hwang was sentenced to a two years suspended prison sentence at the Seoul Central District Court on 26 October 2009, after being found guilty of embezzlement and bioethical violations but cleared of fraud. On the same day, CNN reported that the scientist in 2006 had admitted faking his findings after questions of impropriety had emerged. He had his conviction upheld but his suspended sentence reduced by 6 months on 15 December 2010 by an appeals court in South Korea. In 2014, the South Korean Supreme Court upheld its 2010 ruling.
|
||||
Since the controversy, Hwang has maintained a relatively low profile, but continues to work in scientific fields. As of September 2020, he worked at the Sooam Bioengineering Research Institute in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, leading research efforts into creating cloned pig embryos and embryonic stem cell lines. In February 2011, Hwang visited Libya as part of a US$133 million project in the North African country to build a stem cell research center and transfer relevant technology. The project was canceled due to the 2011 Libyan civil war. In November 2015, a Chinese biotech company Boyalife Group announced that it would partner with Hwang's laboratory, Sooam Biotech, to open the world's largest animal cloning factory in Tianjin. The factory would aim to produce up to one million cattle embryos per year to meet the increasing demand for quality beef in China.
|
||||
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|
||||
|
||||
== Timeline ==
|
||||
Hwang first caught media attention in South Korea when he announced he had successfully created a cloned dairy cow, Yeongrong-i in February 1999. His alleged success was touted as the fifth instance in the world in cow cloning, with a notable caveat: Hwang failed to provide scientifically verifiable data for the research, giving only media sessions and photo ops. Hwang's next claim came in April 1999, when he announced the cloning of a Korean cow, Jin-i, also without providing any scientifically verifiable data. Despite the notable absence of any of the scientific data needed to probe the validity of the research, Hwang's several claims were well received by the South Korean media and public, who were attracted by Hwang's claim of immeasurable economic prospect that his research was said to be promising. The claims of his research results resulted in him being awarded the Scientist of the Year Award by the Korea Science Journalists Association and the Inchon Award. Until 2004, Hwang's main area of research remained in creating genetically modified livestock that included cows and pigs. During that period, Hwang claimed to have created a BSE-resistant cow (which has not been verified), and also stated his intention to clone a Siberian tiger. In February 2004, Hwang and his team announced that they had successfully created an embryonic stem cell by the somatic cell nuclear transfer method, and published their paper in the March 12 issue of Science. Although Hwang had already established himself as an expert in animal cloning and secured celebrity status in South Korea in the late 1990s, his alleged sudden success came as a surprise because this was the first reported success in human somatic cell cloning. Until Hwang's claim, it was generally agreed that creating a human stem cell by cloning was next to impossible due to the complexity of primates. Hwang explained that his team used 242 eggs to create a single cell line. In May, Nature journal published an article stating that Hwang had used eggs taken from two of his graduate students, based on an interview with one of the students. The article raised the question of whether the students might have been pressured to give eggs and thus whether such a donation would have been "voluntary" as Hwang claimed in his scientific paper. At that time, Hwang denied that he had used his students' eggs. Hwang's team announced an even greater achievement a year later in May 2005, and claimed they had created 11 human embryonic stem cells using 185 eggs. His work, published in the June 17 issue of Science, was instantly hailed as a breakthrough in biotechnology because the cells were allegedly created with somatic cells from patients of different age and gender, while the stem cell of 2004 was created with eggs and somatic cells from a single female donor. This meant every patient could receive custom-made treatment with no immune reactions. In addition, Hwang's claim meant that his team had boosted their success rate by 14 times and that this technology could be medically viable. Hwang made further headlines in May 2005 when he criticized U.S. President George W. Bush's policy on embryonic stem cell research. Also, Time magazine named Hwang one of its "People Who Mattered 2004", stating that Hwang "has already proved that human cloning is no longer science fiction, but a fact of life."
|
||||
Following on the earlier success, on August 3, 2005, Hwang announced that his team of researchers had become the first team to successfully clone a dog, which was independently verified through genetic testing. The dog, an Afghan Hound, was named Snuppy. Shortly after his groundbreaking 2005 work, Hwang was appointed to head the new World Stem Cell Hub, a facility that was to be the world's leading stem cell research center. However, in November 2005, Gerald Schatten, a University of Pittsburgh researcher who had worked with Hwang for two years, made the surprise announcement that he had ceased his collaboration with Hwang. In an interview, Schatten commented that "my decision is grounded solely on concerns regarding oocyte (egg) donations in Hwang's research reported in 2004." Following an intense media probe, Roh Sung-il, one of Hwang's close collaborators and head of MizMedi Women's Hospital, held a news conference on November 21. During the conference, Roh admitted that he had paid women US$1,400 each for donating their eggs which were later used in Hwang's research. Roh claimed Hwang was unaware of this, while the South Korean Ministry of Health asserted that no laws or ethical guidelines had been breached as there were no commercial interests involved. Hwang maintained that he was unaware that the eggs had been obtained via these methods, but regardless resigned from his post at the World Stem Cell Hub. On November 22, PD Su-cheop (Producer's Note), a popular MBC investigative reporting show, raised the possibility of unethical conduct in the egg cell-acquiring process. Despite the factual accuracy of the report, news media as well as people caught up in nationalistic fervor in their unwavering support for Hwang asserted that criticism of Hwang's work was "unpatriotic", so much so that the major companies who were sponsoring the show immediately withdrew their support. On November 24, Hwang held a press conference in Seoul, in which he declared his intention of resigning from most of his official posts. He also apologized for his actions and said, "I was blinded by work and my drive for achievement." He denied coercing his researchers into donating eggs and claimed that he found out about the situation only after it had occurred. He added that he had lied about the source of the eggs donated to protect the privacy of his female researchers, and that he was not aware of the Declaration of Helsinki, which clearly enumerates his actions as a breach of ethical conduct. After the press conference, which was aired on all major South Korean television networks, many of the nation's media outlets, government ministries, and members of the public expressed sympathy for Hwang. In mid-December, co-author of Hwang's papers came forward, telling the media that Hwang had confessed to fabricating evidence for nine of the eleven cell lines. He (Dr Roh Il-Sung) reportedly said he had doubts about the remaining two lines. On December 29, 2005, the university determined that all 11 of Hwang's stem cell lines were fabricated. The university announced on January 10, 2006, that Hwang's 2004 and 2005 papers in Science were both fabricated. Following on the confirmation of scientific misconduct, on January 11, Science unconditionally retracted both of Hwang's papers. On January 12, 2006, Hwang held a press conference to apologize for the fiasco, but did not admit to cheating. Instead, he blamed other members of his research project for having deceived him with false data and alleged a conspiracy, saying that his projects had been sabotaged and that there was theft of materials involved. He said that cloning human stem cells was possible and that he had the technology to do it, and if he were given six more months he could prove it.
|
||||
11
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||||
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||||
This is an extension of the ten days he said he needed to re-create the stem cells that he asked for back on December 16, 2005. Seoul prosecutors started a criminal investigation and raided Hwang's home that day. On January 20, 2006, Hwang maintained that two of his 11 forged stem cell lines had been maliciously switched for cells from regular, not cloned, embryos. The allegation involves the lines Hwang claims to have created at Seoul-based MizMedi Hospital. On November 22, 2016, Hwang received a certificate of patent on NT-1 technology from the Korean Intellectual Property Office.
|
||||
23
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|
||||
|
||||
== Hwang's laboratory technique ==
|
||||
|
||||
In the late 1990s, the method that scientists used in cloning was somatic cell nuclear transfer, which is the same procedure that was used to create Dolly the sheep. This laboratory technique begins when an egg is taken from a donor and the nucleus is removed from the egg, creating an enucleated egg. A cell, which contains DNA, is then taken from the animal being cloned. The enucleated egg is then fused together with the nucleus of the cloning subject's cell using electricity. This creates an embryo, which is implanted into a surrogate mother through in vitro fertilization. If the procedure is successful, then the surrogate mother will give birth to a baby that is a clone of the cloning subject at the end of a normal gestation period. In 2014 researchers were reporting cloning success rates of seven to eight out of ten but in 1996 it took 277 attempts to create Dolly.
|
||||
Hwang allegedly used this technique at his laboratory in SNU to clone dogs during his experiments throughout the early 2000s. He claimed that it was possible to clone mammals and that probability for success can be better than 1 in 277 attempts (as in similar cases such as Dolly). Hwang was the first in the world to clone a dog, an Afghan hound called Snuppy in 2005. He described his procedure for cloning in the journal Nature. Researchers from the Seoul National University and the US National Institutes of Health confirmed that Snuppy was a clone. Since then Hwang and his associates have cloned many more dogs. In 2015, it was reported that Huang Woo-suk's company Sooam Biotech had produced 700 cloned puppies since 2005, with their owners paying about $100,000 each to have their dogs cloned.
|
||||
Hwang's intention to develop better technique for cloning was focused on stem cells because they are still at an early stage of development and retain the potential to turn into many different types of cell and when they divide, each new cell has the potential to either remain a stem cell or become another type of cell with a more specialized function.
|
||||
According to stem cell biologists, it might be possible to harness this ability to turn stem cells into a super "repair kit" for the body, theoretically to use stem cells to generate healthy tissue to replace that either damaged by trauma or compromised by disease.
|
||||
The many conditions and illnesses that may eventually be treated by stem cell therapy include Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, diabetes, burns, and spinal cord damage.
|
||||
In March 2012, it was announced that Hwang would collaborate with Russian scientists in an attempt to clone a woolly mammoth from remains found in Siberia. He had previously successful cloned eight coyotes in March 2011 using domestic dogs and grey wolves as surrogate mothers. However no mammoth sample fit for cloning had been found as of 2015.
|
||||
In 2015, the Chinese company BoyaLife announced that in partnership with the Hwang Woo-suk's company Sooam Biotech, they were planning to build a 200 million RMB (about US$32 million) factory in Tianjin, China to produce 100,000 cloned cattle per year to supply China's growing market for quality beef, starting in 2016.
|
||||
In 2015, Sooam Biotech cloned a male boxer puppy from a pet dog that had been dead for 12 days. This was the first time they had cloned a dog that had been dead for such a long time.
|
||||
In 2016, Hwang's company was regularly cloning pigs which were genetically predisposed to certain diseases so that they could be used for testing pharmaceuticals, and cloning cattle which were highly valued for their meat. In total Sooam Biotech was reported to be producing roughly 500 cloned embryos a day from various species. They were also reported to be attempting to clone the Ethiopian wolf, one of the world's rarest canids, of which there are only 500 in the wild, another endangered canid, the dhole, of which there only about 2,500 adults, and the Siberian musk deer, which is classified as vulnerable by the IUCN.
|
||||
|
||||
== Controversies ==
|
||||
24
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|
||||
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||||
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|
||||
|
||||
Until late November 2005, Hwang was criticized only for unpublicized ethical violations. Colleagues and media outlets asserted that he had paid female donors for egg donations and that he had received donations from two junior researchers, both of which were violations. Later controversies centered around scientific misconduct.
|
||||
His team, which cloned the first human embryo to use for research, said they had used the same technology to create batches of embryonic stem cells from nine patients. According to Hwang, the result was much more efficient than they had hoped.
|
||||
Hwang's integrity as a researcher was again put in doubt when it was revealed that PD Su-cheop had scheduled a follow-up report questioning his achievement published in Science in June 2005, which stated he had cloned 11 lines of embryonic stem cells. This caused furious backlash among many South Koreans, and the reaction only intensified when it was discovered that Kim Sun-Jong, one of Hwang's researchers from MizMedi, had been coerced by illegal means to testify against Hwang. As a result, the scheduled broadcast was canceled and the network made a public apology to the nation, everyone more or less operating under the assumption that the show was at fault and not Hwang. Yet, other news outlets began to question Hwang's claims.
|
||||
Close scrutiny revealed that several of the photos of purportedly different cells were in fact photos of the same cell. Hwang responded that these additional photos were accidentally included and that there was no such duplication in the original submission to Science. This was later confirmed by the journal.
|
||||
Researchers raised questions about striking similarities between the DNA profiles of the cloned cells. Then collaborator Gerald Schatten asked Science to remove his name from the paper, stating as a reason that there were "allegations from someone involved with the experiments that certain elements of the report may be fabricated."
|
||||
In the midst of national confusion, Hwang disappeared from public sight, to be hospitalized days later for alleged stress-related fatigue, while public opinion gradually began to turn against Hwang with even the major Korean companies who had withdrawn their support from PD Su-cheop reportedly now less than pleased with Hwang. Days later, Hwang started going to his laboratory while requesting Seoul National University to officially conduct a probe to the allegations surrounding him.
|
||||
The scandal took a dramatic turn on December 15, when Roh Sung-il, who had collaborated on the disputed paper, stated to media outlets that nine of those eleven lines had been faked; specifically, DNA tests illustrated that those nine lines shared identical DNA, implying that they had come from the same source. Roh stated that "Professor Hwang admitted to fabrication", and that he, Hwang, and another co-author had asked Science to withdraw the paper. Adding fuel to the fire, MBC broadcast the content of the canceled PD Su-cheop show, which substantiated Roh's claim.
|
||||
On the same day, The Seattle Times reported that Science had not yet received an official request from Hwang to withdraw the paper, and it had refused to remove Schatten's name from the paper, stating, "No single author, having declared at the time of submission his full and complete confidence in the contents of the paper, can retract his name unilaterally, after publication."
|
||||
Several prominent scientists, including Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep in 1996, and Bob Lanza, a cloning expert based in Worcester, Massachusetts, did call on Hwang to submit his paper to an outside group for independent analysis. Lanza noted, "You can't fake the results if they're carried out by an independent group. I think this simple test could put the charges to rest."
|
||||
Two major press conferences were held on Korean television networks on December 16, one with Hwang, followed by one with his former colleague, Roh Sung-il. Hwang started his press conference by claiming that the technology to make stem cells existed—not an explicit denial that the stem cell lines he used in his paper to Science were fakes. He, however, acknowledged the falsifications of research data in the paper, attributing them to unrecoverable "artificial mistakes". He said that there was a problem with the original lines caused by contamination, and if he were given ten more days he could re-create the stem cell lines. He accused Kim Sun-Jong, a former collaborator, of "switching" some of the stem cell lines.
|
||||
Despite Hwang's claim, in another press conference held only minutes later, Roh Sung-il rebutted Hwang's accusation, saying Hwang was blackmailing MizMedi and Kim Sun-jong. He maintained that at least nine of the eleven stem cell lines were fakes and that Hwang was simply untrustworthy.
|
||||
"Roh Sung-il, chairman of the board at Mizmedi Hospital, told KBS television that Hwang had agreed to ask the journal Science to withdraw the paper, published in June to international acclaim. Roh was one of the co-authors of the article that detailed how individual stem cell colonies were created for 11 patients through cloning. Roh also told MBC television that Hwang had pressured a former scientist at his lab to fake data to make it look like there were 11 stem cell colonies. In a separate report, a former researcher told MBC that Hwang ordered him to fabricate photos to make it appear there were 11 separate colonies from only three. [...] University of Pittsburgh researcher Gerald Schatten has already asked that Science remove him as the senior author of the report, citing questions about the paper's accuracy. Seoul National University announced this week it would conduct an internal probe into Hwang's research."
|
||||
Some scientists have started questioning Hwang's earlier work published in Science in February 2004, in which he claimed to have cloned embryonic stem cells. Maria Biotech head Park Se-pill said, "Up until now, I have believed Hwang did derive cloned embryonic stem cells although he admitted to misconduct in his follow-up paper on patient-specific stem cells...Now, I am not sure whether the cloned stem cell really existed."
|
||||
On July 26, 2006, Hwang said in testimony that he spent part of 500 million won in private donations in attempts to clone extinct Russian mammoths and Korean tigers.
|
||||
23
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|
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||||
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|
||||
|
||||
=== Official probe and confirmation of fraud ===
|
||||
An internal panel was set up in Seoul National University to investigate the allegation, and the probe was started on December 17, 2005. The panel sealed off Hwang's laboratory and conducted a thorough investigation, collecting testimonies from Hwang, Roh and other people who were involved with the scandal. On December 23, the panel announced its initial finding that Hwang had intentionally fabricated stem cell research results creating nine fake cell lines out of eleven, and added that the validity of two remaining cell lines is yet to be confirmed. The panel stated that Hwang's misconduct is "a grave act damaging the foundation of science." Hwang's claim of having used only 185 eggs to create stem cell lines was also denied by the panel, which indicated that more eggs may have been used in the research process.
|
||||
The panel announced additional findings on December 29, and confirmed that no patient-matched embryonic stem cells existed, and that Hwang's team did not have the scientific data to prove any of the stem cells had ever been made.
|
||||
In its final report published on January 10, 2006, the panel reaffirmed its previous findings while announcing additional discoveries. The panel found out that, contrary to Hwang's claim of having used 185 eggs for his team's 2005 paper, at least 273 eggs were shown to have been used according to research records kept in Hwang's lab. In addition, the panel discovered that Hwang's team was supplied with 2,061 eggs in the period of November 28, 2002, to December 8, 2005. Hwang's claim of not having known about the donation of eggs by his own female researchers was also denied by the panel; in fact, it was discovered that Hwang himself had distributed egg donation consent forms to his researchers and personally escorted one to the MizMedi Hospital to perform the egg extraction procedure.
|
||||
The panel stated that Hwang's 2004 Science paper was also fabricated and decided the stem cell discussed in the paper may have been generated by a case of parthenogenetic process (which is itself a significant development, as mammals rarely reproduce by parthenogenesis; in addition, this would make Hwang's lab the first ever to successfully generate human stem cells via parthenogenesis, predating other research facilities' successes). Although Hwang's team didn't rule out the possibility of parthenogenetic process in the paper, the panel said, his team didn't make any conscientious effort to probe the possibility through the tests available.
|
||||
Chung Myunghee, the head of the panel, said at a news conference that the panel was not in a position to investigate Hwang's claim of his stem cells having been switched with MizMedi's, but added that such a claim was incomprehensible when there were no data to prove any of the stem cells were ever made to begin with.
|
||||
However, the panel confirmed that Hwang's team had actually succeeded in cloning a dog they named Snuppy, as results from analyses of 27 markers that allowed distinguishing amongst extremely-inbred animals and of mitochondrial DNA sequencing indicated that Snuppy was a somatic cell clone of Tie (the dog who gave the somatic cells required for Snuppy, which were then inserted into the eggs of surrogate mothers whose nuclei had been removed), making Snuppy the first ever dog to be cloned.
|
||||
The panel, in conclusion, stated that Hwang's team intentionally fabricated the data in both the 2004 and the 2005 papers, as described by Myung Hee Chung (Head of Seoul National University's investigation) and that it was an act of "deception of the scientific community and the public at large".
|
||||
|
||||
=== Resignation and the official dismissal ===
|
||||
On December 23, 2005, Hwang apologized for "creating a shock and a disappointment" and announced that he was resigning his position as professor at the university. However, Hwang maintained that patient-matched stem cell technology remained in South Korea, and his countrymen would see it.
|
||||
Seoul National University said Hwang's resignation request would not be accepted, citing a university regulation that dictates that an employee under investigation may not resign from a post, thus avoiding full retribution and possibly dismissal if found at fault, while benefiting from an honorable voluntary resignation.
|
||||
On February 9, 2006, the university suspended Hwang's position as a professor, together with six other faculty members who participated in Hwang's team; Hwang was dismissed on March 20, 2006.
|
||||
19
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-suk-6.md
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Hwang Woo-suk"
|
||||
chunk: 7/9
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-suk"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:17.477711+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Indictment of Hwang and collaborators ===
|
||||
On May 12, 2006, Hwang was indicted on charges of embezzlement and breach of the country's bioethics law, without physical detention. Prosecutors also brought fraud charges against the three stem cell researchers. He embezzled 2.8 billion won (US$3 million) out of some 40 billion won in research funds, for personal purposes and the illegal purchase of ova used in his experiments.
|
||||
The prosecution also said Hwang's three associates involved in his stem cell research, Yoon Hyun-soo, Lee Byeong-chun and Kang Sung-keun, also misappropriated tens of millions of won in research money. Investigators have been tracking 24.6 billion won to find out how the research money was spent. It was part of Hwang's 36.9 billion won research funds raised through state support and private donations. Investigators said Hwang used bank accounts held by relatives and subordinates in 2002 and 2003 to receive about 475 million won from private organizations. He allegedly laundered the money by withdrawing it all in cash, breaking it up into smaller amounts and putting it back in various bank accounts. Hwang also withdrew 140 million won in August 2001 to buy gifts for his sponsors, including politicians and other prominent social figures, before Chusok holidays, according to prosecutors. He also allegedly misappropriated around 26 million won in research funds in September 2004 to buy a car for his wife. Hwang is suspected of embezzling 600 million won, provided by a private foundation, on multiple occasions from 2001 to 2005 for personal use. Prosecutors are also accusing him of illegally paying some 38 million won to 25 women who provided ova for his research through Hanna Women's Clinic in the first eight months of 2005. They also said Hwang gave several dozen politicians about 55 million won in political funds on numerous occasions from 2001 to 2005. He allegedly provided 14 million won to executives of large companies that provided financial support for his research. The prosecution added Hwang wired about 200 million won to a Korean American, identified only as Kang, in September 2005 and received the equivalent amount in U.S. currency from him when the scientist visited the United States two months later. Also in 2005, Hwang received one billion won each in research funds from SK Group and the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation based on his fabricated stem cell research results. Meanwhile, investigators said Lee Byeong-chun and Kang Sung-keun, both professors of veterinary science at Seoul National University, embezzled about 300 million won and 100 million won each in state funds by inflating research-related expenses. Yoon Hyun-soo, a biology professor at Hanyang University, also embezzled 58 million won from the research fund managed by MizMedi Hospital.
|
||||
|
||||
== Parthenogenesis ==
|
||||
On August 2, 2007, after much independent investigation, it was revealed that Hwang's team succeeded in extracting cells from eggs that had undergone parthenogenesis. Hwang claimed he and his team had extracted stem cells from cloned human embryos. However, further examination of the cells' chromosomes shows the same indicators of parthenogenesis in those extracted stem cells as are found in the mice created by Tokyo scientists in 2004. Although Hwang deceived the world about being the first to create artificially cloned human embryos, he did contribute a major breakthrough to the field of stem cell research. The process may offer a way for creating stem cells that are genetically matched to a particular woman for the treatment of degenerative diseases.
|
||||
The news of the breakthrough came just a month after an announcement from the International Stem Cell Corporation (ISC), a California-based stem cell research company, that they had successfully created the first human embryos through parthenogenesis. Although the actual results of Hwang's work were just published, those embryos were created by him and his team before February 2004, when the fabricated cloning results were announced, which would make them the first to successfully perform the process. Jeffrey Janus, president and director of research for ISC, agrees that "Dr. Hwang's cells have characteristics found in parthenogenetic cells" but remains cautious, saying "it needs more study."
|
||||
|
||||
== Responses ==
|
||||
30
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-suk-7.md
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data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-suk-7.md
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Hwang Woo-suk"
|
||||
chunk: 8/9
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-suk"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:17.477711+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Government involvement ===
|
||||
After having acquired a celebrity status in South Korea, Hwang actively sought to establish every possible tie to political and economic institutions in the country. Hwang especially tried to win favor from the Roh Moo-hyun government, which in turn was suffering from a lack of popular support and wanted to demonstrate its competency by creating and promoting an exemplary policy success.
|
||||
Hwang approached Park Ki-young, a former biology professor, then appointed as the Information, Science and Technology Advisor for the President, and put her as one of the co-authors in his 2004 Science paper. Ties with Park yielded a favorable environment for Hwang in the government, as a non-official group consisting of high-ranking government officials was created to support Hwang's research that includes not only Hwang and Park, but also Kim Byung-joon, Chief National Policy Secretary, and Jin Dae-je, Information and Communications Minister. The group was dubbed as "Hwang-kum-pak-chui", a loose acronym made from member's family names, which means "golden bat" in Korean.
|
||||
After Hwang's paper was published in Science in 2005, support for Hwang came in full swing. In June 2005, the Ministry of Science and Technology selected Hwang as the first recipient of the title Supreme Scientist, an honor worth US$15 million. Hwang, having already claimed the title of POSCO Chair Professor worth US$1.5 million, secured more than US$27 million worth of support in that year.
|
||||
President Roh had been acquainted with Hwang since 2003, and made a number of comments intended to protect him from potential bioethical issues. On June 18, 2004, Roh awarded Hwang a medal and said, "it is not possible nor desirable to prohibit research, just because there are concerns that it may lead to a direction that is deemed unethical." In another instance at the opening of World Stem Cell Hub on October 19, 2005, Roh remarked, "politicians have a responsibility to manage bioethical controversies, not to get in the way of this outstanding research and progress."
|
||||
On December 5, 2005, after PD Su-cheop stirred a national controversy, Cheong Wa Dae reaffirmed its unflinching support for Hwang and his research team. Roh said, "We'll continue to support Professor Hwang. We hope he will return to his research lab soon for the sake of people with physical difficulties and the public", according to presidential spokesman Kim Man-soo.
|
||||
While implying the controversies over MBC-TV's forceful methods used to gather information from Hwang's former junior staff members, Roh said, "The disputes will be resolved gradually and naturally through following scientific research and study. We hope the ongoing disputes over Hwang's achievement will be settled without further trouble."
|
||||
It was alleged that advisor Park Ki-young deliberately avoided to report Roh about details of Hwang's allegation for misconduct, while emphasizing a breach of journalist ethics by MBC. Park, after weeks of silence for her role in the controversy, announced her intent to resign from the advisor post on January 10, 2006.
|
||||
On January 11, 2006, the national post office stopped selling post stamps commemorating Hwang's research. The title of Supreme Scientist awarded to Hwang was revoked on March 21, 2006, after Hwang was dismissed from Seoul National University the day before.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Supporting lawmakers group ===
|
||||
On December 6, 2005, a group of 43 lawmakers from the ruling and opposition parties inaugurated a body to support Hwang Woo-suk. Members of the group, dubbed the "lawmakers' group supporting Professor Hwang Woo-suk", pledged to help Hwang continue his experiments in pursuit of a scientific breakthrough.
|
||||
"There are many lawmakers who, regardless of party affiliation, want to support Hwang. We will join forces to help Hwang devote himself to his studies", Rep. Kwon Sun-taik of the ruling Uri Party said in a news conference at the National Assembly, who was also the leader of the group.
|
||||
He said the group would seek to establish bioethics guidelines and come up with supporting measures for biotechnology researchers in the country. Among those who had joined the group were Reps. Kim Hyuk-kyu, Kim Young-choon and Kim Sung-gon of the ruling party, Kim Hyong-o of the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) and Kim Hak-won, chairman of the United Liberal Democrats.
|
||||
Some female lawmakers participated in a civic group for voluntary egg donations for therapeutic research, which opened in November 2005 following the egg procurement scandal.
|
||||
Reps. Song Young-sun and Chin Soo-hee of the GNP said they would provide their eggs to Hwang's research team. Meanwhile, the ruling and opposition parties called on the Korean Broadcasting Commission to thoroughly investigate the staffers of MBC's PD Note, which broadcast a documentary program critical of Hwang with coercive tactics in interviews, and reprimand them.
|
||||
After most of Hwang's claims were confirmed to be false on January 10, 2006, some lawmakers revealed that Hwang had made several campaign donations to them and other lawmakers.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Resumption of PD Note ===
|
||||
The MBC investigative journalism show PD Note (Korean: PD수첩) returned on air on January 3, 2006, and summarized the course of Hwang's scandal to date. The show had been cancelled under pressure after it broadcast its show on November 22 that accused Hwang of oddities in his research. The last show in 2005, aired on November 29, covered other topics. It remained off the air for five weeks. The second show in 2006, on January 10, dealt further with the Hwang affair, focusing on several instances of Hwang's media spinning tactics. It also covered the unwillingness on the part of a significant part of the public in South Korea to believe that someone who had almost achieved a status of a national hero committed such a shame.
|
||||
43
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-suk-8.md
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43
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Hwang Woo-suk"
|
||||
chunk: 9/9
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-suk"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:17.477711+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Rallies supporting Hwang ===
|
||||
The same day many South Korean citizens rallied outside Hwang's laboratory; as more than 1,000 women pledged to donate their eggs for the scientist's research. [ ... ] Hwang has been in seclusion since apologizing in November 2005, for ethical lapses in human egg procurement for his research. The symbolic event was as a gesture from Hwang's supporters that says they intend to donate their eggs with 1,000 of their members after they took egg-donation pledges online via their website. "Dr. Hwang will not be able to return to the lab, at least, until at the end of this week because he is extremely exhausted, mentally and physically", a key team member, Ahn Cu Rie, wrote in an e-mail to Reuters. [ ... ] At Hwang's lab at Seoul National University, women left bouquets of the national flower, a hibiscus called the Rose of Sharon, for the scientist along with notes of encouragement.
|
||||
The stem cell research center that Hwang led before resigning said it hoped he would return, even though his lapses could hurt its efforts to work with other research institutions.
|
||||
"So far more than 700 South Korean women have pledged to donate their eggs and the number is steadily rising", said Lee Sun-min, an official at a private foundation launched last week to promote egg donations. [ ... ] Thousands of patients have applied to participate in the research, hoping the technology could help treat damaged spinal cords or diseases such as Parkinson's. On Tuesday, an official at the lab said it was hoped that Hwang would return.
|
||||
"We're waiting for Hwang to assume the leadership after some rest", Seong Myong-hoon told a news conference. But Seong said the controversy could hurt the lab. That conclusion was reached after one of Hwang's close research partners, Ahn Cu-rie, returned Tuesday after a 10-day trip to meet with scientists in the United States and Japan, Seong said.
|
||||
"The reaction of foreign scientists was that they understand what Dr. Hwang disclosed, but they cannot accept that without criticism", Seong said. "We can never be optimistic about cooperation with foreign institutions."
|
||||
Seong added: "Researchers of our country were newly awakened to the fact that we have to take every precaution to ensure we don't fall behind international ethics (guidelines) while researching."
|
||||
"The only hope for us is Dr. Hwang. Don't trample on our one shred of hope", a woman whose son suffers from a severe kidney ailment told South Korean broadcaster YTN at the university. The woman also pledged to sell her eggs to Hwang.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Online ova donations ===
|
||||
A website backed by Hwang's supporters began taking egg-donation pledges online since late November 2005 after Hwang resigned all his official posts at World Stem Cell Hub. The details of South Korean women were then passed on to private foundation that claimed to be working with Hwang's research team. An official for the foundation claimed they had received over 700 egg donation pledges.
|
||||
Banners like "Please come back, Doctor Hwang. I'm already dying to see you, Professor Hwang", were put up on the home page of the fan site. The site also carried a photo of Hwang and his cloned dog, Snuppy, trimmed with images of the rose of Sharon, South Korea's national flower, in an apparent appeal for patriotism. The national anthem played as background music.
|
||||
Those who applied to donate ova included people with incurable illnesses and their family members, who hoped that Hwang's research would eventually lead to cures, and young, healthy women.
|
||||
Egg donation offers were also made through organisations with no ties to Hwang, with one organisation dedicated to scientific research claiming the amount of volunteers they had received had sharply increased Hwang's resignation.
|
||||
|
||||
== Documentary ==
|
||||
In June 2023, Netflix released a documentary film, King of Clones which covered Hwang Woo-suk and the Hwang affair.
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
List of geneticists and biochemists
|
||||
Scientific misconduct, including a list of science scandals.
|
||||
Schön scandal
|
||||
Haruko Obokata
|
||||
List of scientific misconduct incidents
|
||||
Whistle Blower (film)
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
|
||||
Final report published by Seoul National University Investigation Committee (in Korean)
|
||||
English summary of the SNU final report
|
||||
Gottweis, Herbert; Triendl, Robert (February 2006). "South Korean policy failure and the Hwang debacle". Nature Biotechnology. 24 (2): 141–143. doi:10.1038/nbt0206-141. PMID 16465151.
|
||||
43
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_William_Heslop-Harrison-0.md
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43
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "John William Heslop-Harrison"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_William_Heslop-Harrison"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:12.446334+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
John William Heslop Harrison, (1881–1967) was a professor of Botany at Kings College, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, specialising in the genetics of moths. He is now best remembered for a widely recognised academic fraud.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Early life and education ==
|
||||
He was born in Birtley on 22 January 1881, the son of George Heslop-Harrison, a pattern-maker at Birtley Iron Works. He was educated at Bede College School in Durham then Rutherford School for Boys in Newcastle upon Tyne. His mother was a keen gardener, and other influences such as his uncle, Rev J E Hull, and neighbour, Charles Robson, led him to an early interest in botany and natural history.
|
||||
He then studied at Durham College of Science, where he obtained a BSc degree in 1903. He did further postgraduate study at the University of Newcastle, gaining an MSc degree in 1916 and a DSc in 1917.
|
||||
In 1921 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE). His proposers were James Hartley Ashworth, Sir Thomas Hudson Beare, Percy Hall Grimshaw, and James Ritchie. He served as the Society's Vice-President 1945–1948. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1928.
|
||||
He died in Birtley, Tyne and Wear on 23 January 1967.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Career ==
|
||||
From 1903 to 1905 he was a schoolmaster in Gateshead and then until 1917 in Middlesbrough.
|
||||
In 1917 he began lecturing in Genetics and Botany at the University of Newcastle being given a professorship in 1927. He remained in this role until retiring in 1946.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
=== Rùm ===
|
||||
In 1948 he was determined by John Raven, a University of Cambridge classics tutor, to have made false claims to have discovered certain plant species on the island of Rùm on the west coast of Scotland. Whether or not such grasses were on Rùm is pivotal to a theory that the islands escaped the last ice age. The fraud claim is described – and its veracity supported – in Karl Sabbagh's 1999 book, A Rum Affair. In 2008 further proof about the forgeries committed by Heslop-Harrison emerged.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
=== Lamarckian experiments ===
|
||||
Heslop Harrison was described as a loner who avoided as much contact as possible with other professionals and conducted most of his experiments at his home in Birtley, Tyne and Wear. He was a supporter of Lamarckian evolution from his experiments with moths and sawflies. According to researcher Michael A. Salmon "Heslop Harrison claimed to have experimental proof that physical changes in the life of an individual moth or sawfly could be passed on to its progeny, according to the theory of Lamarck... For example, Heslop Harrison thought that melanism resulted from the effect of pollution on individual moths which somehow altered their genes. When others attempted to repeat his experiment, however, they always seemed to come up with different results."
|
||||
In the 1920s, Heslop Harrison conducted experiments on the peppered moth, claiming to have evidence for the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Other scientists failed to replicate his results. His experiments were criticised by J. B. S. Haldane.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Family ==
|
||||
In 1906 he married Christian Watson Henderson. Their eldest son was George Heslop-Harrison FRSE who also came to fame as an entomologist.
|
||||
Heslop Harrison's fourth son was Jack Heslop-Harrison who became director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in 1970. His daughter Helena married the botanist William Andrew Clark.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Botanical Reference ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Journal for Geoclimatic Studies"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_for_Geoclimatic_Studies"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:18.674179+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The Journal for Geoclimatic Studies is the name given to a nonexistent journal which published a fabricated global warming study in November 2007 entitled, "Carbon dioxide production by benthic bacteria: the death of manmade global warming theory?" The published study identified the Journal for Geoclimatic Studies as an official publication of Okinawa University's Institute for Geoclimatic Studies (The Institute for Geoclimatic Studies is also fraudulent and does not exist). The spurious study, ostensibly authored by Daniel Klein and Mandeep J. Gupta of the University of Arizona's Department of Climatology, and Philip Cooper and Arne FR Jansson at the University of Gothenburg's Department of Atmospheric Physics, claimed that global warming was not human caused, but the work of carbon-dioxide emitting bacteria based on the ocean floor.
|
||||
The report was circulated by a number of global warming deniers before discovery that the study authors and university departments identified in the publication did not exist. The website where the study was published was taken down once the deception was revealed, and its ownership was traced to David Thorpe, a science journalist and web designer based in the United Kingdom. The true author of the article is purportedly a man identifying himself as Mark Cox, who has claimed the hoax was designed to expose the gullibility and scientific illiteracy of global warming deniers.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
"Phony Scoop on CO2", Science, Volume, vol. 318, no. 5853, American Association for the Advancement of Science, p. 1045, November 16, 2007, doi:10.1126/science.318.5853.1045c, S2CID 220099811
|
||||
Hoax bacteria study tricks climate skeptics, Reuters, November 8, 2007, archived from the original on November 13, 2007, retrieved 2007-12-29
|
||||
37
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_Runestone-0.md
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37
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_Runestone-0.md
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@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Kensington Runestone"
|
||||
chunk: 1/3
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_Runestone"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:19.883519+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The Kensington Runestone is a slab of greywacke stone covered in runes that was discovered in Western Minnesota, United States, in 1898. Olof Ohman, a Swedish immigrant, reported that he unearthed it from a field in the largely rural township of Solem in Douglas County. It was later named after the nearest settlement, Kensington.
|
||||
The inscription purports to be a record left behind by Scandinavian explorers in the 14th century (internally dated to 1362). There has been a drawn-out debate regarding the stone's authenticity, but since the first scientific examination in 1910, the scholarly consensus has classified it as a 19th-century hoax, with some critics directly charging Ohman with fabrication. Nevertheless, there remains a community convinced of the stone's authenticity.
|
||||
|
||||
== Provenance ==
|
||||
A Swedish immigrant, Olof Ohman, said that he found the stone late in 1898 while clearing his recently acquired land of trees and stumps before plowing. The stone was said to be near the crest of a small knoll rising above the wetlands, lying face down and tangled in the root system of a stunted poplar tree estimated to be from less than 10 to about 40 years old. The artifact is about 30 × 16 × 6 inches (76 × 41 × 15 cm) in size and weighs 202 pounds (92 kg). Ohman's 10-year-old son Edward noticed some markings, and the farmer later said that he thought they had found an "Indian almanac".
|
||||
During this period, the journey of Leif Ericson to Vinland (North America) was being widely discussed and there was renewed interest in the Vikings throughout Scandinavia, stirred by the National Romanticism movement. Five years earlier, Norway had participated in the World's Columbian Exposition by sending the Viking, a replica of the Gokstad ship, to Chicago. There was also friction between Sweden and Norway (which ultimately led to Norway's independence from Sweden in 1905). Some Norwegians claimed that the stone was a Swedish hoax, and there were similar Swedish accusations because the stone references a joint expedition of Norwegians and Swedes. It is thought to be more than coincidental that the stone was found among Scandinavian newcomers in Minnesota, still struggling for acceptance and quite proud of their Nordic heritage.
|
||||
A copy of the inscription made its way to the University of Minnesota. Olaus J. Breda (1853–1916), professor of Scandinavian Languages and Literature in the Scandinavian Department, declared the stone to be a forgery and published a discrediting article which appeared in Symra in 1910. Breda also forwarded copies of the inscription to fellow linguists and historians in Scandinavia, such as Oluf Rygh, Sophus Bugge, Gustav Storm, Magnus Olsen and Adolf Noreen. They "unanimously pronounced the Kensington inscription a fraud and forgery of recent date".
|
||||
The stone was then sent to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Scholars either dismissed it as a prank or felt unable to identify a sustainable historical context, and the stone was returned to Ohman. Hjalmar Holand, a Norwegian-American historian and author, claimed Ohman gave him the stone. However, the Minnesota Historical Society has a bill of sale showing Ohman sold them the stone for $10 in 1911. Holand renewed public interest with an article enthusiastically summarizing studies that were made by geologist Newton Horace Winchell (Minnesota Historical Society) and linguist George T. Flom (Philological Society of the University of Illinois), who both published opinions in 1910.
|
||||
According to Winchell, the tree under which the stone was found had been destroyed before 1910. Several nearby poplars that witnesses estimated as being about the same size were cut down and, by counting their rings, it was determined they were around 30 to 40 years old. One member of the team who had excavated at the find site in 1899, county school superintendent Cleve Van Dyke, later recalled the trees being only 10 or 12 years old. The surrounding county had not been settled until 1858, and settlement was severely restricted for a time by the Dakota War of 1862 (although it was reported that, by 1867, the best land in the township adjacent to Solem, Holmes City, was already taken by a mixture of Swedish, Norwegian and "Yankee" settlers).
|
||||
Winchell estimated that the inscription was roughly 500 years old, by comparing its weathering with the weathering on the backside, which he assumed was glacial and 8,000 years old. He also stated that the chisel marks were fresh. More recently geologist Harold Edwards has also noted that "The inscription is about as sharp as the day it was carved ... The letters are smooth showing virtually no weathering." Winchell also mentions in the same report that Prof. William O. Hotchkiss, the state geologist of Wisconsin, estimated that the runes were at least 50 to 100 years old. Meanwhile, Flom found a strong apparent divergence between the runes used in the Kensington inscription and those in use during the 14th century. Similarly, the language of the inscription was modern compared to the Nordic languages of the 14th century.
|
||||
The Kensington Runestone is on display at the Runestone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota.
|
||||
|
||||
== Text and translation ==
|
||||
|
||||
The text consists of nine lines on the face of the stone, and three lines on the edge, read as follows:
|
||||
Front:
|
||||
|
||||
8 : göter : ok : 22 : norrmen : po :
|
||||
...o : opdagelsefärd : fro :
|
||||
vinland : of : vest : vi :
|
||||
hade : läger : ved : 2 : skjär : en :
|
||||
dags : rise : norr : fro : deno : sten :
|
||||
vi : var : ok : fiske : en : dagh : äptir :
|
||||
vi : kom : hem : fan : 10 : man : röde :
|
||||
af : blod : og : ded : AVM :
|
||||
frälse : äf : illü.
|
||||
Side:
|
||||
46
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_Runestone-1.md
Normal file
46
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_Runestone-1.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Kensington Runestone"
|
||||
chunk: 2/3
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_Runestone"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:19.883519+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
här : (10) : mans : ve : havet : at : se :
|
||||
äptir : vore : skip : 14 : dagh : rise :
|
||||
from : deno : öh : ahr : 1362 :
|
||||
The sequences rr, ll and gh represent actual digraphs. The AVM is written in Latin capitals.
|
||||
The numbers given in Arabic numerals in the above transcription are given in pentadic numerals.
|
||||
At least seven of the runes, including those transcribed a, d, v, j, ä, ö above, are not in any standard known from the medieval period (see below for details).
|
||||
The language of the inscription is close to modern Swedish, the transliterated text being quite easily comprehensible to any speaker of a modern Scandinavian language. The language, being closer to the Swedish of the 19th than of the 14th century, is one of the main reasons for the scholarly consensus dismissing it as a hoax.
|
||||
The text translates to:
|
||||
"Eight Geats and twenty-two Norwegians on an exploration journey from Vinland to the west. We had camp by two skerries one day's journey north from this stone. We were [out] to fish one day. After we came home [we] found ten men red of blood and dead. AVM (Ave Virgo Maria) save [us] from evil."
|
||||
"[We] have ten men by the sea to look after our ships, fourteen days' travel from this island. [In the] year 1362."
|
||||
|
||||
== Linguistic analysis ==
|
||||
Holand took the stone to Europe and, while newspapers in Minnesota carried articles hotly debating its authenticity, the stone was quickly dismissed by Swedish linguists.
|
||||
For the next 40 years, Holand struggled to sway public and scholarly opinion about the Runestone, writing articles and several books. He achieved brief success in 1949, when the stone was put on display at the Smithsonian Institution, and scholars such as William Thalbitzer and S. N. Hagen published papers supporting its authenticity.
|
||||
At nearly the same time, Scandinavian linguists Sven Jansson, Erik Moltke, Harry Andersen and K. M. Nielsen, along with a popular book by Erik Wahlgren, again questioned the Runestone's authenticity.
|
||||
Along with Wahlgren, historian Theodore C. Blegen flatly asserted that Ohman had carved the artifact as a prank, possibly with help from others in the Kensington area. Further resolution seemed to come with the 1976 published transcript of an interview of Frank Walter Gran, conducted by Paul Carson, Jr. on August 13, 1967, that had been recorded on audio tape. In it, Gran said that his father John confessed in 1927 that Ohman made the inscription. John Gran's story, however, was based on second-hand anecdotes that he had heard about Ohman, and, although it was presented as a dying declaration, Gran lived for several more years, saying nothing more about the stone.
|
||||
The possibility that the Runestone was an authentic 14th-century artifact was raised again, in 1982, by Robert Hall, an emeritus professor of the Italian language and Italian literature at Cornell University, who published a book (and a follow-up in 1994) questioning the methods of its critics. Hall asserted that the odd philological problems in the Runestone could be the result of normal dialectal variances in Old Swedish of the period. He contended that critics had not considered the physical evidence, which he found leaned heavily toward authenticity. Hall was not a runologist; his errors in reading the runes have been described by two runologists, James E. Knirk and R. I. Page.
|
||||
In The Vikings and America (1986), Wahlgren again stated that the text bore linguistic abnormalities and spellings that he thought suggested that the Runestone was a forgery.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Lexical evidence ===
|
||||
One of the main linguistic arguments for the rejection of the text as genuine Old Swedish is the term
|
||||
opthagelse farth (updagelsefard) 'journey of discovery'.
|
||||
This lexeme is unattested in either Scandinavian, Low Franconian or Low German before the 16th century.
|
||||
Similar terms exist in modern Scandinavian (Norwegian oppdagingsferd or oppdagelsesferd, Swedish upptäcktsfärd).
|
||||
Opdage is a loan from Low German *updagen, Dutch opdagen, which is in turn from High German aufdecken, ultimately loan-translated from French découvrir 'to discover' in the 16th century.
|
||||
The Norwegian historian Gustav Storm often used the modern Norwegian lexeme in late 19th-century articles on Viking exploration, creating a plausible incentive for the manufacturer of the inscription to use this word.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Grammatical evidence ===
|
||||
Another characteristic pointed out by skeptics is the text's lack of cases.
|
||||
Early Old Swedish (14th century) still retained the four cases of Old Norse, but Late Old Swedish (15th century) reduced its case structure to two cases, so that the absence of inflection in a Swedish text of the 14th century would be an irregularity.
|
||||
Similarly, the inscription text does not use the plural verb forms that were common in the 14th century and have only recently disappeared: for example, (plural forms in parentheses) wi war (warum), hathe (hafðe), [wi] fiske (fiskaðum), kom (komum), fann (funnum) and wi hathe (hafðum).
|
||||
Proponents of the stone's authenticity pointed to sporadic examples of these simpler forms in some 14th-century texts and to the great changes of the morphological system of the Scandinavian languages that began during the latter part of that century.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Paleographic evidence ===
|
||||
The inscription contains pentadic numerals. Such numerals are known in Scandinavia, but nearly always from relatively recent times, not from verified medieval runic monuments, on which numbers were usually spelled out as words.
|
||||
S. N. Hagen stated "The Kensington alphabet is a synthesis of older unsimplified runes, later dotted runes, and a number of Latin letters ... The runes for a, n, s and t are the old Danish unsimplified forms which should have been out of use for a long time [by the 14th century] ... I suggest that [a posited 14th century] creator must at some time or other in his life have been familiar with an inscription (or inscriptions) composed at a time when these unsimplified forms were still in use" and that he "was not a professional runic scribe before he left his homeland".
|
||||
54
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_Runestone-2.md
Normal file
54
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_Runestone-2.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Kensington Runestone"
|
||||
chunk: 3/3
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_Runestone"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:19.883519+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
A possible origin for the irregular shape of the runes was discovered in 2004, in the 1883 notes of a then-16-year-old journeyman tailor with an interest in folk music, Edward Larsson. Larsson's aunt had migrated with her husband and son from Sweden to Crooked Lake, just outside Alexandria, Minnesota in 1870.
|
||||
Larsson's sheet lists two different Futharks. The first Futhark consists of 22 runes, the last two of which are bind-runes, representing the letter-combinations EL and MW. His second Futhark consists of 27 runes, where the last three are specially adapted to represent the letters å, ä, and ö of the modern Swedish alphabet. The runes in this second set correspond closely to the non-standard runes in the Kensington inscription.
|
||||
Another possible origin was discovered in 2019, when two short inscriptions with runes closely resembling the ones on the Kensington stone, dated 1870 and 1877 respectively, were discovered in a farm-hand's room in the village Kölsjön in the parish of Hassela, not too far from Olof Öhman's home parish Forsa. In 2020, Swedish archaeologist Mats G. Larsson discovered that Anna Ersson, cousin and childhood friend of Olof Öhman, lived in Kölsjön during 1878. Their relationship seems to have been close, as Öhman asked Ersson to marry him in 1879. More runic inscriptions were later discovered in the area around Kölsjön, and Larsson furthermore established that Öhman had relatives who owned land in Kölsjön, further increasing the proximity between Öhman and the runic inscriptions of 1870s Sweden.
|
||||
The abbreviation for Ave Maria consists of the Latin letters AVM.
|
||||
Wahlgren (1958) noted that the carver had incised a notch on the upper right-hand corner of the letter V. The Massey Twins in their 2004 paper argued that this notch is consistent with a scribal abbreviation for a final -e used in the 14th century.
|
||||
|
||||
== Purported historical context ==
|
||||
|
||||
Norse colonies are known to have existed in Greenland from the late 10th century to the 15th century, and at least one short-lived settlement was established in Newfoundland, at L'Anse aux Meadows, in the 11th century, but no other widely accepted material evidence of Norse contact with the Americas in the pre-Columbian era has yet emerged.
|
||||
In a letter by Gerardus Mercator to John Dee, dated 1577, Mercator refers to a Jacob Cnoyen, who had learned that eight men returned to Norway from an expedition to the Arctic islands in 1364. One of the men, a priest, provided the King of Norway with a great deal of geographical information.
|
||||
Furthermore, in 1354, King Magnus Eriksson of Sweden and Norway issued a letter appointing a law officer named Paul Knutsson as leader of an expedition to the colony of Greenland, in order to investigate reports that the population was turning away from Christian culture. Another of the documents reprinted by the 19th-century scholars was a scholarly attempt by Icelandic Bishop Gisli Oddsson, in 1637, to compile a history of the Arctic colonies. He dated the Greenlanders' fall away from Christianity to 1342 and claimed that they had turned instead to America. Supporters of a 14th-century origin for the Kensington Runestone argue that Knutson may, therefore, have travelled beyond Greenland to North America in search of renegade Greenlanders, whereupon most of his expedition was killed in Minnesota, leaving just the eight voyagers to return to Norway.
|
||||
However, there is no evidence that the Knutson expedition ever set sail (the government of Norway went through considerable turmoil in 1355) and the information from Cnoyen as relayed by Mercator states specifically that the eight men who came to Norway in 1364 were not survivors of a recent expedition, but descended from the colonists who had settled the distant lands several generations earlier. Those early 19th-century books, which aroused a great deal of interest among Scandinavian Americans, would have been available to a late 19th-century hoaxer.
|
||||
Hjalmar Holand adduced the "blond" Indians among the Mandan on the Upper Missouri River as possible descendants of the Swedish and Norwegian explorers. This was dismissed as "tangential" to the Runestone issue by Alice Beck Kehoe in her 2004 book The Kensington Runestone, Approaching a Research Question Holistically.
|
||||
|
||||
== In popular culture ==
|
||||
Peter Stormare delved into the history and mystery of the Kensington Runestone in a TV series titled Secrets of the Viking Stone which aired on the Science channel.
|
||||
In May 2022, the St. Paul–based History Theatre premiered Runestone! A Rock Musical. The show, written by Mark Jensen and composed by Gary Rue, explores the impact of the runestone on Öhman and his family, but leaves the veracity of the carving up to the audience to judge.
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
AVM Runestone, a hoax planted near the site of the Kensington runestone
|
||||
Elbow Lake Runestone, a hoax planted in Minnesota
|
||||
Beardmore Relics, Viking Age relics, supposedly found in Canada, associated with the Kensington runestone
|
||||
Vérendrye Runestone, allegedly found west of the Great Lakes in the 1730s
|
||||
Heavener Runestone, a runestone found in Oklahoma
|
||||
Narragansett Runestone, marked stone visible during low tide in Rhode Island
|
||||
Spirit Pond runestones, several small runestones found in Maine
|
||||
Maine penny, a Norse coin that was found in Maine
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
== Literature ==
|
||||
Thalbitzer, William C. (1951). Two runic stones, from Greenland and Minnesota. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. OCLC 2585531.
|
||||
Hall, Robert A. Jr. (1982). The Kensington Rune-stone is Genuine: Linguistic, practical, methodological considerations. Columbia, SC: Hornbeam Press. ISBN 0-917496-21-3.
|
||||
Kehoe, Alice Beck (2005). The Kensington Runestone: Approaching a Research Question Holistically. Waveland Press. ISBN 1-57766-371-3.
|
||||
"Kensingtonstenens gåta – The riddle of the Kensington runestone" (PDF). Historiska Nyheter (in Swedish and English) (Specialnummer om Kensingtonstenen). Stockholm: Statens historiska museum: 16 pages. 2003. ISSN 0280-4115. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 17, 2009. Retrieved December 19, 2008.
|
||||
Anderson, Rasmus B (1920). "Another View of the Kensington Rune Stone". Wisconsin Magazine of History. 3: 1–9. Retrieved March 31, 2011.
|
||||
Flom, George T (1910). "The Kensington Rune-Stone: A modern inscription from Douglas County, Minnesota". Publications of the Illinois State Historical Library. 15. Illinois State Historical Society: 3–44. Retrieved March 31, 2011.
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
|
||||
Kensington Runestone Park in Solem Township, Douglas County, Minnesota
|
||||
Runestone Museum which houses the stone in Alexandria, Minnesota
|
||||
Decoding the Kensington Runestone
|
||||
360 View of Rune Stone Zoom into and view the stone just like you were at the museum.
|
||||
39
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legrand_G._Capers-0.md
Normal file
39
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legrand_G._Capers-0.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Legrand G. Capers"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legrand_G._Capers"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:48.954197+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Legrand G. Capers (April 16, 1834 – December 2, 1877) was an American physician, best known for his 1874 spurious case report of bullet-mediated impregnation of a young woman.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Biography ==
|
||||
Legrand Guerry Capers, Jr. was born on April 16, 1834, in Charleston, South Carolina, as the son of the merchant LeGrand G. Capers (1808–1868) and his first wife, Abigail Swift (1810–1846). LeGrand G. Capers, Sr. served on Gen. Worth's staff during the Mexican–American War.
|
||||
LeGrand G. Capers, Jr. studied medicine as the assistant to his brother-in-law, Ebenezer Swift, and graduated from Jefferson Medical College. Later he practised as ship physician on Vanderbilt's steamers.
|
||||
When the American Civil War broke out, Capers participated in the foundation of the Confederate Medical Department in Alabama. On July 19, 1861, he became assistant surgeon in the 4th Georgia Volunteer Infantry. On October 30, 1863, he was promoted to chief surgeon in Cutshaw's battalion.
|
||||
After the end of the war in 1865, Capers moved to New Orleans and became demonstrator of anatomy in the New Orleans School of Medicine. He fell ill in October 1877 and died shortly after from tuberculosis on December 2. He is buried in Vicksburg. Obituaries appeared in the Transactions of the Mississippi State Medical Association and American Medical Weekly.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== "Bullet pregnancy" ==
|
||||
The infamous case of "bullet pregnancy" was published in 1874 in The American Medical Weekly. Capers claimed that he witnessed this case eleven years before, while serving in the Confederate army:
|
||||
|
||||
On the 12th day of May, 1863, the battle of R. was fought. [...] Our men were fighting nobly, but pressed by superior numbers, had gradually fallen back to within one hundred and fifty yards of the house. My position being near my regiment, suddenly I beheld a noble, gallant young friend staggering closer, and then fall to the earth. In the same moment a piercing scream from the house reached my ear! I was soon by the side of the young man, and, upon examination, found a compound fracture, with extensive comminution of the left tibia; the ball having ricochetted from these parts, and, in its onward flight, passed through the scrotum, carrying away the left testicle. Scarcely had I finished dressing the wounds of this poor fellow, when the estimable matron came running to me in the greatest distress, begging me to go to one of her daughters, who, she informed me, had been badly wounded a few minutes before. Hastening to the house, I found that the eldest of the young ladies had indeed received a most serious wound. A minnie ball had penetrated the left abdominal parietes, about midway between the umbilicus and anterior spinal process of the ilium, and was lost in the abdominal cavity, leaving a ragged wound behind. Believing there was little or no hope of her recovery, I had only time to prescribe an anodyne, when our army fell back, leaving both field and village in the hands of the enemy. [...] About six months after her recovery, the movements of our army brought me again to the village of R., and I was again sent for to see the young lady. She appeared in excellent health and spirits, but her abdomen had become enormously enlarged, so much so as to resemble pregnancy at the seventh or eighth month. Indeed, had I not known the family and the facts of the abdominal wound, I should have so pronounced the case. Under the above circumstances, I failed to give a positive diagnosis, determining to keep the case under surveillance. [...] Just two hundred and seventy-eight days from the date of the receipt of the wound by the minnie ball, I delivered this same young lady of a fine boy, weighing eight pounds. [...] About three weeks from the date of this remarkable birth, I was called to see the child, the grandmother insisting there was "something wrong about the genitals." Examination revealed an enlarged, swollen, sensitive scrotum, containing on the right side a hard, roughened substance, evidently foreign. I decided upon operating for its removal at once, and in so doing, extracted from the scrotum a minnie ball, mashed and battered as if it had met in its flight some hard, unyielding substance.
|
||||
|
||||
An editor's note in a subsequent issue of the journal revealed the case to be a joke:
|
||||
|
||||
DR. L.G. CAPERS, of Vicksburg, Miss., disclaims responsibility for the truth of that remarkable case of impregnation by a minnie ball, as reported in No. 19 of this Journal. He tells the story as it was told to him. He does not say it is untrue, but is disposed to appositely remember the truth of the old adage, that "accidents may happen in the best regulated families." The joke is, that the Doctor reported the case without any signature, but as the editor is indisposed to be made the victim of canards, and recognized the writing sent, he was unwilling to deprive the author of the contemplated fun, and allowed him to enjoy even more of this than was anticipated. The readers have enjoyed the story much, but not enough "to cut capers" after reading it.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Son of a gun
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
Works related to Attention Gynaecologists! — Notes from the Diary of a Field and Hospital Surgeon, C. S. A. at Wikisource
|
||||
19
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Display_(book)-0.md
Normal file
19
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Display_(book)-0.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Life on Display (book)"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Display_(book)"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:22.447513+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Life on Display: Revolutionizing U.S. Museums of Science and Natural History in the Twentieth Century is a history of modern American science education and its relationship with museums of science. It was written by Karen A. Rader and Victoria E. M. Cain and published by the University of Chicago Press in 2014.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
Official website
|
||||
Introduction
|
||||
36
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_and_Darwin-0.md
Normal file
36
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_and_Darwin-0.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Lincoln and Darwin"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_and_Darwin"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:23.715234+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Lincoln and Darwin: Shared Visions of Race, Science, and Religion is a 2010 book by James Lander about the lives and views of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Overview ==
|
||||
Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day, February 12, 1809. Both lost their mother at a young age and, despite their differences in upbringing, both men saw themselves as autodidacts. Lander argues that they also shared an interest in science and a skeptical approach to religion. Darwin closely followed the events of the American Civil War and wanted Lincoln and the Union to prevail, but it is unlikely that Lincoln read Darwin's work.
|
||||
Lincoln and Darwin is structured as a series of alternating narratives concerning each man's interactions with the events and discoveries of the mid-19th century. Lander explores similarities in the intellectual development, concerns, and impacts of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, focusing in particular on the issue of slavery in the United States, which both men influentially opposed. Lander's broader argument is that Lincoln and Darwin shared the same outlook on the central issues of race, science, and religion. He also looks at the relationship between science and race in the 19th century United States and the emergence and influence of scientific racism. Lander situates Lincoln and Darwin against their respective opponents: Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln's rival in Illinois politics, and Louis Agassiz, an advocate of polygenism.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Critical reception ==
|
||||
Tom Allen, in The Journal of the Civil War Era, wrote that Lincoln and Darwin "is not always completely convincing" with regard to the "shared vision" Lander identifies, but concluded that the book "is well worth reading. The prose is delightfully lucid, and the parallel account of two lives so apparently different provides a fresh perspective on the intellectual culture of the nineteenth century."
|
||||
Jean H. Baker, writing in Civil War History, described Lincoln and Darwin as "a profound comparison of the two men's perspectives and ... a worthy addition to the numerous individual studies of either man", and praised Lander for providing a new means of understanding and appreciating each man.
|
||||
Steven Conn, in the Reports of the National Center for Science Education, noted that Lander's comparisons occasionally appear "a little strained", but that "more often than not these comparisons and juxtapositions persuade"; and praised in particular Lander's analysis of the interactions between race and science.
|
||||
Stephen L. Hansen, in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, criticized Lander's "optimistic and sentimental view" of Lincoln's attitudes on race, but praised the book's "readable style" and concluded "This is a book that should be read, discussed, and enjoyed."
|
||||
Mark Largent, writing in Isis described Lincoln and Darwin as "a strange project", but nonetheless "quite engaging because it allows Lander to bring into focus broad questions about the relationship between individuals and their contexts as well as some specific questions about mid-nineteenth-century Western thought."
|
||||
David Turley, writing in American Nineteenth Century History, observed that the book contains little original research and questioned the coherence of its themes "applied to Lincoln and Darwin together", but praised "Lander's lucid, succinct, and up-to-date accounts of the topics that he deploys to illustrate his protagonists' involvement with his three main themes."
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Between Heaven and Hell, a novel by Peter Kreeft about a fictional discussion in purgatory among John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley, all of whom died on November 22, 1963.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
Lincoln and Darwin at Google Books
|
||||
18
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spurious_inventions-0.md
Normal file
18
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spurious_inventions-0.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "List of spurious inventions"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spurious_inventions"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:30:21.033997+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
This is a list of spurious inventions, technologies which are generally considered to not possess their claimed capabilities, to be hoaxes, or to not have ever existed in the first place.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
List of hoaxes
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
15
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_and_the_Natural_World-0.md
Normal file
15
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_and_the_Natural_World-0.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Man and the Natural World"
|
||||
chunk: 1/2
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_and_the_Natural_World"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
|
||||
Man and the Natural World. Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800 by historian Keith Thomas was originally published in Great Britain by Allen Lane in 1983.
|
||||
|
||||
== Outline ==
|
||||
Anthropocentric worldview. The first chapter introduces us to the extreme human-centred view of the natural world in early modern England. This view had theological foundations and roots in Greek philosophers such as Aristotle. All things were created for the benefit and pleasure of man. Wild animals, birds and fish are God's gift to all men. Plants were created by God for the sake of animals and animals for the sake of men and thus humans may lawfully kill animals. Cattle and sheep had only been given life in the first place to keep their meat fresh "till we shall have need to eat them". Furthermore, they were better off in man's care than left to the mercy of wild predators. If not for food, animals were created for moral or aesthetic purposes. The louse, for example, was created to provide "a powerful incentive to habits of cleanliness". Weeds exercised "the industry of man to weed them out". The purpose of singing-birds was to entertain mankind. No animal or plant existed for itself. This worldview was all-embracing and unquestioned at the time. Only after travellers came back with stories about the respectful treatment of animals by Buddhists and Hindus, an alternative worldview was possible in theory. But the general reaction was of baffled contempt. Humans are superior, animals are inferior.
|
||||
Human uniqueness. One of the pillars of the anthropocentric world view was the biblical view of human uniqueness. Humans are superior because humans have an immortal soul. There is an absolute and fixed barrier between humans and animals. This doctrine was reinforced by the philosophy of René Descartes (1630s onwards), who held that animals were machines and could not feel pain.
|
||||
30
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|
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title: "Man and the Natural World"
|
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|
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|
||||
|
||||
Influence of botanists and zoologists. The rise of natural history helped to undermine this anthropocentric view. Anthropocentric classifications such as edible-inedible, useful-useless animals were gradually being replaced by more objective classifications based on observational criteria. That was real progress because old classifications were highly arbitrary and had harmful effects on wild animals. jays, woodpecker, worms, wrens and squirrels were targeted in particular. On the other hand, in some parts of England the robin and swallow were more or less sacred and treated with respect. The naturalists of the 17th century were beginning to study plants and animals for their own sake, independent of their utility or meaning for man.
|
||||
Pets narrowing the gap. In the 16th and 17th centuries pets had established themselves in the English households for company, especially in towns. Not only dogs and cats, but also pet monkeys, tortoises, otters, rabbits, squirrels and songbirds such as canaries, nightingales, goldfinches, larks, linnets, parrots, magpies and jackdaws. In the 18th century pets were given human names, and were never eaten. Observation of pets provided support for the view that pets could be intelligent, sensitive, responsive and almost every other human quality. All this helped to break down the absolute gap between animals and humans.
|
||||
Cruelty to animals. Cruelty to animals (bull-baiting, cockfighting, mistreatment of donkeys, horses) was almost universal in England before 1700. However, attitudes to cruelty were changing. Already theologian John Calvin, still firmly within the anthropocentric tradition, remembered that animals, like men, were part of God's creation, and were created for Man's sake, but we should handle them gently. From the 1740s onwards, there was a growing stream of writings by philosophers, scientists, and poets attacking cruelty, culminating in the foundation of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in 1824. Man was fully entitled to domesticate animals and to kill them for food and clothing, but to cause unnecessary suffering was morally wrong. Quakers forbid hunting for sport altogether. Jeremy Bentham in 1789 focused his thinking on the idea whether animals could suffer.
|
||||
Influence of astronomers and geologists. Astronomers and geologists too had a profound effect on changing attitudes, just like botanists and zoologists did earlier. As astronomers revealed that the earth was not the centre of the universe, it became increasingly hard to maintain that the universe was exclusively created for humans. Geologists discovered that the earth must have existed 'some 70.000 years' before the appearance of man. So, what was the point of an Earth without Man? If the universe and the earth were not specially created for humans, why would animals and plants be specially created for man?
|
||||
Attitudes to trees and flowers. Initially, the forest had been seen as wild and hostile, providing shelter for dangerous wild beasts and a refuge for outlaws. It was believed that the first human beings were 'woodland men', homines sylvestres. The progress of mankind was from the forest to the field. This resulted in large-scale forest clearance. Woodlands became a resource for shipbuilding. Between 1500 and 1700 the number of trees was substantially reduced. Later forests became 'romantic', they added beauty and dignity to the scene. Private landowners planted some 50,000,000 timber trees between 1760 and 1835. New exotic species were imported. Flowers were grown not because they were medicinally useful or symbolically meaningful, but because they were aesthetically pleasing. Flowers were imported from all over the world.
|
||||
Attitudes to nature. Mountains are a good example of changing attitudes to nature. In the mid-17th century mountains were hated as barren 'deformities', 'monstrous excrescences', 'rubbish of the earth', useless, unproductive and dangerous for men. Then theologians remembered that all God's works served a purpose, and that the purpose of mountains was supplying rivers with water and offering a home for goats. A century later mountains became objects of the highest aesthetic admiration. It was forgotten that mountains are agriculturally unproductive.
|
||||
Vegetarianism. The argument against cruelty to animals was carried one step further. Once it was accepted that domesticated animals should be treated with kindness, it seemed increasingly repugnant to kill them for food. Furthermore, the anthropocentric view that animals were made for man became a minority view, and biblical arguments became unconvincing in a secular world. Non-religious arguments were put forward: the slaughter of animals has a brutalising effect upon the human character, because it makes men cruel and ferocious; the consumption of meat is bad for human health because it is physiological unnatural; it inflicts untold suffering upon man's fellow-creatures; stock-breeding is a wasteful form of agriculture compared with arable farming, because crops produce far more food per acre. Despite all these arguments for vegetarianism, England did not become a vegetarian nation. Instead, pigs, calves, hares and rabbits were no longer served at dinner with their heads attached, concealing the true origin of meat, and slaughterhouses were concealed from public view.
|
||||
Conclusion. The conflict between new attitudes to nature and the realities of society, with its growing cities and growing population, was not resolved.A mixture of compromise and concealment has so far prevented this conflict from having to be fully resolved. It is one of the contradictions upon which modern civilization may be said to rest. About its ultimate consequences we can only speculate.
|
||||
|
||||
== Reception ==
|
||||
|
||||
== Footnotes ==
|
||||
All page numbers refer to the Penguin paperback 1984 edition.
|
||||
|
||||
== Editions ==
|
||||
ISBN 9780844669113 Peter Smith Publisher, 1997, hardcover
|
||||
ISBN 9780140146868 Penguin Books Ltd, 1984, 1991, paperback
|
||||
ISBN 9780141936048 Penguin Books Ltd, 1991, ePub eBook
|
||||
ISBN 9780713912272 Viking 1983 hardcover
|
||||
ISBN 0-394-49945-X Pantheon 1983 hardcover
|
||||
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||||
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|
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date_saved: "2026-05-05T08:40:19.641008+00:00"
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|
||||
60
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Posthuman_Future-0.md
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||||
title: "Our Posthuman Future"
|
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||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution is a 2002 book by Francis Fukuyama. In it, he discusses the potential threat to liberal democracy that use of new and emerging biotechnologies for transhumanist ends poses.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Human nature ==
|
||||
Fukuyama defines human nature as "the sum of the behavior and characteristics that are typical of the human species, arising from genetics rather than environmental factors." The "typicality" is further defined as a statistical phenomenon of the usual distribution of measured parameters describing human characteristics, such the normal distribution of height or intellectual quotient. The author recognizes that distinguishing "pathological" from "normal" is difficult, but insists that drawing the line between the two is not only possible, but is routinely achieved by regulatory agencies through a legislative process. "It has often seemed to me that the only people who can argue that there is no difference in principle between disease and health are those who have never been sick: if you have a virus or fracture your leg, you know perfectly well that something is wrong."
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Human dignity ==
|
||||
Possession of moral choice, human language, reason, sociability, emotions, sentience, and consciousness constitute distinguishing qualities that differentiate humans from animals. Fukuyama refers to the irreducible totality of these qualities as "Factor X", "the complex whole" as opposed to "the sum of simple parts", which forms the foundation of human dignity. Moreover, he believes that "every member of the human species possesses a genetic endowment that allows him or her to become a whole human being, an endowment that distinguishes a human in essence from other types of creatures." Thus, he squarely places the source of human dignity in human genetics providing the argument against unregulated modification of human germline cells. Fukuyama argues that the moral status of human embryos is higher than that of human cells or human tissues because they possess "the potential to become a full human being." He concludes that "it is therefore reasonable, on non-religious grounds, to question whether researchers should be free to create, clone, and destroy human embryos at will."
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Human rights ==
|
||||
Francis Fukuyama argues that informed discussion of human rights requires understanding of human purposes, which themselves rest on a concept of human nature and human dignity. Therefore, biotechnology targeting human nature will inevitably affect the discourse of values and politics. He provides several arguments to defend his human nature-based theory of rights:
|
||||
|
||||
Classic philosophical accounts by Socrates and Plato argue for the existence of human nature. Fukuyama believes that these classic accounts are too easily dismissed by "thoughtless contemporary commentators [who] sneer at Plato's "simplistic" psychology".
|
||||
The Fallacy of "Naturalistic Fallacy". In response to the assertion that moral obligations cannot be derived from the observation of natural world ("naturalistic fallacy"), Fukuyama demonstrates that humans routinely use emotions to prioritize values. For example, the fear of violent death produces the basic right of life, which some will consider a value higher than the freedom of religion.
|
||||
Inconsistencies in the views of libertarian legal theorists, John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. For example, Fukuyama shows that John Rawls in "A Theory of Justice", appeals to apparent observations of human nature, such as genetically programmed social reciprocity. Ronald Dworkin, on the other hand, also appears to make assumptions about human nature: the existence of distinct natural human potential that can develop over time, efforts needed to cultivate this potential, and desirable choices of an individual regarding her potential.
|
||||
Some decisions by the US Supreme Court "suggest priorities among the wide variety of human desires and purposes." For example, Fukuyama suggests that the US Supreme Court decision Casey vs. Planned Parenthood defends "moral autonomy as the most important human right."
|
||||
Values make collective action possible. "Human beings also find great satisfaction in the fact that values and norms are shared. Solipsistically held values defeat their own purpose and lead to a highly dysfunctional society in which people are unable to work together for common ends."
|
||||
Political history reveals the failure of political regimes which ignored the limits of human nature. For example, Fukuyama concludes that the ultimate failure of communism was caused by its "failure to respect the natural inclination to favor kin and private property."
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Political control of biotechnology ==
|
||||
Fukuyama recognizes that translation of human nature into rights is difficult, but possible through a rational discussion of human ends. In his opinion, control of biotechnology is a political necessity. "Countries must regulate the development and use of technology politically, setting up institutions that will discriminate between those technological advances that promote human flourishing, and those that pose a threat to human dignity and well-being". He rejects the idea that "theology, philosophy, or politics" should not influence the scientific process, because "science by itself cannot establish the ends to which it is put." "Nazi doctors who injected concentration camp victims with infection agents... were in fact legitimate scientists who gathered real data that could potentially be put to good use." Therefore, morality is needed to establish the end of science and the technology that science produces, and pronounce on whether those ends are good or bad." Political process that could decide on the legitimate uses of science is enabled by a democratically constituted political community acting through elected and scientifically informed representatives.
|
||||
Fukuyama rejects the notion that biotechnology cannot be controlled. Nuclear weapons, nuclear power, ballistic missiles, biological and chemical warfare, illegal human organ trade, neuropharmacological drugs, genetically modified foods, human experimentation have been the subject of effective international political control. Occasional breaking of the law, cannot be used as an excuse not to pursue legislature at all. "Every country makes murder a crime and attaches severe penalties to homicide, and yet murders nonetheless occur. The fact that they do has never been a reason for giving up on the law or on attempts to enforce it."
|
||||
Author outlines several issues that need to be addressed to establish an effective international regulation of biotechnology:
|
||||
|
||||
Over-regulation can create inefficiencies, drive up the business costs, and stifle innovation.
|
||||
While most regulatory initiatives begin domestically, to be truly effective the regulation needs to be negotiated, harmonized, and enacted on the international level.
|
||||
Risks, benefits, and enforcement costs of biotechnology need to clearly defined.
|
||||
Different ethical views of biotechnology throughout the world.
|
||||
Different political systems throughout the world.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Publication history ==
|
||||
Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2002, hardcover (ISBN 0-374-23643-7)
|
||||
Picador USA, 2003, paperback (ISBN 0-312-42171-0).
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
The End of History and the Last Man
|
||||
Brave New World argument
|
||||
The Abolition of Man
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
Presentation by Fukuyama on Our Posthuman Future, May 9, 2002
|
||||
36
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Boghossian-0.md
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|
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|
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|
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|
||||
|
||||
Peter Gregory Boghossian (; born July 25, 1966) is an American philosopher and college professor. He was an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University for ten years, and his areas of academic focus include atheism, critical thinking, pedagogy, scientific skepticism, and the Socratic method. He is the author of A Manual for Creating Atheists, and (with James A. Lindsay) of How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide.
|
||||
Boghossian was involved in the grievance studies affair (also called "Sokal Squared" in media coverage) with collaborators James A. Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, which entailed submitting bogus papers to academic journals related to gender studies and other fields in order to test peer-reviews. This project generated significant media and academic attention, including both praise and condemnation, as well as ethical and methodological criticism. After an investigation, Portland State University restricted Boghossian's future work on the basis of research misconduct. In September 2021, Boghossian resigned his position from Portland State University, citing harassment and a lack of intellectual freedom.
|
||||
Boghossian coined the term street epistemology for a set of conversational techniques he described, which are designed to enable examination of strongly held beliefs, especially of the religious kind, in a non-confrontational manner.
|
||||
|
||||
== Early life ==
|
||||
Boghossian was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. He is of Armenian descent; his paternal grandparents were Armenian immigrants.
|
||||
|
||||
== Career ==
|
||||
|
||||
Boghossian received a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Marquette University in 1988, and later earned a Master of Arts degree in philosophy from Fordham University in 1992. He later received his Doctor of Education in 2004 from Portland State University. His primary interests are critical thinking, philosophy of education, and moral reasoning. His thesis looked at the use of the Socratic method with prison inmates for critical thinking and moral reasoning with the intention of decreasing ongoing criminal behavior. The research was funded by the State of Oregon. Boghossian was Chairman of the Prison Advisory Committee for the Columbia River Correctional Institution. He is a fellow at the Center for Prison Reform. He was employed as an assistant professor at Portland State University, quitting in protest due to what he viewed as a culture of illiberalism.
|
||||
Boghossian is the author of two books, A Manual for Creating Atheists (2013), a book with a foreword by Michael Shermer, and How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide (2019). He also contributed a foreword to white supremacist commentator Stefan Molyneux's book Against the Gods. He has characteized his collaborations with Molyneux as being based only on his agreement on matters of metaphysics, and not with Molyneux's political views.
|
||||
In 2017, Boghossian was featured in Reasons to Believe, a documentary focusing on psychology and the science of belief.
|
||||
He has been a speaker for the Center for Inquiry, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, and the Secular Student Alliance.
|
||||
In September 2021, Boghossian resigned his position from Portland State University. In his resignation letter, he called the university a "Social Justice factory" and said that he faced harassment and retaliation for speaking out. The letter also accuses the university of creating a culture where students are "afraid to speak openly and honestly", of training students to "mimic the moral certainty of ideologues", and of "[driving] intolerance of divergent beliefs and opinions".
|
||||
In November 2021, Boghossian was among the founders of the University of Austin, a school whose mission is "to create a 'fiercely independent' school that offers an alternative to what founders see as a rise in “illiberalism” on college campuses."
|
||||
On February 17, 2022, he gave a conference on "wokism" at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) in Budapest, Hungary.
|
||||
|
||||
== Views ==
|
||||
|
||||
Boghossian has called all faith-based beliefs "delusions". He has been described by The Daily Beast as aligned with the New Atheist movement. He advocates using the Socratic method to dissuade religious believers, though he recommends focusing on criticism of faith as a way of knowing (he calls it an "unreliable epistemology"), rather than the outward trappings of religious communities.
|
||||
In a 2015 interview with Dave Rubin, Boghossian described himself as a classical liberal who has never voted for a Republican candidate, but is "not a fan" of the Democrats. He stated that any of the Republican candidates for the 2016 presidential election "would be an unmitigated disaster". He donated to and endorsed Andrew Yang for the 2020 United States presidential election. He has stated that the US Republican Party is "the most powerful, anti-science political movement in the world". He wrote that it was "not alarmist" to state that they "could destroy the world" since many "refuse to even acknowledge that climate change is happening", and stated that their "denialist attitude is due partly to the religious convictions".
|
||||
According to Boghossian, "the regressive left have taken over academia". He has often stated that cultural relativism and egalitarianism are contradictory values.
|
||||
|
||||
== Grievance studies affair ==
|
||||
|
||||
In the grievance studies affair, also referred to as the "Sokal Squared" scandal, Boghossian, James A. Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose submitted a series of hoax academic papers for peer-review to journals in academic fields which they termed "grievance studies"—race, gender, feminist and sexuality studies which they believed were characterized by low scientific standards. They prepared 20 papers, of which 7 were accepted by the time the Wall Street Journal called their bluff.
|
||||
22
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|
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|
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|
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---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Previous hoax paper ===
|
||||
In 2017, Boghossian and Lindsay published a hoax paper titled "The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct". The paper, which the authors said was intentionally absurd and written in a way that imitated the style of "poststructuralist discursive gender theory", argued that the penis should be seen "not as an anatomical organ but as a social construct isomorphic to performative toxic masculinity". Boghossian and Lindsay initially submitted the paper to Norma, where it was rejected. They later submitted the paper to Cogent Social Sciences, a Taylor & Francis open access journal which has been criticized as a pay-to-publish operation. The authors later revealed the hoax in Skeptic magazine. Boghossian and Lindsay stated that they intended to demonstrate that "gender studies is crippled academically by an overriding almost-religious belief that maleness is the root of all evil", and also to highlight problems with the review processes of open-access journals.
|
||||
A number of critics questioned whether Boghossian and Lindsay's paper demonstrated a problem in the field of gender studies. Alan Sokal, a mathematics professor who was responsible for a similar hoax in 1996, noted that Cogent Social Sciences was a low-tiered open access journal that did not specialize in gender studies, and said that it seemed unlikely the paper would have been accepted at a mainstream gender studies journal. While the journal did conduct a postmortem, Boghossian and Lindsay concluded the "impact [of the hoax] was very limited, and much criticism of it was legitimate".
|
||||
|
||||
=== Sequence of events ===
|
||||
Beginning in August 2017, Boghossian, Lindsay, and Pluckrose began a much larger attempt in which they wrote 20 hoax papers, submitting them to peer-reviewed journals under a variety of pseudonyms as well as the name of Richard Baldwin, a professor emeritus at Florida's Gulf Coast State College and friend of Boghossian. The project was halted early after one of the papers in the feminist geography journal Gender, Place & Culture was criticized on social media, and then its authenticity questioned on Campus Reform.
|
||||
After this, the trio revealed the full extent of their work in a YouTube video created and released by documentary filmmaker Mike Nayna, alongside an investigation by The Wall Street Journal. By the time of the revelation seven of their twenty papers had been accepted, seven were still under review, and six had been rejected. One paper, which was accepted by feminist social work journal Affilia, transposed up-to-date jargon into passages lifted from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.
|
||||
Tom Whipple of The Times wrote that academic reviewers had praised the studies prior to the revelation of the hoax as "a rich and exciting contribution to the study of ... the intersection between masculinity and anality", "excellent and very timely", and "important dialogue for social workers and feminist scholars".
|
||||
|
||||
=== Reactions ===
|
||||
The project drew both praise and criticism, with author Yascha Mounk dubbing it 'Sokal squared' in reference to the Sokal Affair hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal and saying "The result is hilarious and delightful. It also showcases a serious problem with big parts of academia." Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker said the project posed the question "is there any idea so outlandish that it won't be published in a Critical/PoMo/Identity/'Theory' journal?" Daniel Engber of online magazine Slate criticised the project, saying "one could have run this sting on almost any empirical discipline and returned the same result". In an open but anonymous letter, eleven of Boghossian's colleagues at Portland State University wrote that the hoaxes "violat[ed] acceptable norms of research", and were "fraudulent, time-wasting, anti-intellectual activities". Joel P. Christensen and Matthew A. Sears said it was "the academic equivalent of the fraudulent hit pieces on Planned Parenthood" produced in 2015. Carl Bergstrom claimed "the hoaxers appear woefully naïve about how the [peer review] system actually works".
|
||||
A 2021 study assessing the grievance studies affair concluded, (1) journals with higher impact factors were more likely to reject papers submitted as part of the project; (2) the chances were better, if the manuscript was allegedly based on empirical data; (3) peer reviews can be an important asset in the process of revising a manuscript; and (4) when the project authors, with academic education from neighboring disciplines, closely followed the reviewers' advice, they were able to learn relatively quickly what is needed for writing an acceptable article. The boundary between a seriously written paper and a "hoax" gradually became blurred. Finally (5), the way the project ended showed that in the long run, the scientific community will uncover fraudulent practices."
|
||||
35
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Boghossian-2.md
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|
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|
||||
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|
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|
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category: "reference"
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|
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date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:29:44.239028+00:00"
|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Research misconduct investigation ===
|
||||
In 2018, Boghossian's employer, Portland State University, initiated a research misconduct inquiry relating to the grievance studies affair. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the university's institutional review board (IRB) concluded in December that Boghossian violated the ethical guidelines by conducting research on human subjects without approval. Consequently, he was banned from doing research until he had "completed training and could demonstrate that he understood how to protect the rights of human subjects". The University also said it was "considering a further charge that he had falsified data".
|
||||
After news of the research conduct investigation broke, a number of prominent academics wrote letters defending Boghossian, including evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, mathematician and physicist Alan Sokal, philosopher Daniel Dennett, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, and psychologist Jordan Peterson. Pinker wrote that Portland State University's investigation struck him and his colleagues "as an attempt to weaponize an important [principle] of academic ethics in order to punish a scholar for expressing an unpopular opinion". Dawkins suggested that the investigation could be politically motivated: "If the members of your committee of inquiry object to the very idea of satire as a form of creative expression, they should come out honestly and say so. But to pretend that this is a matter of publishing false data is so obviously ridiculous that one cannot help suspecting an ulterior motive." Peterson said that those pursuing allegations against Boghossian, and not Boghossian himself, were guilty of academic misconduct.
|
||||
On the other hand, IRB experts interviewed by Jesse Singal for New York magazine agreed that Boghossian should have sought IRB approval for the study.
|
||||
|
||||
== Street epistemology ==
|
||||
Street epistemology (often abbreviated to SE) is a term coined by Boghossian in his book A Manual for Creating Atheists. This is a set of non-confrontational conversational techniques for discussing a strongly-held belief, designed to promote thoughtful reflection and open-mindedness in a participant regarding the belief. Boghossian outlined the method and its application in helping religious believers to reflect on the reliability of faith as an epistemology. However, it has also been found effective in many other contexts, and Boghossian later co-authored with James Lindsay How to Have Impossible Conversations, which describes the application of street epistemology to an examination of a wider range of beliefs including nonreligious ones.
|
||||
|
||||
== Bibliography ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== Thesis ===
|
||||
Socratic pedagogy, critical thinking, moral reasoning and inmate education: an exploratory study (Ed.D. thesis). Portland State University. 2004. OCLC 57569353.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Books ===
|
||||
Boghossian, Peter (2013). A Manual for Creating Atheists. Pitchstone Publishing. ISBN 978-1939578099.
|
||||
Boghossian, Peter; Lindsay, James (2019). How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide. Da Capo Lifelong Books. ISBN 978-0738285320.
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
|
||||
Official website
|
||||
Boghossian, Peter. "Beyond Woke with Peter Boghossian". boghossian.substack.com. Retrieved May 5, 2022.
|
||||
Portland State University profile Archived May 12, 2019, at the Wayback Machine
|
||||
Street Epistemology on WikiUniversity
|
||||
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|
||||
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||||
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||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
|
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|
||||
31
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||||
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|
||||
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|
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|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
|
||||
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World is a non-fiction book released in 2015, by the historian Andrea Wulf about the Prussian naturalist, explorer and geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The book follows Humboldt from his early childhood and travels through Europe as a young man to his journey through Latin America and his return to Europe. Wulf makes the case that Humboldt synthesized knowledge from many different fields to form a vision of nature as one interconnected system, that would go on to influence scientists, activists and the public.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Sections ==
|
||||
Part 1. Departure: Emerging Ideas
|
||||
Wulf describes Humboldt's childhood with his emotionally distant mother. As a child his interests in nature and travel were not taken seriously. His mother, on whom he was financially dependent, insisted he become a civil servant. As a young man, Humboldt became friends with Goethe and other German intellectuals. His mother's death allowed him the freedom and financial independence needed to journey to the New World.
|
||||
Part 2 Arrival: Collecting Ideas
|
||||
Humboldt arrives in Venezuela with his companion Bonpland and begins his journey through Central and South America. He brought with him a plethora of scientific instruments. He chronicles his travels and the measurements he obtained using scientific instruments in his journals. Humboldt climbs Chimborazo, a volcano in the Andes, which was then believed to be highest mountain in the world. The trip concludes with his visit to the United States where he visited the White House to discuss science and politics with Thomas Jefferson before returning to Europe.
|
||||
Part 3 Return: Sorting Ideas
|
||||
Humboldt returns to Europe where he is greeted as a celebrity. He lives as an expat in Paris for seven months as he finds the city and its scientific culture more stimulating than that of Berlin. While in France, he meets a young Simon Bolivar, who is impressed with Humboldt's knowledge and passion for his home country of Venezuela, and they discuss South American politics. Humboldt returns to Prussia, to earn a salary in the court of King Frederick William III of Prussia before returning to Paris. At this point he begins to work on several manuscripts based on his travels. The books are widely read. As Bolivar begins to plan and execute revolutions in South America, Humboldt publishes a series of books on the politics of Latin America that criticize colonialism.
|
||||
Part 4 New Worlds: Spreading Ideas
|
||||
Wulf discusses Humboldt's personal correspondence and influence on a young Charles Darwin, who attributed to Humboldt the inspiration for an interest in natural science leading to his voyage on the Beagle. Humboldt's influence on the American poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau is explored. Humboldt's magnum opus Cosmos, where he talks of the interconnections of the natural world, is discussed.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Reception ==
|
||||
Invention of Nature became a New York Times bestseller and was praised in Literary Review as "a dazzling account of Humboldt’s restless search for scientific, emotional and aesthetic satisfaction." Some critics felt that the book could have covered Humboldt and his travels more thoroughly instead of focusing on people he influenced. Others found that the book showed the relevance of Humboldt to our times. In 2015, the book won the Costa Award for Biography. In September 2016, the book was awarded the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize.
|
||||
In his Alexander von Humboldt: A Concise Biography (2024) and a series of articles, historian Andreas Daum proposes an interpretation of Humboldt that differs significantly from Wulf’s. Like Wulf, Daum views Humboldt as a seminal figure. He, too, highlights his achievements. But Daum cautions against “taking Humboldt out of his epoch and portraying him as a singular intellect way ahead of his time”, as Wulf suggests. According to Daum, such heroizing tendencies fuel an “Humboldt exceptionalism” that does not do justice to Humboldt’s identity as a man struggling to secure knowledge in turbulent times. This exceptionalism underestimates the social and intellectual connections Humboldt cultivated, and it neglects the historical context from which he emerged. Daum also warns against boldly projecting today’s legitimate anti-colonial critique onto Humboldt. He advocates for critically examining the contradictions in Humboldt’s life and work without vilifying him, arriving at a balanced account.
|
||||
A recent, comparative review of both books calls Daum, a professor of history, a “bit more qualified” to approach Humboldt and praises his “nuanced picture of Humboldt.” It appreciates Wulf’s appealing, though overly detailed narrative. The review calls Daum’s shorter, but more succinct book “less fluff, more facts.”
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
49
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Machine-0.md
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|
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|
||||
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||||
The Myth of the Machine is a two-volume book by Lewis Mumford that takes an in-depth look at the forces that have shaped modern technology since prehistoric times. The first volume, Technics and Human Development, was published in 1967, followed by the second volume, The Pentagon of Power, in 1970. Mumford shows the parallel developments between human tools and social organization mainly through language and rituals. It is considered a synthesis of many theories Mumford developed throughout his prolific writing career. Volume 2 was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Megamachine ==
|
||||
"In The Myth of the Machine, Mumford insisted upon the reality of the Megamachine: the convergence of science, economy, technics and political power as a unified community of interpretation rendering useless and eccentric life-enhancing values. Subversion of this authoritarian kingdom begins with that area of human contact with the world that cannot be successfully repressed - one's feelings about one's self."
|
||||
In the Prologue, Mumford defines his purpose here as "to question both the assumptions and the predictions upon which our commitment to the present forms of scientific and technical progress, treated as ends in themselves, have been based."
|
||||
Mumford dates the emergence of the "Machine" from the pyramid age (primarily with reference to Egypt, but also acknowledging other ancient cultures in that era which produced massive and precisely engineered structures). Mumford draws an homology between this social structure and physical tools like the wheel, not only in their productive function but also in their physical power: "By operating as a single mechanical unit of specialized, subdivided, interlocking parts, the 100,000 men who worked on that pyramid could generate ten thousand horsepower". He uses the term 'Megamachine' to describe the social and bureaucratic structure that enabled a ruler to coordinate a huge workforce to undertake such vast and complex projects. Where the projects were public works such as irrigation systems and canals or the construction of cities, Mumford referred to the "labour machine", and where they involved conquest he used the expression "military machine". The term "Megamachine" connoted the social structure in its entirety.
|
||||
Bruno Latour refers to Mumford and the Megamachine when discussing the development of sociotechnics, especially the modeling of nonhuman machines on the large-scale division of labor. Latour concurs with Mumford that "before having any notion of wheels, gears, works, and movements, you first need to have set up the very possibility of a large scale organization". Mumford similarly conceives of the Megamachine in contrast to the commonly held notion of man as the tool-making animal, first described by Thomas Carlyle in his 1836 novel Sartor Resartus. "In any adequate definition of technics, it should be plain that many insects, birds, and mammals had made far more radical innovations in the fabrication of containers, with their intricate nests and bowers, their geometric beehives, their urbanoid anthills and termitories, their beaver lodges, than man's ancestors had achieved in the making of tools until the emergence of Homo sapiens". Drawing from Plato, who "attributed man's emergence from a primitive state as much to Marsyas and Orpheus, the makers of music, as to fire-stealing Prometheus, or to Hephaestus", Mumford argues that man's unique identity comes from his "capacity to combine a wide identity of animal propensities into an emergent cultural entity: a human personality". Mumford also cites Johan Huizinga's notion of Homo ludens, insofar as "play, rather than work, was the formative element in human culture".
|
||||
Mumford himself connects the Megamachine with John Maynard Keynes' notion of "pyramid building", from the latter's book The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. The execution of monumental projects like the Great Pyramid of Giza or space rockets during the Space Race serve to redirect the Megamachine's excessive productivity into applications which justify the Megamachine. Hence although the Great Pyramid required the Megamachine to be constructed, the Megamachine also necessitated projects like the Great Pyramid to ideologically anchor itself.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
=== The Future of Technics ===
|
||||
William Manson writes that Mumford differed from other major critics of technology in that "[Mumford] emphasized that the ultimate function of social structures ("society") should be to enhance individual development and mutually beneficial patterns of social cooperation. Living in such conducive, humanly scaled communities, individuals could develop their many-sided capacities (moral/empathic, cognitive, aesthetic, etc.). Technical means, if limited to these human purposes and values, could enhance such growth and social well-being."
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Volume I, Technics and Human Development ==
|
||||
In this volume Mumford discusses the progress of terrestrial exploration, and scientific discovery; and traces the interplay of ideological interests, inventions and subjective drives in the evolution of human society. It expands upon the arguments he earlier promoted in Technics and Civilization (1934), and brings them up to date in the light of social developments in the intervening three decades. In the Preface he writes: "...I have been driven, by the wholesale miscarriage of megatechnics, to deal with the collective obsessions and compulsions that have misdirected our energies, and undermined our abilities to live full and spiritually satisfying lives."
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Volume II, The Pentagon of Power ==
|
||||
The "Pentagon of Power" refers to five aspects of what Mumford calls "the new power complex" of military and industry in industrialized nation-states:
|
||||
|
||||
Politics
|
||||
Power (in the sense of physical energy)
|
||||
Productivity
|
||||
Profit
|
||||
Publicity
|
||||
The "pentagon" was also clearly selected to be in reference to the Pentagon, regarding which Mumford commented: "The concrete form of the Pentagon in Washington serves even better than its Soviet counterpart, the Kremlin, as a symbol of totalitarian absolutism: all the more because this particular megastructure combines a pathetically outmoded Renascence plan with the current wasteful and inefficient facilities for monotransportation by car." Mumford found an important aspect of the Pentagon, as a physical structure symbolizing the object of his critique, the way that it functions as an enclosed "citadel" in which the U.S. military's elite make decisions, cut off from the world in which they act.
|
||||
Although much of the volume explores the negative influence of centralised power and exploitative behaviour on the human condition, it finishes on a positive and optimistic note in the closing chapters. His final remark is:
|
||||
|
||||
"But for those of us who have thrown off the myth of the machine, the next move is ours: for the gates of the technocratic prison will open automatically, despite their rusty ancient hinges, as soon as we choose to walk out."
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Bibliography ==
|
||||
Mumford, Lewis, 1970. The Pentagon of Power: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-163974-4.
|
||||
Lewis Mumford, Reflections, "REFLECTIONS I-THE MEGAMACHINE," The New Yorker, October 10, 1970, p. 50 abstract
|
||||
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|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Politics_of_Numbers"
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||||
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||||
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||||
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||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T07:12:01.131041+00:00"
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||||
|
||||
33
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishwa_Jit_Gupta-0.md
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||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
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||||
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||||
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|
||||
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||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
|
||||
Vishwa Jit Gupta, alternatively spelt Viswa Jit Gupta, or Vishwajit Gupta, (1942—2022) was an Indian paleontologist and former professor of geology at Panjab University, Chandigarh. He is reputed for research in the geological settings and fossil records of the Himalayas, publishing five books and 458 articles on the subject between 1966 and 1989. However, many of his fossils were revealed to be fake or manipulated, and he became infamous for large-scale scientific fraud, the case that came to be known as the Himalayan fossil hoax. Once recognised as "India's most celebrated fossil scientist", he has been named as "the greatest" and "most notorious paleontological fraudster" and "Houdini of the Himalayas."
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Biography ==
|
||||
Gupta studied M.Sc. in the Department of Geology (at the time the Centre of Advanced Study in Palaeontology and Himalayan Geology) at Panjab University, Chandigarh. After enrolling in a doctoral programme under the supervision of Mulk Raj Sahni, he investigated on the fossils of the Himalayan region in Kashmir. He and Sahni published the first reports of fossils in 1964, the discovery of graptolites in two papers in Nature, and fossil assemblage in two papers in Current Science, and one in the Journal of the Palaeontological Society of India. In 1966, Panjab University awarded him a Ph.D. on the thesis Palaeontology, Stratigraphy and Structure of the Palaeozoic Rocks of the Area South-East of Srinagar.
|
||||
Gupta soon joined the faculty of geology and produced his first Ph.D. scholar Inder Jeet in 1972. Panjab University awarded him a D.Sc. in 1972 in recognition of his research, and created a separate chair, Director of the Institute of Paleontology, for him. By 1989, he published over 458 research articles and five books on Himalayan geology.
|
||||
Gupta collaborated with 128 eminent scientists around the world, including William B. N. Berry, Director of the University of California, Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology, Gerhard R. Fuchs of the Geological Survey of Austria, Philippe Janvier of the Museum of Natural History at Paris, John Bruce Waterhouse of the University of Queensland, Frank H. T. Rhodes from the University College of Swansea (later president of Cornell University), Michael E. Brookfield of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Makoto Kato of Hokkaido University, Andrzej Gaździcki of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Heinrich Karl Erben of the Institut für Paläontologie in Bonn, and K. J. Budurov of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Gary Webster at the Washington State University coauthored nine of Gupta's papers. With Susan Turner of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, he reported in 1973 the discovery of the oldest (at the time) fish in India that belonged to Devonian.
|
||||
In 1989, Gupta was exposed as a research fraudster by Australian geologist John Talent of Macquarie University. In December 1990, the Panjab University received reports from the Geological Society of India and the Society for Scientific Values bringing out evidence of Gupta's elaborate misconduct. By that time, Gupta was professor of geology as well as director of the Institute of Paleontology of the Panjab University. Vice Chancellor Ram Prakash Bambah issued Gupta's suspension order in February 1991, but reinstated by a new Vice Chancellor T.N. Kapoor in January 1992. The University Grants Commission of India revoked its financial support to Gupta's lab. In 1994, the legal inquiry led M. S. Gujral, a retired judge of the Sikkim High Court, found him guilty of research misconducts, but the university Senate decided to allow him continuation of service. However, the university stayed his becoming a dean in 1994. He was allowed to retire "normally" with superannuation benefits in 2002.
|
||||
After retirement, Gupta focussed on environmental issues and wrote seven books on the subject.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Research misconduct ==
|
||||
|
||||
Gupta's publishing record based on work purportedly made over 20 years consisting of more than 400 research papers came under scrutiny after Talent researched his claims and work for nearly nine years so as to make a clear case of fraud. The discovery of the fraud began when Talent and John Pickett visited a road cut site in Nepal where Gupta had reported prolific numbers of Devonian conodont fossils. They found no fossils at nearly all the twenty sites he had mentioned but they found one site which yielded a fossil of a Silurian age. They subsequently chanced on his use of the same image in two papers and initially considered the possibility of an error through the addition of a wrong photograph. A more detailed examination showed that Gupta had used illustrations of fossils that were similar to specimens collected near New York by George Jennings Hinde in 1879. They interviewed coauthors, talked to Gupta on several occasions and made a detailed case after nine years of research accusing Gupta of willful and large scale fraud.
|
||||
Gupta attempted to respond to the claims with arguments from authority, noting the credentials of his co-workers. The case unravelled with several co-workers realizing that they had been misled and who had assumed good faith, overlooked obvious contradictions and paradoxical results which would arise from the claims made, particularly in assuming that Gupta had collected the fossils where he claimed they had been found. A range of other malpractices were also reported including the reuse of specimens from disparate locations, the use of a specimen that was found missing elsewhere, and plagiarism of images.
|
||||
John Talent received death threats from Gupta. In an interview to ABC he went on record to note that a technician in Gupta's department who threatened to reveal details of the fraud was reportedly killed in hit-and-run accident. Talent claimed that Gupta had offered money to hitmen to inflict injury on his enemies. The aged mother of one of the Indian co-authors of the report by Talent published by the Senckenberg Museum was hit and seriously injured in a road accident.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
Thesis published under M.R. Sahni (1966)
|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "War in the Age of Intelligent Machines"
|
||||
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|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_the_Age_of_Intelligent_Machines"
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||||
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||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
|
||||
War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991) is a book by Manuel DeLanda, in which he traces the history of warfare and the history of technology.
|
||||
It is influenced in part by Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1978) and also reinterprets the concepts of war machines and the machinic phylum, introduced in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus (1980). Deleuze and Guattari appreciated Foucault's definition of philosophy as a "tool box" that was to encourage thinking about new ideas. They prepared the field for a re-appropriation of their concepts, for use in another context of the "same" concept, which they called "actualization". DeLanda drew on the concepts these authors put forth, to investigate the history of warfare and technology.
|
||||
|
||||
== A social history of technology and of warfare ==
|
||||
DeLanda describes how social and economic formations influence war machines, i.e. the form of armies, in each historical period. He draws on chaos theory to show how the biosphere reaches singularities (or bifurcations) which mark self-organization thresholds where emergent properties are displayed and claims that the "mecanosphere", constituted by the machinic phylum, possesses similar qualities. He argues for example how a certain level of population growth may induce invasions and others may provoke wars.
|
||||
As a historian, DeLanda is indebted to the Annales School and the study of long-time historical phenomena, as opposed to human-scale phenomena. The next threshold point, or singularity, to be reached, according to DeLanda, is the point where man and machine cease to oppose themselves, becoming a war machine and when that war machine is crossed by the machinic phylum. It may result in erratic war machines that become nomads, because of a lack of political control. DeLanda writes:
|
||||
|
||||
I defined the machinic phylum as the set of all the singularities at the onset of processes of self-organization — the critical points in the flow of matter and energy, points at which these flows spontaneously acquire a new form or pattern. All these processes, involving elements as different as molecules, cells or termites, may be represented by a few mathematical models. Thus, because one and the same singularity may be said to trigger two very different self-organizing effects, the singularity is said to be 'mechanism independent'
|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
chunk: 2/3
|
||||
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|
||||
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||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
== Centralization and decentralization ==
|
||||
According to DeLanda, centralization and decentralization are two trends in the "war machine": either military commanders try to centralize command and control of each event on the battlefield and get "human will out of the decision-making loop" or they delegate responsibility to individual soldiers (e.g., platoons or the German mission-type tactics) to avoid "friction". "Friction", according to DeLanda, is like "noise" — too much friction blocks the war machine, which destroys itself. Thus, rather than waiting for friction to accumulate at the head of the control, command and communication center (C3), which is the case in centralized armies, decentralized war machines allow it to disperse at each level of the machine.
|
||||
The 1805 Jacquard loom, used holes punched in pasteboard punched cards to control the weaving of patterns in fabric and is the first example of a "migration" of human control to machine control and marks the invention of software according to DeLanda. Command and control techniques adapted by the Germans were then introduced in army arsenals by Frederick Taylor and extended to civilian society: "the imposition of military production methods into the civilian society was accompanied by the transfer of a whole command and control grid." (p. 153) The system of Numerical control — and then the CNC — which was developed by funds from the US Air Force, "withdraws all control from workers in the area of weapons production and centralizes it at the top. But if the NC (and related methods) effectively shortened the chain of command be getting humans out of the decision-making loop, it also weakened the civilian sector of the economy by its adverse effects on workers' productivity," (p. 154) argues Manuel DeLanda. He thus underlines that the US has become a net importer of machine tools for the first time since the 19th century, and points out that while in 1975 all major manufacturers of integrated chips were American, in 1986 only two were not Japanese. In 1982, the Japanese MITI had launched the Fifth Generation Computer Systems project (FGCS) initiative to create computers supposed to perform much calculation utilizing massive parallelism.
|
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According to DeLanda, the Prussian Army was thus Jominian, that it favored centralized command of the battlefield and the conduct of military affairs over diplomacy and politics. He opposes Clausewitz's classic theory exposed in On War (1832) of the primacy of politics over warfare (if strategy is the art of assembling battles, politics is the art of making sense of victories). Although DeLanda did not quote Sun Tzu, his use of Clausewitz recalls the Sun's counsels on the way to avoid wars as being the most effective warfare: one may be sure he won the war when the war didn't happen. DeLanda claims that this Jominian theory influenced Prussian militarism, the RAND Corporation and current Pentagon policies concerning research and development. This centralization always aims at taking out humans from the decision-making loop and is therefore closely linked to the evolution of technology — although a major thesis of DeLanda's book is that evolution of technology is neither good or bad, as technophiles and technophobes hope or fear. It may be used to keep the human will out of the loop or prioritize cooperative behavior and decentralization: the classic example used is the hackers' re-appropriation of the military ARPANET in the early ages of the Internet.
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The Schlieffen Plan, formulated by the German general staff after the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War, is a good example of centralized war planning and of Jominian theory: everything was so rigidly planned that there was almost zero ability to adapt for sudden changes. When World War I started in August 1914, the military told the emperor that they could do nothing but invade France, although the emperor changed his mind, hoping that if he didn't invade France, Great Britain wouldn't enter the war (in virtue of the 1904 Entente cordiale agreement). But the plan was too rigid and didn't allow for modification, thus potentially becoming one of the indirect causes of the war (although it surely wasn't the only one: DeLanda, who begins his book quoting Fernand Braudel, doesn't believe in unicausality or determinism).
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== Wargaming and game theory ==
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DeLanda also shows how wargaming, invented in the early 19th century by Prussians under the name of Kriegsspiel, has been used since that time for simulation of battles, in particular by the general staff, which may be considered the "institutionalized brain" of the armed forces — until their substitution by think tanks, the first one being the RAND Corporation, charged with the elaboration of science policy in the frame of the military-industrial complex. Frederick the Great was fascinated with automatons, as Foucault has shown and with miniature wargames. 19th century wargaming models, which benefited from progress in cartography, was dependent on dice at the beginning to represent the effects of chaos. Eventually, these irrational conditions were taken out of the loop, as well as human will: current military wargames oppose computers, not human beings. It was shown during the nuclear arms race that human beings refused in game models to cross the threshold and press the red button, which convinced military programmers to take out human players.
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DeLanda distinguishes various "ages" of war machines (although they probably don't succeed each other in a simple way; Foucault and Deleuze likewise cast in doubt such historical linear succession); he also defines various "levels" of war machines (tactics, strategy and logistics, which necessarily involve politics).
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Henceforth, describing the passage from the "clockwork paradigm" to the "motor paradigm", he quotes Michel Serres's studies to demonstrate how this new paradigm led to the creation of an "abstract motor" composed of three components: a reservoir (steam in the case of the steam engine), a form of exploitable difference (heat/cold) and a "diagram" or "program" for the exploitation of (thermal) differences. Michel Serres thus mentioned Darwin, Marx and Freud as examples in the area of scientific discourse,
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