Greatest hoax of all time?

[Abby Normal]

A funny story regarding Joseph Smith and Mormonism (well Mormonism anyway, sort of)

A number of years ago I was in a car pool with people with whom I worked. One day we got a new member, a woman who had just moved to D.C. after living in Salt Lake City for the last few years. Someone asked her how she liked it there. She replied that the city was really nice and she liked it but that she absolutely could not stand Mormons calling them a bunch of bigoted ***holes. She then went on about a five minute rant against them. When she had finished she looked around somewhat self-consciously and said I hope nobody here is a Mormon. I gave her a super dirty look and said I happen to be a Mormon (which I am not). She got real red in the face and apologized profusely until I told her that I was just kidding. Pretty funny (to me anyway). We ended up becoming good friends.

c.d.

Mormons are generally good people but they have some pretty wacky ideas.

[barnflatwyngarde]

Re predictions-I read somewhere something (awhile back) along the lines that if you ask enough people about a certain upcoming event, and give them options to chose, than the option most people pick is the option most likely to happen-and that its more accurate the more people you ask. And im not talking about betting odds vegas type thing.


as I remember the CIA, or one of US intel agencies was actually talking about setting up a public website to do just this to try and predict outcomes (like world events, stockmarkets, wars etc.).


Did anyone hear anything about this?

Yeah Abby, Ima familiae with this concept.

It's basically the phenomenon of when you ask a large number of people to estimate the answer to a question (e.g. what is the distance from the earth to Mars) the average of all the replies tends to be very close to the actual answer.

There is an excellent book on this called "The Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki.

[Ginger]

Mormons are generally good people but they have some pretty wacky ideas.

The Mormons I've known personally and professionally have all been quite nice people, consistently enough that I tend to ascribe their pleasant nature to a Mormon upbringing. The religion itself is completely deranged, although vastly entertaining to study. The very Fortean nature of Mormonism (the golden leaves buried beneath a tree, the magical translating device, and the secret history of America) make it fascinating.

[Robert]

Mormons and genealogy - very good work.

Mormons and polygamy - crazy!

[Abby Normal]

The Mormons I've known personally and professionally have all been quite nice people, consistently enough that I tend to ascribe their pleasant nature to a Mormon upbringing. The religion itself is completely deranged, although vastly entertaining to study. The very Fortean nature of Mormonism (the golden leaves buried beneath a tree, the magical translating device, and the secret history of America) make it fascinating.

Yes. It is . Very

[Abby Normal]

Mormons and genealogy - very good work.

Mormons and polygamy - crazy!

Yup their geneology is good work. But its also pretty crazy too, or the reason why. So they can track down dead family members and baptise them.

[TomTomKent]

I've been giving it some thought, and I think I can propose a top five hoaxes, with the greatest impact, if not great as in good...

1. The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion, for refusing to die, and be forgotten no matter how often it was debunked.

2. Washington Irvin's biography of Columbus, is not a hoax as such, but a fictional scene in which Columbus argued with the church that the world was a sphere, and he could sail around it, was pretty much the origin of the Flat Earth theory.

3. The MMR Hoax. I'm sorry to say that Andrew Wakefield's "study" been completely exposed as a fraud, but because the press took it in good faith, it caused a panic, stopped children getting vaccinated, and spurred on the anti vaccine movement. Strip away the politics, however, to the facts, and you find one man, wanting to sell his company's three vaccines, using incredibly iffy methods, to give the illusion of results that have been shown to be wrong time, after time, after time.

4. Alex Jones and Info-Wars. I'm including Jones' (the shouty American man on the internet, not the nice lady on the One Show) entire output as one elongated hoax, because, in court, he admitted his celebrity personality is a character piece. However, through broadcasting right wing conspiracies, everything from the looming FEMA conquest of America, the faking of 9/11 and Sandy Hook, to Pizzagate, and Hilary Clinton being a literal demon, Jones has (intended or not) caused consequences that he, and Infowars, seem way too okay with. It's outright scary when random people turn up at pizza restaurants with guns to expose a conspiracy, or harass and bully the grieving families of Sandy Hook victims, but the PRESIDENT has stated blatant conspiracy theories from InfoWars as FACTS, which for better or worse (no... just for worse), means the hoaxes from Jones' network have had a far greater impact than anybody would have credence.


5. The Pattison Gimli Film. This is more of a benign choice. The boring reality is that two guys making a film about Bigfoot, for which they hired a Bigfoot costume, actors, crew, etc, took a little time off to go and hang out by a creek, and just happened to film a Bigfoot, that looks a lot like their costume... Of course, when they went to show the film, they neglected to mention the film they were making at the time, and just concentrated on the being in the woods by the creek bit. What started as a publicity stunt, making what they could from a failing venture, has rolled out into decades of strange and wonderful stories.

[sleekviper]

Brontosaurus. Two guys racing to see who could name the most dinosaurs, and one of them finds two sets of remains. Same type, but puts a different head on one, and names it Brontosaurus.

[Batman]

Brontosaurus. Two guys racing to see who could name the most dinosaurs, and one of them finds two sets of remains. Same type, but puts a different head on one, and names it Brontosaurus.

What is actually happening in the past decade is that because we understand more about the developmental biology of dinosaur bones from young to adult, we can now actually go through all of the world's fossil remains of dinosaurs to see if some are juvenile versions of adults and not a different species.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100714131244.htm

[sleekviper]

Brontosaurus they knew.
"Although the mistake was spotted by scientists by 1903, the Brontosaurus lived on, in movies, books and children's imaginations. The Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh even topped its Apatosaurus skeleton with the wrong head in 1932. The apathy of the scientific community and a dearth of well-preserved Apatosaurus skulls kept it there for nearly 50 years."

https://www.npr.org/2012/12/09/166665795/forget-extinct-the-brontosaurus-never-even-existed

[Batman]

Brontosaurus they knew.
"Although the mistake was spotted by scientists by 1903, the Brontosaurus lived on, in movies, books and children's imaginations. The Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh even topped its Apatosaurus skeleton with the wrong head in 1932. The apathy of the scientific community and a dearth of well-preserved Apatosaurus skulls kept it there for nearly 50 years."

https://www.npr.org/2012/12/09/16666...r-even-existed

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brontosaurus-is-back1/

[sleekviper]

Oh boy. That does not matter, Marsh did not use the correct head for the skeleton. Yes, in 2015 they decided the fossil could be different than the 1877 first find, but it still has the wrong head. The cranium is from three different dinosaurs.

[Batman]

Oh boy. That does not matter, Marsh did not use the correct head for the skeleton. Yes, in 2015 they decided the fossil could be different than the 1877 first find, but it still has the wrong head. The cranium is from three different dinosaurs.

How is that a hoax though?

[Svensson]

It's a hoax by God by putting the dinosaur bones into stones and arranging the stones in a confusing order. I think the old man can be quite a jester when he wants to be.

[c.d.]

It's a hoax by God by putting the dinosaur bones into stones and arranging the stones in a confusing order. I think the old man can be quite a jester when he wants to be.

Well he certainly confused the heck out of all those scientists who claim the earth is 4.5 billion years old when the Bible is clear that it is only around 6,000 years old.

c.d.