Great Frauds in & about Science

[Michaelangelica]

Self explanatory?

I'll start
Mouse grows Human Ear
Call for ban of Genetic Engineering
http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s1644154.htm

[ronthepon]

Yeah?

Look at this.

Big long old bla bla.

Question is: Why is it still so underground?

http://users.telenet.be/vdmoortel/di...onLanding.html


Just to show I don't believe this, I'll post two sites on the counter arg side.

http://www.space.com/news/spacehisto...es_010215.html

http://www.astrocentral.co.uk/moonhoax.html

[Michaelangelica]

LOL
Very funny
Your three of a kind beat my full mouse

From
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s981350.htm
Other Internet hoaxes have included fake CNN websites that have announced the deaths of celebrities or the auctioning on E-Bay of the "Ghost in a Jar." The unremarkable jar attracted hoax bids of up to $100 million before E-Bay pulled the plug, Boese said.

"As a species, we are very good at enchanting ourselves," explained skeptic Barry Beyerstein, a psychologist from Simon Fraser University.
So it's really no surprise that despite more science and education than ever before, we keep falling for hoaxes.
In fact, he said "smart people are sometimes more vulnerable because they think they are immune to being fooled.

[Nootropic]

Let we all forget about this man:

http://today.reuters.com/News/Crises...ryId=SEO272098

[Michaelangelica]

Not a bad haul

"Hwang's team received 41.7 billion won ($44.57 million) in state funds from 1995 to 2005, the Board of Audit and Inspection has said, adding there were accounting holes in the records kept by Hwang and his team for the use of the money. ($1 = 935 won) (Additional reporting by Jack Kim and Lee Jin-joo)"

Sadly, it is not only the Con men who get caught
see Wikapedia
William McBride
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dr. William McBride, gynaecologist and obstetrictrician, is the Australian doctor who discovered the teratogenicity of thalidomide which ended the practice of prescribing it during pregnancy.

Dr. McBride published a letter in The Lancet, in December 1961, noting a large number of birth defects in children of patients who were prescribed the drug. Dr. McBride was awarded a medal and prize money by the French Government in connection with his discovery, and, using the prize money he had won he established Foundation 41, a Sydney-based medical research foundation concerned with the causes of birth defects.

Years later, McBride tried to speed up the results of his medical research into birth defects, and was caught falsifying results. He was deregistered as a doctor, and immediately resigned from his position as head of Foundation 41.

As Dr. McBride's deregistration occurred as a result of work he did as a researcher, and not because of work he did as a medical practitioner, the decision to debar Dr. McBride from working as a medical practitioner was reversed and Dr. McBride was re-registered as a doctor in 1998. While Dr. McBride is now allowed to work as a medical practitioner, he is no longer able to work in medical research.

Tthalidomide is, of course, still being sold in third world countries !

[Michaelangelica]

A year earlier, in the same courthouse, Poehlman pleaded guilty to lying on a federal grant application and admitted to fabricating more than a decade’s worth of scientific data on obesity, menopause and aging, much of it while conducting clinical research as a tenured faculty member at the University of Vermont.
He presented fraudulent data in lectures and in published papers, and he used this data to obtain millions of dollars in federal grants from the National Institutes of Health — a crime subject to as many as five years in federal prison.

Poehlman’s admission of guilt came after more than five years during which he denied the charges against him, lied under oath and tried to discredit his accusers.
By the time Poehlman came clean, his case had grown into one of the most expansive cases of scientific fraud in U.S. history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/ma...D4T5PYFCZ5xJjA

[Michaelangelica]

KOREAN SCIENTIST PAID MAFIA FOR MAMMOTH (Ancient Worlds News, 25/10/06) Disgraced South Korean stem cell scientist Professor Hwang Woo-suk says he spent private donations for research to pay the Russian mafia for mammoth tissues to clone extinct species.
http://abc.net.au/science/news/stori...10.htm?ancient

[Pyrotex]

Then there's these two scientific frauds: Piltdown Man and Cold Fusion.

According to the PBS documentary, the Piltdown Man started out as a practical joke initiated by the director of the London Museum; there may or may not have been co-conspirators. Apparently, before he could trigger his little trap and show the media up for the gullible buffoons they certainly were, World War I happened. When the gun smoke cleared, he apparently figured it would be bad for his health to expose his little joke, so he put the so-called fossil remains of mister Piltdown in a vault, where they lay untouched for nearly half a century.

Unfortunately, this little prank has caused major grief to the entire paleontology and biological evolution communities ever since.

Cold Fusion may have been an unintended hoax, fueled by greed and hubris.

Then there are the re-occuring hoaxes of infinite power sources that scam so many uneducated Americans every year.

[Michaelangelica]

When the first samples of platypus were sent to England; most thought it a fraud.
A duck-billed mammal, with a poisonious spur, that lays eggs!!??
Pull the other one!.

[Pyrotex]

Here's another fraud "in and about science" -- but it leans the other way.

Down in Texas, there's this dry river bed with fossils of dinosaur footprints. In places, you can see multiple tracks of multiple species. Well, some creationists claims that there were human footprints among the dinosaur footprints! Upon close examination, the human prints turned out to be the heel prints of a dinosaur -- and someone had chiseled little "toes" on each of them. The chisel marks were clear under the microscope.

Well, the perpertrator admitted his fraud. But that hasn't ended the controversy. Creationist speakers STILL use that to prove their case, and still point to that "evidence" in their books.

http://www.bible.ca/tracks/tracks.htm

http://paleo.cc/paluxy/tsite.htm