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This year's dumbest astrophysics hoax fooled over a million Facebook users
Over the past few weeks, there's a good chance that someone on your Facebook News Feed has shared a story about a once-in-a-lifetime planetary alignment happening on January 4, 2015. The interplanetary gravitational pull of the galactic event will, seemingly miraculously, counteract Earth's gravity for a short period of time, rendering everyone on the planet briefly weightless. This story was picked up by a few small viral sites like...
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Bigfoot film stabilized
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This Is What It's Like To Fall In Love With A Woman Who Doesn't Exist
Leah Palmer was a high-flying fashionista with a jet-setting lifestyle and a host of admirers on social media. But her entire existence was a fraud – a multi-year hoax that depended on stealing someone else’s life. BuzzFeed News tells the extraordinary story.
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Behind the greatest Wikipedia hoax ever pulled
Yuri Gadyukin did not owe money to a gangster. His final film was not swirling out of control. Weathers did not kill him. His body was not found beneath the Hammersmith Bridge. Gadyukin never died, in fact, because he never existed...
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What lies beneath
Why do archaeological fraudsters work so hard to deceive us? Because bad science makes for good stories. By Ted Scheinman.
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Facebook Privacy Hoax Once Again Dupes Millions Of Users, Clutters News Feed
Facebook is all about trends. One moment you're being bombarded with blood moon pictures taken of the supermoon lunar eclipse, and the next you're wading through hoax messages from friends and family who should know better than to post these things. There are two such messages making the rounds at this very moment.
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Loch Ness: The greatest PR stunt of the century
One evening, when I was growing up on Exmoor, my father returned home with some news. He had just seen a large black cat – a panther, he supposed – on the horizon. He reported the sighting to the local farmer, who was not at all surprised, for he, too, had seen this ominous beast... Rupert Hawksley.
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How Stories Deceive
A young woman fooled the governments of three countries. What does her con reveal about how we see the world? By Maria Konnikova.
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Saint Sulpice and the Symbolism of the Priory of Sion
What if some of the most haunting symbolism of the twentieth century was the invention of a shadowy figure who pirated innocuous images from a famous church in order to construct the mythos of a secret society? By Andrew Gough.
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Jail sentence for YouTube pranksters
Four members of the controversial Trollstation YouTube channel have been jailed in connection with fake robberies and kidnappings. The group were involved in a fake robbery at London's National Portrait Gallery and a fake kidnapping at Tate Britain in July 2015. The channel, with 718,000 subscribers, has built a reputation for filming staged pranks around the city. A fifth member was imprisoned in March following a bomb hoax.
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The unending quest of the Hoax Slayer
For 13 years, Brett Christensen has been a committed professional debunker. This balding, bearded, soft-spoken, and serious man of 53 years has devoted himself to fighting the tide of online misinformation—the kind of scams, frauds, and hoaxes that used to spread from one inbox to the next but today move with alarming speed… By Andrew McMillen.
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White powder at Norway mail centre sends 44 to hospital
Police said in a press release on Friday afternoon that the white powder that led to the evacuation of a mail distribution centre was a harmless flour product that contain no foreign substances. “We are of course pleased that there were no dangerous chemicals in the powder,” police spokesman Knut Erik Ågrav said. Ågrav said that police are continuing to investigate who sent the envelope and said the incident was "serious and will have major consequences". "Both the police and the hospital used a lot of resources on this," he told NRK.
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Study reveals culprit behind Piltdown Man, one of science’s most famous hoaxes
New techniques finger 19th century amateur fossil hunter in famous forgery. By Michael Price.
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Amalia Ulman Is the First Great Instagram Artist
She has convinced her followers she is a pretty-in-pink naïf, an escort, an unhinged ex, an office drone, and, most recently, an expectant mother. None of it is real. By Molly Langmuir. (Sept. 16, 2016)
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Did Robert Caruso Con The Washington Press—Or Is That What The Russians Want You To Think?
How hard is it to con people in Washington, D.C.? Easier than you might think, considering it’s the place where things like nuclear war get decided. The national-security circuit in particular, with its think tank fellowships and massive government contracts, is one of the juiciest rackets around... By Brendan James.
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The Great Moon Hoax Was Simply a Sign of Its Time
Scientific discoveries and faraway voyages inspired fantastic tales—and a [2015] Smithsonian exhibition. By Sarah Zielinski.(July 2, 2015)
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How a Fake Typhus Epidemic Saved a Polish City From the Nazis
During World War II, a man went to the doctor in Rozwadów, Poland with a unique complaint… By Matt Soniak. (Sept. 22, 2015)
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The App That Does Nothing
A fake social network might be the only thing your smartphone needs. By Ian Bogost.
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Syria, ‘Experts’ and George Monbiot
Investigative journalist Gareth Porter has published two exclusives whose import is far greater than may be immediately apparent. They concern Israel’s bombing in 2007 of a supposed nuclear plant secretly built, according to a self-serving US and Israeli narrative, by Syrian leader Bashar Assad... By Jonathan Cook.
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Why do archaeological fraudsters work so hard to deceive us?
Why do archaeological fraudsters work so hard to deceive us? Because bad science makes for good stories. By Ted Scheinman.
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