Why hoax?
Shortly after news broke of the arrest of Radovan Karadzic (aka alternative healer Dragan Dabic) this week, someone apparently went to the trouble of registering the domain name www.dragandabic.com in order to perpetrate a hoax on the world. The prankster found photographs of the man, manufactured a biography in Serbian and English and with a flourish, posted Dr Dabic's 10 favourite ancient Chinese proverbs.
My question is why?
Some hoaxes are for financial gain. Others for revenge or to make some political point. But this falls into that category of hoax motivated by the sheer pleasure of seeing people all around the world fall for it.
Crop circles are in the same group of global hoax: nothing in it for the hoaxer other than the amusement at seeing others scratch their heads and jump to daft conclusions.
One of my favourites is the story of big game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell's search for the Loch Ness monster in the 1930s. Strolling along the bonny banks one day, he spotted some strange footprints. Excitement mounted - they were large and relatively fresh. Casts were made and sent for analysis at the Natural History Museum. The world waited in anticipation for the results which showed they were the footprints... of a hippopotamus. The hoaxer had used a hippopotamus foot umbrella-stand to bag himself a Marmaduke.
The internet has inspired a new generation of hoaxers who often claim their activities are designed to illustrate people's gullibility. My guess is that the real motivation is actually the sense of power it can give - the same psychological driver behind spreading viruses or hacking secure sites.
In November 2004, the press pack traipsed down to Portreath in Cornwall to cover the story of 'Surf Rage'. Disgruntled Cornish surfers were apparently taking direct action against visitors who used local beaches. The source of the story, which was covered by the BBC, The Times, The Independent and the Press Association, was a website called locals-only.co.uk which called for "guerrilla tactics" against tourists. The site was in fact created by a group of journalism students. (You cannot trust the media.)
More recently there was the story of a 13-year-old Texan boy who was convicted of stealing his dad's credit card and using it to hire two prostitutes with whom to play PlayStation. An amended version of the tale can be found here.
The Sun, the Telegraph and London's Metro paper all ran the story which was later revealed to be a complete hoax. The author was a blogger who calls himself Lyndon Antcliff and claims it was an exercise in "linkbaiting".
The BBC now runs courses on how to avoid being hoaxed - not least because we have been rather spectacularly fooled in the past. Some viewers get satisfaction, apparently, by seeing their fake or retouched photographs being published.
I get plenty of e-mails tipping me off about extraordinary conspiracy stories which, if only they were true, would win me a Bafta.
The most troubling hoax which got through was in 2004 when the BBC broadcast a false report that the US company Dow Chemical had admitted blame for the Bhopal disaster and set up a massive compensation fund.
The source for the story was a bogus, but very convincing, website which had been set up much earlier by anti-capitalist anarchists called The Yes Men. The group has written a book ("Improperganda - The Art of the Publicity Stunt", Mark Borowski, 2000), which details the success of their various anti-capitalist hoaxes.
The BBC producer who had stumbled across the webpage e-mailed the address on the site, and arranged an interview with the "CEO of Dow Chemicals". The interviewee was, in fact, Yes Men activist Jude Finisterra, who went on air live to publicly acknowledge Dow's "responsibility" for the disaster. This led to an immediate loss of $2 billion from the share price of the company, money recovered fully later in the day, but a huge lesson about the sophistication of the contemporary hoaxer.
Other classic hoaxes include a campaign against dihydrogen monoxide - a highly reactive chemical which is one of the main waste products from nuclear power plants, is present in pesticides, has been used by ALL students responsible for school shootings in the US, is used by athletes to improve performance and contributes to global warming.
All the statements are true, but the calls for a ban was a stunt. Dihydrogen monoxide is, of course, water. Plenty fell for it, including a New Zealand MP who demanded to know from the health minister whether there were any plans to outlaw the chemical.
Another amusing hoax was perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a New York University physicist and mathematician. He penned an article entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity". It was utter nonsense - a collection of postmodern phrases and academic jargon which meant precisely nothing.
Here is an example:
"It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical "reality", no less than social "reality", is at bottom a social and linguistic construct; that scientific "knowledge", far from being objective, reflects and encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced it; that the truth claims of science are inherently theory-laden and self-referential; and consequently, that the discourse of the scientific community, for all its undeniable value, cannot assert a privileged epistemological status with respect to counter-hegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or marginalized communities."
The article was duly published in the academic journal Social Text who were not too pleased to see Mr Sokal reveal the truth in the rival magazine Dissent.
I can see his motivation, but what of those individuals who get a thrill from anonymously spoofing the media? Perhaps there is simply enormous self-satisfaction from seeing the global village chatter about your little joke.
I'm 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~10~RS~)
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A few of these stunts have some malicious intent but, for the most part, they simply set out to make the self-righteous and pompous look stupid. The Sokal example is a good one and the fact that an apparently respectable journal ran with it simply makes his point.
The acid test is 'does it actually do anyone any harm?' The Dow Chemical one is a case in point. Engineering a blip in the share price is relatively harmless but what if someone in Bhopal believed for a brief moment that some kind of justice was on its way. Terribly cruel.
I really don't see the point of the Dragan Dabic one, but for the vast majority I think it is just a way of saying 'lighten up everyone' and they may just be right.
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I'm not convinced that Sokal's text is actually meaningless - in fact, I think I disagree with it! It stands more as an example of how the peer review process tends to go wrong.
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I run a small hobby-business via eBay and my own website.. I make pennies in profit but its fun.
Recently I've had several customers place large orders then when I've enquired about delivery I find the hotmail accounts are closed.
THEY don't make anything out of it and I don't have an enemies that know me that well that they could engineer such an elaborate 'sting'.
All I can imagine is that people get a buzz out of wasting strangers time and money.... its the online equivalent of prank phone calls or ringing the door bell and running away. Apparently 52% of 999 calls are hoax so clearly this mental aberation is quite common.
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The concept of the hoax, provides society with a very useful benefit.
Because you know the hoax is out there, you question things. (Good) Journalists check sources and seek evidence, and the rest of us, don't automatically believe what we see and hear.
And if the BBC ever gets caught out it should consider its role in uncovering the Spaghetti trees on southern Italy!
If we lived in a society where nothing was ever questioned, then society would never evolve. It keeps us all on our toes.
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And the greatest hoax of all...
Man made Global warming as perpertrated by the IPCC.
So badly wrong that they have now renamed it Climate Change.
A band wagon jumped on by scientists all over the globe to secure funding for research departments so that they can draw salaries.
Normal scientists will tell you that the only way to secure funding for research now is to dress it up as a Climate Change project
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I think the last 2 entries in this blog are contradictory - The entry that I am commenting on is how people manipulate the media and what's the point, apart from to amuse themselves on a self righteous agenda or a campaign against something that the author holds dear, while the previous one is about how the media manipulates the public by publishing figures that have themselves been manipulated, to generate a sense of shock or an emotional response of some other kind.
Well, guys, you can't have it both ways can you? If, in the pursuit of a story, you get played by a con artist, whose fault is it? Is it the fault of the con artist or is it the fault of the journalist who failed to check the source of the story adequately?
The condescending final paragraph of this blog entry smacks of the bitterness of a reporter who has been hoaxed a couple of times before.
Get a sense of humour! If you can't do that check the story out before you publish. It avoids getting egg on your face!
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If you were taken in for one second by the Bhopal hoax, then perhaps you need to look for another job.
The chemical company involved was Union Carbide, not Dow Chemical.
What is less known is that, at the time of the disaster, Indian law required all such international operations had to be majority owned by Indian nationals; so that in one sense the responsibility rested with the compatriots of those affected.
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The narcissism of journalists.
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Strangely enough, the extract of Sokal that you picked out was one of the few sections that actually does mean something. It basically means that scientists are biased by cultural and linguistic factors (something a bit more difficult to explain) and so can't pursue objective truth. No single viewpoint about the natural world is correct because they are all biased in this way, so people are wrong to assume that scientists are any more right about science than non-scientists or pseudo-scientists.
It IS a load of rubbish, but it does mean something. The title of the essay and much of the rest of the essay on the other hand means absolutely nothing.
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I find these hoaxes socially valuable.
You can see the visible trail of shoddy journalism, organisations that don't check facts but just blithely print what they are fed.
More people should do this to test the veracity of your chosen media distributor.
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I am director of a not-for-profit media ethics program. See http://www.stinkyjournalism.org.
We wrote about a BBC News story in 2004 where they reported an "Iranian woman gives birth to a frog." This headline was not a joke. BBC News themselves hoaxed the public but never fessed up to doing a correction. See our story http://www.stinkyjournalism.org/latest-journalism-news-updates-19.php
The title
The BBC News photo of a frog on a tree branch stated "tests are being done on the frog."
We immediately called BBC to inform them that scientists informed us that the frog they illustrated occurred only in Southern China. So not only did an Iranian woman give birth to a frog...she gave birth to a Chinese frog !
BBC's response? Cowardly, they simply removed the story leaving dead links throughout the Internet. However, we save the screen shot for our reportage.
BBC News should revisit this case for their new course. We have more information on this case. So please do contact us.
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I am director of a not-for-profit media ethics program. See http://www.stinkyjournalism.org.
We wrote about a BBC News story in 2004 where they reported an "Iranian woman gives birth to a frog." This headline was not a joke. BBC News themselves hoaxed the public but never fessed up to doing a correction. See our story http://www.stinkyjournalism.org/latest-journalism-news-updates-19.php
The BBC News photo of a frog on a tree branch stated "tests are being done on the frog."
We immediately called BBC to inform them that scientists told us that the frog they illustrated occurred only in Southern China. So not only did an Iranian woman give birth to a frog...she gave birth to a Chinese frog !
BBC's response? Cowardly, they simply removed the story leaving dead links throughout the Internet. However, we save the screen shot for our reportage.
BBC News should revisit this case for their new course. We have more information on this case. So please do contact us.
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#7 - scagiola
From the Union Carbide web site - verbatim:
"Union Carbide Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company. "Dow", as used throughout, often refers generically to The Dow Chemical Company and its consolidated subsidiaries.
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I think post number nine is a hoax...
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To "leftofright" comment #9
You are falling for the hoax if you think that this post modern--"science is only culturally relative" statement by Sokal is true. Dr. Sokal talked the talk that he knew was complete hooey but was highly fashionable in post modernist circles. And they fell for it.
If I find a dead bird, I may feel relatively different as a hunter than as a PETA member --however, the scientific and repeatable fact is the bird is dead. This is an example of objective truth.
Sokal mocked the notion that no single or objective view in the natural world was possible. The paragraph selected for this article is no exception .
Hey, Mark Easton, please add News outlets, such as BBC News creating hoaxes (my BBC News "Iranian woman gives birth to frog" story is a perfect example).
In this case, the original Iranian report was mistranslated . Clearly added a BBC employee(s) added a fake "historical context." In an obvious attempt to give a patina of credibility, they mentioned a German "frog vomiting woman" from the 17th century that was not in the original Iranian report .
Also, the BBC employee(s) consciously left out the fact that the woman had two children--but importantly, the Iranian report clearly stated one was "malformed."
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I think the continued rise and increasing incidence of the spoof report is quite simply because so many reputedly mainstream sources are little more than blaggers using bovine biological solids to get their way at the expense of others that now and again the medium spontaneously bites back.
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The Downfall of America
by
Osama bin Laden
NOTE: Osama bin Laden has prepared this speech for delivery to the world to commemorate the seven year anniversary of his attack on America. It has been obtained by an Iraqi double agent working for the CIA and now safely in the Federal Witness Protection program.
OSAMA: My fellow freedom fighters and American invaders. Let me begin by saying the reports on my illness, injuries and death have been highly exaggerated. I am very much alive and proud of the havoc and destruction al Qaeda has created, far exceeding my wildest expectations. Certainly, American infidels shuddered over the shocking and awesome attacks on 9/11. That was your wakeup call and we are doing better as you well know.
Here is my game plan, revealed only because although there will be more surprises, this one is already operational. Briefly, al Qaeda die-hards have quietly infiltrated various businesses, industries and government jobs in over two-thousand cities and towns. Our cells wisely took the required loyalty oaths and joined every patriotic organization in the community.
Secret sabotage is commencing nicely. For example, elevators are mysteriously getting stuck between floors, clerks in stores insult customers, bus drivers slam their doors on senior citizens, potholes are everywhere and streets littered with refuse.
Loyal insurgents in your post offices make sure packages are badly mauled, mail is delivered late, if at all, often to the wrong addresses or returned for postage due. Rumors fly that the government has incompetent employees. Customers complain to no avail and channel their anger into drinking, drugs, road rage and vandalism following sporting events.
These and other planned annoyances begin to breed increased hostility among all people. Your ruling class, sensing discontent, blames it on air and water pollution or burning the rain forest. Meantime, American traitors in factories are busy manufacturing defective products such as leaky toothpaste tubes, television sets with built-in snow and detergents that clog kitchen drains.
As our war on your nerves builds momentum, the civilian population goes beserk. They cancel newspaper subscriptions, fight with neighbors and minority groups organize marches on Washington. A frightened nation elevates its terrorist alert to red, so everybody hoards food, water and gasoline except the colorblind. They remain uninformed and unprotected.
For the next phase, our loyal telephone operators will give wrong numbers, disconnect and play a recorded message constantly: ?Please hang up and try again.? Then, hundreds of my computer geeks in Afghanistan and Pakistan are planting infectious viruses and billions of spam ads, code named ?Bubonic Plague.? An epidemic of frustration soon immobilizes 300 million people who are enraged, ready to revolt and willing to accept any change in government.
Finally, on Holloween night, small al Qaeda agents, disguised as children, invade major network television stations to ?trick or treat? and force repeated playings of ?The Lawrence Welk Show,? ?Gunsmoke? and ?Green Acres.?
With 99.% of television households having bashed their TV sets, the next morning swarms of cars will converge on main streets in every city. Their mission is to tie up traffic, causing gridlock, and prevent people from going to work. This quagmire allows my victorious regime time to occupy offices, rearrange furniture, change names on doors and write pink slips for the former occupants.
My takeover will be complete without firing a shot. To ease emotional pressure, because Prozac supplies are going to be in high demand, I might schedule a few public floggings. This weekly sporting event was the highlight of Taliban soccer matches during intermission. On my ?A? list I have Ann Coulter, Chris Matthews, Paris Hilton, Dr. Ruth, Donald Trump, Barbara Walters and probably Jerry Springer.
Let me conclude by offering a special thanks to Saddam Hussein, whether he be in hell or heaven, who diverted so much attention away from my mayhem. He was such a wonderful patsy, a bumbling idiot with no class. Although, God willing, he did manage to hide our WMD in Syria before General Bush invaded Iraq. Didn?t you all love ?Baghdad Bob?? He?s my choice for press secretary; unless Ari Fleischer wants the job and renounces his religion. We?ll see.
I look forward to bringing al Qaeda?s style of servitude to America and remember, the trapdoor to the White House will always be open. So feel free to come and visit anytime. In the meantime, you can write to me care of General Delivery, Islamabad, Pakistan. Also, look for my new puzzle game at amazon.com called ?Where?s Osama?? The grand prize is $25 million dollars.
Now, if you will excuse me, praise Allah, I must get back to my wives who remain shrouded in misery.
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Pot_Kettle got there before me, but I totally agree that "Global Warming" will be proven to have been the world's biggest hoaxes.
I grew up being taught about the coming of the ice age again, and how we will all be skating to work.
To fall for this theory based upon minute increases in the world's temperature over a 10 year period would be exactly the same mistake as to look at the Stock Market between 8:45 and 8:46. You would see a 0.1% drop in value and immediately declare that we have 1000 minutes left before we are all penniless!
I'm not the only one with this view. The guy who sells me my organic cigars (at only 80% extra on the price - a real bargain) thinks the same.
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Mark Easton's article was entertaining enough. He may wish to note that hoaxing is not a new phenomenon.
In my ancient youth, I remember a famous one about Spaghetti trees - which apparently was backed up by an actual TV program broadcast in prime time!
Trouble is, I can't remember who might have done this. Could he find out?
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A hoax in the news is great fun and we really should lighten up a bit. As far back as I can remember it hasn't been news at all - it's always the same, war, war, starvation, suffering etc.
I think the spaghetti tree programme was by David Attenborough wasn't it?
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20 - poshCrescentmoon
Richard Dimbleby on the 'Tonight' progamme if memory serves.
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Because people do a hoax following this story, to make a quick dollar....
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what do we consider a hoax these days anyway? dozens, even hundreds of thousands of people are killed, and trainloads of money are wasted on the premise of a simple hoax. when collin powell takes a laser pointer and points at the grainy, blurry video and tells you that's an iraqi truck transporting a nuclear weapon is that a hoax? what about love? is the idea of ever lasting love one big hoax too?
but i digress :-)
in the case of "dr. dabic" and his site i think you are ignoring the content and are missing a bigger point there. that isn/t some frothy teenager pranking, or some bozo scoring political points with the masses. there is a certain degree of sophistication in that unsophisticated site. look at those chinese sayings, each one of them means something in the light of these revelations. each one of them makes very much sense. read the first one, doesn't it sound like a coded message that he was protected by the state all along?? and most of them feel like he is saying good bye to his followers, and also as if sending a message that karodzic is a wiser, changed man? and look at the site's title. what does it mean? if you ponder over it, i think it means more than we think. i think the proper question is not why hoax, but why this particular hoax? it looks to me that this was his previously prepared testament, to be initiated only in case he ever gets caught.
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for me this practice helps to keep the media on their toes and encourages them to check their stories rather than the all to common practice of printing PR releases. Who are the BBC running courses, to spot fakes, for? i kind of assumed that people involved in the publishing process would be expected to check facts anyway. but i'm obviously out of touch.
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In some small defence of dear old Auntie we need to remember the date of broadcast was 1 April when talking about the spaghetti tree report. The British press have a long history when in comes to making up April fool reports.
Esther Rantzen perpetuated a number on her "That's Life" programme, which was also on the BBC. Anyone remember the discovery of that rarest type of llama, the Lapri Loof?
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All this talk about hoax's and not one mention of Brass Eye!
This comedy had highlights like getting MP's to ask questions in the House of Commons about the dangerouse (and made up) drug cake.
They also had 'celebs' doing films including the line 'Peodophiles have genetically more in common with crabs than people, there is no scientific facts for this but it's true." and that they can release chemicals through the internent to make children more suceptable to meeting up, with the celeb sniffing his keyboard saying "I can feel it working".
Unfortuneately because most of the jokes were on the celebs there was a big media backlash against the program rather than the correct backlash agaisnt the celeb culture where they would say anything just to get on TV rather than checking any facts.
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this whole thing was a triple layered fake.
1. man with a fake identity
2. practicing a fake profession
3. with the help of a fake web site
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I find it interesting that Mark failed to mention the last of the 10 Chinese phrases found on the supposed hoax Dabic site.
The one who turns in his own, shall dig two graves.
Hoax indeed, or perhaps as a previous poster has mentioned - perhaps not.
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Hoaxes and the BBC are easy. Make uip a technology or science press release and fax it to the right number. As long as the language sounds authoritative and maybe the brands mentioned are "global" then the lazy BBC will republish on the website and maybe even devote a few minutes to it on "Click" or what used to be Tomorrow's World.
Lazy journalism is rife and multiplying. Especially when funded by the TV tax.
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There is actually an excellent magazine which looks at hoaxing - both in terms of the details of the hoaxes, and more usefully, in terms of how society works with hoaxed topics. It's called the Fortean Times - www.forteantimes.com is their site.
They frequently discuss the nature of media hoaxes; there is a particular one about LSD being sold to schoolchildren on bits of blotting papaer printed with children's TV cartoon characters, which actually has a rate-of-propagation between small market town newspapers across the UK. This is all pretty useful and refreshing stuff, since it helps to determine how mad you are, against an external benchmark... and to show that Internet hoaxes are not the only, nor the first, kind.
(the motive for internet hoaxing is quite different, since visitors to a website can be subjected to drive-by virus and trojan infection, so any name or topic which people might search for on the net has a considerable cash value to infectors, identity thieves and the like - making a site that attracts people because it's about a fake identity would for them be the height of irony...)
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Ref Comment 5.
Whilst I concur with his overall assessment of Climate Change, Global Warming, this is not however the most expensive hoax of all time.
It is in fact the most expensive fraud of all time.
Climate Change is a long standing science. Global Warming is as the name suggests a prolonged warming period and is a term within that science. Global Cooling (get used to that term, in the next 50 year climatic cycle you will hear it a lot) is a period of, not unsurprisingly, global cooling. These terms and processes have existed long before the notion that man's activities may or may not be accelerating to some degree entirely natural processes (theoretically possible) - or driving these processes in a direction that they would not otherwise be going (most improbable).
"Man made Global warming as perpertrated by the IPCC. So badly wrong that they have now renamed it Climate Change".
This is unfair. These terms are pre-existing scientific terms hijacked by the 'green' industry. For certain however they are a band wagon jumped on by scientists all over the globe to secure funding for research departments so that they can draw salaries.
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That hoax about dihydrogen monoxide and the New Zealand MP was quite amusing. But more important, it is an example of what I can learn each day. Before this evening I never knew that "dihydrogen monoxide" meant just water.
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