Skeptics expose the hoaxes, but should skeptics ever

be the hoaxers?

If hoaxes were true, it would

be a vastly different world. Forwarding an e-mail would get us free

travel, free lattes, free laptops, free shoes, and free beer. We would

be able to buy third-world orphans for use as organ donors and would

make millions of dollars transferring money from Nigerian bank accounts.

We would have evidence of Bigfoot, fairies, giants, and aliens. Christopher

Walken would be president of the United States, and while Will Ferrell,

Axl Rose, and Paul McCartney would be dead, Elvis would still be alive.

With

chain letters, virus hoaxes, and photoshopped images of big alien cats,

it is April Fool’s Day every day online. The advice to “check Snopes

( http://www.snopes.com/ )” is becoming as fixed a phrase

as “Google it.” If only there was a Snopes entry for everything

in life.

When a Hoax

Is Not a Hoax

Hoaxes, pranks, practical jokes,

tricks, myths, and urban legends are all related phenomena. There are

similarities and differences among them, but they all have in common

that they are untrue but could be true.

The

claim that Gene Simmons is dead is more of a rumor than a hoax, although

to start a rumor is to hoax. Hoaxes are relatively static in storyline,

while urban legends have less “version control.” Urban legends are

more beliefs about events than hoaxes involving acts or artifacts, and

tricks are generally “magic tricks” performed by magicians or a

drunken relative during the holidays. We would say that the Jackass

team plays practical jokes and performs stunts rather than hoaxes. Not

all “hoaxes” are hoaxes. For example, the “Moon Hoax”—the

belief that the 1969 Moon landing occurred in a studio—is a conspiracy

theory, not a hoax.

These

phenomena differ most in the intention behind them. People who spread

apocryphal tales usually do so out of the belief that they are true,

and these people have good intentions to inform and warn others. Conversely,

there is no necessary social value in spreading hoaxes, even if we think

they’re true. There is no obvious threat to anyone if there are (Cottingley)

fairies in the bottom of the garden.

But

there is a hidden threat. Unlike urban legends, hoaxes often have victims.

The hoaxed has something to lose, like money or credibility, while the

hoaxer has something to gain. Hoaxes usually result in personal gain

for the hoaxer, whether that is the amusement of pulling a prank, publicity,

or profit. In a prototypical hoax the hoaxer has the deliberate intention

to deceive, usually with malicious intent (although those who perpetuate

the hoax are not necessarily in on the hoax). An urban legend is misinformation

that needs to be corrected, while a hoax is a claim to be exposed.

“To

hoax” is closer to “to scam,” “to con,” and to dupe” and

leans uncomfortably toward words like fake, forge and

fraud and their legal implications. We don’t have names for the

faceless many who spread urban legends, whereas hoaxers are fraudsters,

charlatans, swindlers, scammers, crooks, and con-artists.

Missing Links

From Balloon Boy to the sale

of holy relics, there are many themes to hoaxes. Georgia’s Imedi television

created a political hoax in March 2010 falsely claiming that Russia

had invaded Georgia. Hoaxes are often financial, such as the notorious

Nigerian scams and other advance-fee frauds (and in a more broad sense,

pyramid schemes). For financial or personal reasons, people have faked

their own disappearances or even deaths.

Hoaxes

frequently have paranormal or pseudoscientific themes. These hoaxes

aim to make us believe a claim or to provide “evidence” of the supernatural.

These hoaxes are often cryptozoological in nature, involving alleged

anomalous animals. Some are hybrid creatures and sideshow “gaffs”

such as P.T. Barnum’s infamous Fiji Mermaid, which was probably a

monkey torso sewn onto a fish body. There has been an endless stream

of “missing links,” including Frank Hansen’s Minnesota Iceman

that toured carnivals in the late 1960s. This was a vinyl dummy, touted

as a humanoid creature, frozen in a block of ice. In what is probably

one of the world’s most infamous hoaxes, the head of the Piltdown

Man consisted of the lower jawbone of an orangutan attached to a human

skull. For forty years some experts believed the tampered remains were

of a descendent of humans.

There

are Bigfoot hoaxes aplenty, including the 2008 Dead Bigfoot Hoax in

which an alleged cryptid found in the foothills of Georgia was revealed

to be a costume. The 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film is more iconic than

convincing, but while it is the best-case Bigfoot hoax for skeptics,

it is the “gold standard” of evidence for Bigfoot believers.

Tell Me Lies…

The most successful hoaxes

are the ones that leave us wondering, “Was that a hoax?” There are

many enduring hoaxes that have become folklore “fact” well after

they were revealed to be hoaxes. The Fox sisters initiated the Spiritualism

movement with their séances, a practice that is still strong today

despite the sisters’ eventual public confession that they produced

the “paranormal” phenomena by cracking their toe joints and bouncing

apples off the floor. Doug Bower and Dave Chorley admitted that their

crop circles were art rather than alien, but this has done nothing to

lessen the perception of the circles as evidence of extraterrestrial

visitations.

In

1938 Orson Welles performed a radio adaptation of The War of the

Worlds by H.G. Wells. For some who missed the show’s introduction,

the radio drama was misconstrued as an emergency report of an extraterrestrial

landing on Earth. The “news” quickly developed into mass hysteria.

This wasn’t intended as a hoax, but the memory of the supposed “Martian

invasion” remains.

Usually

the hoaxer never intends to disclose the hoax. The truth is a secret

for the skeptics to unearth. In 1986 James Randi famously debunked TV

Evangelist Peter Popoff as a hot reader with a direct line to his wife

rather than God. This should have been a ruinous revelation, but Popoff’s

career has had a second coming. The proof of his deception has done

nothing to shake the belief of true believers.

Skeptical Hoaxes

Hoaxes are something that skeptics

are skeptical of, but sometimes the skeptics are the hoaxers.

Like a modern-day Houdini, James Randi often exposes hoaxes, but he

has also been the perpetrator of a few hoaxes himself.

From

1979–1983 two young psychics named Steve Shaw (Banachek) and Mike

Edwards demonstrated their paranormal abilities to a team of parapsychologists

in a laboratory. However, these “psychics” were really mentalists/magicians,

and their participation was a hoax orchestrated by James Randi. Named

Project Alpha,1 the hoax aimed to disprove complaints that

a lack of funding prevents parapsychologists from undertaking useful

experiments. Randi also wanted to show the need for a magician in the

laboratory. Edwards and Shaw were selected from some 300 applicants

to participate in the research project. They underwent over 160 hours

of “scientific” testing that never revealed that their “paranormal”

powers were mere magic tricks.

In

1988 American psychic José Alvarez arrived in Australia, claiming to

channel a 2,000-year-old spirit named Carlos. With his incredible ability

to stop his pulse he developed a fast following, save for a few narrow-minded

skeptics who were convinced he was a fake. Alvarez boasted an impressive

resume of appearances on (fake) television shows and radio stations

and in (fake) magazines and newspapers, because he was a fake.

The Carlos hoax was devised by Randi to demonstrate the ease of creating

a cult and to reveal the gullibility of the media and public.

The

Carlos hoax and Project Alpha are the most infamous “skeptical hoaxes,”

although there are many other examples of this kind. Before the Carlos

hoax, Bob Steiner toured Australia as psychic Steve Terbot in 1984.

Steiner is a magician and former president of the Society of American

Magicians, and he is the author of the book Don’t Get Taken.

He initially presented his cold-reading techniques as skills in astrology,

mediumship, and tarot and palm reading. After two weeks of amazing his

audiences, he finally revealed his hoax on national television, explaining

that his objective was to “warn the people of Australia to beware

of people claiming to be psychics.”2

In

the area of pseudoscience, physicist Alan Sokal penned the impressive-sounding

“Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics

of Quantum Gravity.” The piece was a hoax. The article’s premise

was that quantum gravity is a social construct, but the author’s premise

was that the phony piece would pass peer review in an academic journal.

The parody paper appeared in an issue of Social Text. In a subsequent

issue of Lingua Franca, Sokal explained that he aimed to see

if a scholarly journal would “publish an article liberally salted

with nonsense if it (a) sounded good and (b) flattered the editors’

ideological preconceptions.”3

Hoaxes

are a useful method of exposing other hoaxes. Inspired by the Virgin

Mary grilled cheese sandwich, I created my own piece of pop pareidolia,

the Pope Tart.4 In another debunking I applied for a job

with Absolutely Psychic. The application process should have revealed

my lack of psychic abilities as they claim, “Our clients immediately

notice that all readers are carefully handpicked. We are very ‘picky,’

and we’re proud of it! Unfortunately, 94.3% of most applications are

turned away.”5 I was offered a job as a telephone psychic.

Magician

Brian Brushwood hosts the popular Internet series Scam School.6

In this “Mythbusters” for the pool shark crowd, Brushwood pulls

street cons, swindling and scamming in the name of skepticism. He teaches

tricks “to get free drinks at bars and impress friends,” but the

underlying message is that anyone can be tricked.

The Moral of

This Story Is…

Skeptical hoaxes are social

experiments. They reveal human behavior under natural conditions. Their

purpose is to test media reporting and gauge the response of the public.

They are intended for public gain, not for personal gain. They are not

intended to deceive but rather to show us that we can all be deceived.

Unlike other hoaxes, the skeptical hoax will always be revealed because

that is the point.

In

contrast to other hoaxes that bank on credulity, skeptical hoaxes hope

to prompt critical thinking. Randi wanted people to see through his

hoaxes. During Project Alpha, the young magicians were instructed that

if confronted, they were to admit that the project was a hoax. But they

were never asked. If skeptical hoaxes fail to elicit critical thinking,

the hoaxers hope to teach critical thinking.

There

are valid arguments against creating skeptical hoaxes. By staging a

hoax the skeptical hoaxer can seem as bad as any other hoaxer. The hoax

can backfire or incite resentment: nobody likes a “gotcha” moment

or an “I told you so!” The worst thing that can happen is nothing:

the lesson goes unlearned or the lesson is easily forgotten.

The

ultimate success of hoaxes demonstrates that we can all be deceived.

Skeptical hoaxes show that we allow ourselves to be deceived. As Blaise

Pascal put it, “We like to be deceived.”

References:

1. Randi, James. 1983. “The

Project Alpha Experiment, Part One: The First Two Years.” Skeptical

Inquirer (Summer). See also: Randi, James. 1983. “The Project

Alpha Experiment, Part Two: Beyond the Laboratory.” Skeptical Inquirer

(Fall).

2. Steiner, Robert. 1989.

Don’t Get Taken! Bunco and Bunkum Exposed:

How to Protect Yourself. Wide-Awake Books.

3. Sokal, Alan. 1996. “A

Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies.” Lingua Franca (May). Available at www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html .

4. Stollznow, Karen. 2008.

“Merchandising God: The Pope Tart.” Skeptical Inquirer

(May/June).

5. Stollznow, Karen. 2004.

“The Psychic Skeptic, Part I.” The Skeptic (Australian Skeptics)

24(4): 28–31. See also: Stollznow, Karen. 2005. “The Psychic Skeptic,

Part II.” The Skeptic (Australian Skeptics) 25(1): 14–18.

6. Scam School

with Brian Brushwood. Available at http://revision3.com/scamschool . Accessed November 11, 2010.