SOME SCIENTIFIC HOAXES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4774, 14 October 1893, Page 1

SOME SCIENTIFIC HOAXES.

With the rapid advance 61 science there is ft corresponding increase in the eager deaire of the publio for information, and this de&ire is not always satisfied with oolid I food. There is accordingly dome temptation for the scientific man ma mischievous mood to provide specially spiced tit-bita wherewith to tickle the palates ot the unlearned. Newspapers are peculiarly liable to Bo hoaxed in scientific matters. However learned an editor and his staff mat. be, they cannot be experte in aU branches of knowledge, and only expert* could iv many cases detect the false in matter carefully prepared to gull- the unwary. It ie on record that the Times itieU waa once the victim of a German hoax. At the time when Dr Koch's cure for consumption figured largely in the publio prints, a German journalist informed the correspondent of an English news agency that the delay in the preparation of Koch's lymph was due to the scarcity of guineai pigs— not the species known in financial circles. The correspondent took this in, wired it to his agency/ and it appeared in the Times in the form of a Bpeoial report. Next day the same correspondent, further prompted by his reliable informant, supplied the Times with the exclusive information that " on account of the scarcity of guinea-pigs, other animals, even cows are now being used for the production of lymph." These remarkable and abartrd statements seem 'to have ronsed no suspicions, and there was much laughter among the Berlin journalists at having "sold" both the Times and the "News Agency." Some time ago there appeared ill ft Chicago paper a professedly circumstantial account of an exposure of the illusions ot Indian jugglers. Their remarkable feats were said to be performed by the aid of hypnotism, and the exposure was claimed to have been made by the aid of a camera. When the juggler proceeded to perform one of his common tricks— the planting 6f a seed which, under his hands, grew in a few minutes to the dimensions of a respectable shrnb, with leaves and fruit all complete— snapshots were taken at intervals, and the plates, when developed, were stated to have shown absolutely nothing besides the performer and hia^ simple apparatus, there being no trace visible of the supposed growing plant, the inference being that the audience were hypnotised, and made to see whatever the juggler wished them to see. The camera being, of course, unaffected by the mystic power, showed the deception at once. / This apparently simple and straightforward # explanation " caught on, and the article, or the facts it professed to narrate, was immediately copied into other journals all over the world. But a certain shrewd editor on this side, who knew something about hypnotism, saw through the deception, and on writing to the editor of the paper which had first published the narative, asking for further particulars, and for the sight of one of the negatives which had been taken, received in reply the confession that the article was pure fiction, and had been written round an incidentally broached idea that hypnotism might prove an excellent explanation of the wonders of Indian jugglery. The whole thing was, in fact, a hoax, cleverly designed and worked out; and though the exposure of the pretended exposure was widely published, it is not at all likely that it received the same, publicity as the original story enjoyed. No contradiction, indeed, howevei convincing and satisfactory, ever reaches the ears of all who take in the first statement. The fertile American imagination delights in taking in the publio by full descriptions of the construction and working of absurdly impossible mechanical contrivances noaless than in carrying out practical and useful inventions, and if unwary scientific men are for a time hoaxed with the rest, so much the better. The San Francisco Sunday Examiner, of March 8, 1891, contained a fall description, illustrated with diagrams of its parts, of a marvellous pifece of apparatus, designed to aid the astronomer in the search for comets, and to relieve him of much of the monotonous and unremitting labour required for their detection. The headlines of the article, in the approved American style, ran as follows i — < ALMOST HUMAN INTELLECT!! AS ASTBOHOMXOAi MaCHIHH THAT Plßcotbbs Comets ail bx Itsbml The Machine gets in Bange, Electricity . does tho ßest! A Wonderful Scientific Invention that will do away with the Astronomers' Weary HtfUrs of Searching. The Idea Founded on the Spectrum ot the Comet's light. Id's Just ■ Like Gunning for Wandering- Stars with a Telescope! The instrument as described was bo cunningly contrived as to sweep the whole heavens of the plaoe where it might be sat

up, automatically and unceasingly, night aft«r night, and whenever a comet, however faint, passed into the field of view, its light, passing through a prism, being differently constructed from that of any ether heavenly body, affected an electrical apparatus, and set a bell ringing in the bedroom of the astronomer, summoning hiia from his couch at the critical moment to make the necessary observations. Thus the instrument did the work, while the astronomer reaped the glory of the discovery. The article, which was of considerable length, and .evidently the work of someone well up in astronomy, though nothing oat a oaring: piece of fiction throughout, was well calculated to mislead ordinary readers, and it would not be difficult to imagine that it mystified even a few trained astronomers. It was, at any sate, copied into scientific journals of repute, with only a slight hint of suspicion. -