The hoax of this century is one of the most famous scientific scandals in history. 19 1 1 year, British lawyer Dawson claimed to have found part of the skull of an ape-man in Bulten. 19 13, Dawson and Woodward, a famous British anthropologist, announced that they had unearthed the skull of a half-ape-half-human creature, and claimed that this creature lived about 500,000 years ago. Their "discovery" is regarded as strong evidence of Darwin's biological evolution theory, named "Shu Ren" in anthropology, considered as a transitional organism from apes to humans, and even appeared on stamps as a major scientific achievement. 1928, scientists determined the age of ancient fossils by fluorine content, and found that Shu Ren's skull was not earlier than Neolithic age, and his mandible belonged to a juvenile chimpanzee. They also found that the skull and mandible were stained. An elaborate scam was finally exposed.
2.n-ray-collective self-deception
1899, following the discovery of X-ray by the British scientist Roentgen, 1903, the famous French physicist Brownlow announced that he had discovered a new kind of ray-N-ray. It has aroused enthusiastic pursuit in French physics circles, and many scholars, including Nobel Prize winner becquerel, have followed suit. 1904 in the first half of the year, only the Journal of French Academy of Sciences published 54 papers on N-rays. But outside France, no one can find this kind of radiation. Later, British physicist Wood proved that N-rays were completely wrong. Brownlow, eager to make great achievements and compete with the British, took his subjective judgment as an objective fact. Other French scientists rallied around Brownlow out of national pride, thus creating this farce of collective self-deception.
3. Millikan chose the data when he did the experiment-the flaw on the great man.
19 10, American physicist Millikan conducted the famous "oil drop experiment", and for the first time, he measured that hydrogen was 1836 times heavier than an electron, and won the Nobel Prize in Physics with 1923. At the same time, Ellen Gaft, a physicist who is more famous than him, is doing the same experiment, but no corresponding results have been obtained. Sixty years later, historians found that the 58 observations published by Millikan were not "not selected" as he vowed, but were selected from 140 observations! He only collects beautiful data that is beneficial to him and deletes all unfavorable data. This discovery shocked the physics community.
4. Cold nuclear fusion-eager to be a laughing stock
1On March 23rd, 989, Burns of the University of Utah in the United States and Fresman of Southampton University in the United Kingdom held a press conference, claiming that in a small laboratory device, palladium was used as cathode to electrolyze heavy water, and "cold nuclear fusion" was realized at normal temperature and pressure. However, more than 0/000 laboratories around the world have never successfully repeated the experimental results of Burns and Fresman, and finally denied this achievement. Their stories have become a negative textbook known to almost everyone in the scientific community.
5. Schon's "science" series of fake papers-the fall of tomorrow's star.
The "Schon Incident" is considered as one of the biggest academic fraud scandals in the history of contemporary science. On June 5438+065438+1 October1day, 2002, American Science magazine published a brief statement by American physicist Schon and his eight collaborators, announcing the cancellation of eight papers published in Science magazine from 2000 to 2006. The first authors of these eight papers are all Schon, covering the achievements of organic transistors, superconducting devices and molecular semiconductors. At that time, 32-year-old Schon published nearly 90 papers in academic journals and was once considered as a candidate for the Nobel Prize. However, Schon's research results were questioned by some colleagues, so Bell Laboratories invited five external experts to investigate. According to the survey results obtained by experts in September, Schon fabricated or tampered with the experimental data in at least 16 papers, and his collaborators were innocent and had no knowledge of it. The reason for Schon's large-scale fraud is that he has a strong desire for fame and fortune, hoping to gain honor by publishing some conjectures first, and eventually his reputation is ruined.
6. Turning water into oil-a modern fantasy
In 1980s, Wang Hongcheng, a native of Harbin, China, declared that "water has turned into oil". His theory is to prepare a mother liquor, and then mix it with ordinary water at the ratio of 1: 100000 to become a "water-based fuel", which can replace gasoline with low cost. Only a simple machine can produce 1 ton mother liquor every 20 minutes, while 1 ton mother liquor can produce 65438 water-based fuel. Through his performance, Wang Hongcheng persuaded some famous scientists, and the president and party secretary of Harbin Institute of Technology also believed him. Some media called it "the fifth great invention of China", which made changing water into oil a hot news at that time. Before 1994, a number of CPPCC members jointly questioned, and this scam lasted for more than ten years in China, causing losses of hundreds of millions of yuan to the country. Wang Hongcheng was eventually sentenced to ten years in prison.
7. Liaoning ancient birds-hometown of shame fossils
The "Liaoning ancient pirate bird" fossil is a false fossil made up of different animal bones. After being smuggled into the United States from 65438 to 0999, it attracted great attention of American scholars. The famous American National Geographic magazine published an article saying that ancient pirate birds were the missing link between dinosaurs and birds, which provided a direct basis for the dinosaur origin theory of birds. Later, Xu Xing, a scientist in China, exposed the scam. This scientific scandal was immediately cited in western countries.
There was an uproar, including NBC, USA-Today, Nature, Science and other world-renowned media scrambling to report.
8. lysenko Incident-Power Distorted Science.
From 1930s to 1960s, Lamarck and michurin's concept of acquired genetics became orthodox in the Soviet Union. For political and other reasons, lysenko, the representative of Lamarckian School, refused to accept the genetics of Mendel and Morgan supported by experiments, and called western geneticists enemies of the Soviet people, persecuting their opponents with political tools, which caused havoc in Soviet genetics and spread to many Eastern Group countries including China. Lysenko incident is a typical case in which political authority replaces scientific authority to adjudicate scientific disputes.
9. Watergate Incident in American Science.
In the early 1970s, William summerlin, a scientist at the Si Long Catalim Institute, claimed that he had successfully transplanted the skin of a black mouse into a white mouse. Summerlin seems to have found a way to avoid rejection without immunosuppressive drugs. This discovery is of great significance to organ transplantation. 1974, summerlin fraud case was exposed. It turned out that he achieved this result with the help of a black felt pen. An observant assistant in the laboratory noticed that the black spots on the mouse's back could be washed away, so everything else was washed away. Later, summerlin admitted everything and defended himself with heavy work. Finally, he was found guilty of misconduct. The summerlin incident caused a strong shock in academic circles, and many newspapers called this scandal "Watergate Incident in American Science".
10. Baltimore Incident-The Storm of Nobel Prize Winners
1In April, 986, Baltimore, winner of the Nobel Prize in Biomedicine, and her collaborator Teresa Carrie jointly published a paper in the famous academic journal Cell. However, a postdoctoral fellow with Teresa found that the experimental data obtained by her laboratory was flawed, which probably caused widespread concern. Sadly, in the five-year investigation, Baltimore has been using its reputation to publicly threaten investigators and oppose outside intervention. 1991March, after two rounds of investigation, the National Institutes of Health formally accused two key experimental data in the paper of being forged, which was a serious scientific misconduct. Although it was later confirmed that Baltimore was unaware of the data error and recovered his reputation, he withdrew his paper, publicly apologized to Otto, the whistleblower, and resigned as president of Rockefeller University.