A true hoax provokes. It questions cultural biases, shattering conventions. But the curious case of the three men writing as a female author Carmen Mola does none of this.
The flood of information can be overwhelming.
Rudzhan Nagiev/iStock/Getty Images Plus
The QAnon conspiracy movement is the latest in a long line of moral panics that emerge as a response to change. False theories are used to undermine claims to social justice raised by marginalized groups.
A sign outside Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver, B.C., explains visitor restrictions to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Hospitals have requested that people avoid non-emergency visits, and conspiracy theorists are posting images of empty parking lots online as false proof that COVID-19 is an elaborate hoax.
FOX News host Sean Hannity (pictured here in 2018) gave credibility to a tweet he read out lout on his popular syndicated radio show, which called COVID-19 a fraud “to spread panic in the populace, manipulate the economy and suppress dissent.”
AP/Julie Jacobson
Why have conspiracy theories so easily circulated during the COVID-19 pandemic? What do these theories tell us about societies and what challenges do they present?
The Voynich Manuscript has researchers, the media, and the public hooked. But pseudo-explanations for the book’s ‘code’ reveals a serious problem with society’s relationship with science.
Wellness ‘gurus’ like Belle Gibson (not pictured here) have changed the way we think about our own health.
Budimir Jevtic/Shutterstock
Research in Indonesia shows that people’s age, education levels and gender do not determine their likelihood to share fake news. Internet spending does.
Dozens of voluntary researchers in nine Indonesian cities mapped digital literacy activities and they found the country needs much more to solve their digital media problems.
When new discoveries are jealously guarded under lock and key, science suffers.
Andy Wright
Researcher who has studied online news for 20 years says people fall for fake news because they don’t value journalistic sources and consider themselves and their friends as credible news sources.
Sharing election hashtags: Dots are Twitter accounts; lines show retweeting; larger dots are retweeted more. Red dots are likely bots; blue ones are likely humans.
Clayton Davis
If people can be conned into jeopardizing our children’s lives, as they do when they opt out of immunizations, could they also be conned out of democracy?
Eoanthropus dawsoni, or the Piltdown Man, never really existed.
Wikimedia/Wellcome Images
One of paleontology’s most notorious hoaxes has long been blamed on a serial forger named Charles Dawson. But might a Jesuit priest have been in on a joke that went wrong ?
The portrait painted by John Cooke in 1915. Back row: (left to right) F. O. Barlow, G. Elliot Smith, Charles Dawson, Arthur Smith Woodward.
John Cooke/wikimedia
Fossils claiming to be the missing link between ape and humans were manipulated in such a way that Charles Dawson, who discovered them, was most likely the forger.
Cleverly doctored images of the effects of Sydney’s April storms amused social media users – but hoax images have a much longer history.
Todd Lopez/@Creative_Order
The adage that the camera doesn’t lie is, of course, a lie, as a long history of hoaxes amply demonstrates. And yet we can still be duped by tricksters. We should remain vigilant.
What? Eating chocolate doesn’t help lose weight? But I read it in the newspaper!
anjuli_ayer/Flickr
A recent hoax study suggesting chocolate helps people lose weight highlights many problems with the way science is conducted and reported by the media.