The recent apparent hoax by a Colorado couple seeking fame and fortune by preying on the credulity of the general public and abetted by their considerable skills as trained actors is the inspiration for this week’s blog. Hoaxes succeed where access to information in a situation is controlled by the party perpetrating the hoax, and fields of study that rely on unique, one-of-a kind observations or objects are more susceptible to hoaxes. Think art forgeries or in paleontology, unique fossils purported to be missing links. In the history of paleontology several episodes stand out, they range in time from the 1800s to the 1990s, but the reasons for the hoaxes are essentially the same as the recent one in the news because this aspect of human nature hasn’t changed. PT Barnum is supposed to have said, " There’s a sucker born every minute"*; the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes put it more eloquently as, “there is nothing new under the sun.”
*And PT Barnum is in fact associated with a paleontological/anthropological hoax, the Cardiff Giant (shown here). See www.roadsideamerica.com/ story/2172
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