I’ll ask Andrew Wakefield what he thinks
Why wasnt this un Huggbees Unusual Deaths series? This is hilarious!
My daughter has just written her bachelor thesis. For that, she had to compare a bunch of papers and studies about a number of sub-topics related to her thesis topic. For one such point, there were only two studies to be found in the world. Both from renowned scientists and universities, both looking sound regarding their methods, both having comparably large data sets, and they both came to completely opposite conclusions. After a talk with her thesis advisor, she dropped this sub-topic and the studies from her thesis.
Yep. Something like that.
Man, late to this party but if you want a wild ride this guy’s got a few… Humans to elements. I realize the statement wasn’t looking for a response but if you actually want to know buckle up…
Patenting my formula for turning mercury into gold, registering it with the state, and filing a series of vexatious lawsuits claiming anyone doing gold plating is actually using my technique.
Mercury to gold is an easy one, you just hide gold in your stir stick behind a wax cap.
isn’t there a problem with lack of replication in the scientific world though? i feel like replication experiments don’t get grants easily so people are more likely to pursue one time experiments.
Yeah and if it were some mundane claim it would probably get away with it. But its always something outlandish like say being able to perform fully automated blood tests with a single drop of blood.
For a hot minute, Elizabeth Holmes had a company with a multi-billion dollar valuation based on her specious claims. It doesn’t seem like the risk of getting caught deterred her from committing a phenomenal fraud, or rendering false results to thousands of patients who relied on it during her initial testing. The enormous immediate profit and prestige drowned out the nagging fear of getting caught.
Also, the people investing in her company really should have done more independent research than they did.
Just do experiments that confirm the bias of your peers and grant review boards.
Someone knows the Master’s thesis trick.
It counts as long as p < 0.05
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White mode screen shots nooo my eyes !
There are a couple great video essays by Bobby Broccoli on YouTube where they dive into the history of people who faked human cloning and discovering a new element
Link for those interested:
Amazing video. Thanks for sharing.
The video on Jan Hendrick Schön was what I thought of on opening the thread
I love bobby broccoli. For me, one of the very few instant-click long format channels.
Later that evening at the local tavern.
“So then when it fails for the third time, he drinks a cup of acid, tips his hat to the crowd, and then collapses.”
“Haha! That’s gold!”
The tavern falls silent.
Priceless
He was probably suffering from mercury poisoning anyway which made him think he could get away with what he was doing.
damn the guy lied himself into a pretty deep hole. it is a shame he felt suicide was his only option. sure his reputation was ruined, but he was young. he could have started a new life elsewhere
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Yeah but back then pictures weren’t common and you could just grow a beard, decide your name is now Thames Twice, and move to another town really fast away while still letting your title as chemist, since document verification was really hard to do unless it was for some bigwig (and even then you could sometimes get in). If you really want to sell the act he could learn an exotic foreign language like Swedish and say he studied in Sweden too, but had English parents and that’s why he spoke English so fluently. Most of proving why you are cage by showing you could do the skills you claimed you had.
That’s why charlatans could live a life of scamming.
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BECAUSE pictures weren’t common, it was hard to start a new life. If you were an adult and knew no one in the town you arrived at, no one would trust you, give you a job or rent out a room to you. Cause they’d all assume there was a good reason you ran away from the place where people knew you, and there was no way to verify if you were who you claimed to be.
Ummm, people moved all the time. There wouldn’t be a reason to assume you were running from something. Have you never read a history book? You could even just be moving to a smaller town in the country side for “fresher air” to help your tuberculosis.
If you had a profession, you needed a letter of recommendation from your former employer or your guild to vouch for you.
Depends on the job, how much starting money you had, and where you’re moving too. You could for example say you’re moving to set up a chemist shop, especially in the smaller or more remote towns.
Who wants they prussic drank?
Mercury to silver is an easy transformation. You just take a vial of quicksilver, and make it run laps until it’s really tired.
While this may work short-term, eventually you’ll end up with a bunch of quickersilver, which is much harder to convert. While it’s a bit more work, I find the conversion from mercury to improvised cudgel is an easier transformation so long as you perform it in locations already high in gold content. Do note that this is a potentially volatile and dangerous reaction.
But that’s not all that useful, since it’s not stable and will turn soon into quickersilver
That’s why you break mercury’s legs instead.
