Since we get so many students at the SDMB looking for help with their papers, I figured I’d look for help in teaching my class.
I’m discussing sources and credibility, and I was wondering if anybody could recommend some good hoax sites along the lines of Bonsaikitten.com, or really anyplace that looks credible but is giving out bogus info.
Alternatively, I’d like a good juicy example of one of the major news sources getting the facts utterly wrong.
Snopes.com, one of the most credible hoaxbusting sites, has a page of “lost legends” that are there in order to test the reader’s gullibility. The last entry is an essay on “false authority syndrome.”
How about nearly all the major news outlets collectively muffing one of the year’s biggest stories? Gore wins Florida:
It’s more blatant, but http://www.whitehouse.org/ (note, NOT .com) doesn’t spill the beans right away…
There’s a guy in the States who makes a habit of making up outrageous news stories and seeing how far he can run with them… I can’t recall his name or any of the specific things he’s done though. Anything he was involved in outta count.
Thanks kalt, but I’m looking for things that people might actually believe. I don’t think The Onion fools anyone.
And before someone says it, I already have Somethingawful.com
Like malepregnancy.com? Another famous one is manbeef.com (a fake mail-order company selling human meat) but it looks like it’s not there anymore. The oldest hoax site I can remember is the Toilet Cam, supposedly a real-time webcam aimed at an office toilet. It turned out to be a static image. Here is some info on it.
The Museum of Hoaxes web site has a collection of hoax websites which lists many others.
…except for certain members of the Beijing press corps that is.
http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/nation/3429896.htm
The Bad Astronomy website contains a wealth of examples of astronomical conspiracy theories, as well as media errors. Debunking is provided.
A current thread there about the possibility that the moons of Mars got sucked out of their orbits by comet 76p in June of 2000, provides an excellent glimpse of what happens when wild theory and internet science collide.
Not sure how old your students are, but if you think they’re old enough and your school board will allow it, the Technical Virgin site is always a hoot!
http://www.haven.org/~hauman/InfinityDog/technicalvirgin/index.html
You don’t quite pick up on if it’s serious or not until you hit the teen testimonials page.
(Warning! May not be safe for young children or residents of Utah!)
My english prof was on the same subject last week and she gave this example:
http://www.martinlutherking.org/
She pointed out it fits a lot of the criteria for a reputable site.
There is also a lot of sites like that involving the holocaust( i.e., it never existed).
I’m interested in the King site – do the references check out?
This isn’t really a General Quesition with a factual answer, so I’ll move this over to MPSIMS.
bibliophage
moderator GQ