1.0 INTRODUCTION
I'm Neil Pickering, a fourth-year chemistry grad student in Durham, North Carolina. I spend my days waiting on columns and my nights waiting for time on the NMR, and in between, I get e-mail. Specifically, I get forwards. My Aunt Ruth in Winston-Salem sends about four a day, and my mother sends whatever Aunt Ruth forgot. Every one of them ends with some version of FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!!
So this summer I started treating the forwards the way I'd treat any unknown that shows up in the lab: figure out what it claims to be, look it up, test it if I can, write down what happened. This page is the lab notebook. Aunt Ruth has been told about it. She says she's proud of me and has forwarded it to everyone she knows.
2.0 METHODS
2.1 Look for the signs. Almost every hoax has most of these:
- ALL CAPITAL LETTERS and a lot of exclamation points!!!
- A line promising that "this is not a hoax." Real news almost never has to say so.
- No date. It says "yesterday" or "this week" but never which one, so it stays fresh forever.
- An authority that's vague or wrong: the FCC, "IBM," "a friend of my cousin who's a nurse."
- A story that happened to someone nobody can actually find.
- Orders to send it to everybody, right now, before it's too late.
2.2 Check the literature. The Department of Energy's computer security team, CIAC, keeps a list of virus hoaxes. The Urban Legends Reference Pages and the alt.folklore.urban newsgroup cover pretty much everything else. For the old stuff, go to the library and find Jan Harold Brunvand's books; The Vanishing Hitchhiker is the place to start. And if a company's name is in the story, see what the company says.
2.3 Replicate if possible. See Case 002, which I replicated with two sticks of butter and a blender.
2.4 Report the results, even when they're embarrassing to Aunt Ruth.
3.0 RESULTS: THE CASE LOG
| CASE |
THE CLAIM |
VERDICT |
| 001 |
Just opening an e-mail called "Good Times" will erase your hard drive.
Full report |
HOAX |
| 002 |
Neiman Marcus charged a woman $250 for its cookie recipe, so she's giving it away free.
Full report |
HOAX
(but tasty) |
| 003 |
Craig Shergold, a boy in England with a brain tumor, wants get-well cards (or business cards) to set a world record.
Notes: This one started out true, back in 1989. He got his record, many millions of cards over. Then he had surgery in 1991, and he recovered. His family has asked for years for people to stop. The letter never got the news. |
OUT OF DATE
please stop |
| 004 |
"Mikey" from the Life cereal commercials died from eating Pop Rocks and drinking soda.
Notes: The boy who played Mikey grew up just fine. Pop Rocks crackle because of little bubbles of carbon dioxide trapped in the candy. That's a tiny amount of gas next to what's in the can of soda you're drinking. You'll burp. That's it. |
HOAX |
| 005 |
Water heated in the microwave can suddenly boil up out of the cup when you move it.
Notes: Yes, this one's real chemistry. It's called superheating. Bubbles need a scratch or a speck to start on, and in a very clean, smooth cup, water can get hotter than its boiling point without bubbling. Then you bump it or drop in a spoonful of instant coffee and it all goes at once. Don't heat it longer than you need to, and let it sit a minute before you reach in. |
TRUE |
| 006 |
A traveler wakes up in a hotel bathtub full of ice, missing a kidney.
Notes: Always a friend of a friend, never anybody with a name. Nobody who it actually happened to has ever turned up. A kidney transplant takes a matched donor, an operating room and a whole team of surgeons, not a motel bathroom. |
HOAX |
| 007 |
Drug dealers are handing kids "Blue Star" lick-on tattoos soaked in LSD.
Notes: The warning flyer has been photocopied and passed around for nearly twenty years. Police departments keep putting out notices saying they've never seen a case of it. Aunt Ruth's copy came from her church bulletin. |
HOAX |
4.0 DISCUSSION
Seven cases, one true. That's about my usual success rate with experiments too.
The thing I keep noticing is that the people forwarding these aren't gullible. Aunt Ruth did the books for a furniture company for thirty years; nobody slips a bad number past her. They forward because they're trying to help. The hoax works because it borrows good intentions. So be nice when you write back. I start with "Thanks for thinking of me," and then I send the link.
5.0 FUTURE WORK
- Case 008: Aunt Ruth's newest, received Thursday. Analysis pending.
- Whether my advisor actually reads my progress reports. Results so far inconclusive.
Got a forward you want tested? Send it to the lab. Please delete the forty lines of >>>> first.
GeoCities.us
» ResearchTriangle » Lab
