A Tour of the Halls of Flummery. . - Reviews - The Museum of Hoaxes: A collection of Pranks, Stunts, Deceptions, and Other Wonderful Stories Contrived for the Public from the Middle Ages to the New Millennium - book review

The Museum of Hoaxes: A collection of Pranks, Stunts, Deceptions, and Other Wonderful Stories Contrived for the Public from the Middle Ages to the New Millennium. By Alex Boese. Penguin Putnam, New York. 2002. ISBN 0-525-94678-0. 266 pp. Hardcover, $19.95.

Hoaxes and the history of hoaxing are important elements in understanding practical skepticism. The very notion that perhaps a remarkable story or account may not be entirely (or at all) true is, at its heart, a skeptical one. In a way, the history of the paranormal closely parallels the history of hoaxes. From Bigfoot to Spiritualist mediums, from the Turin Shroud to the Roswell crash, there is hardly a category of the unexplained or paranormal that does not have a robust history of fraud and hoaxing. Alex Boese, a graduate student in San Diego and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes Web site, guides readers through his virtual museum in his new book The Museum of Hoaxes.

Some of the hoaxes will be familiar to longtime SKEPTICAL INQUIRER readers, such as the Cardiff Giant (said to be a petrified giant as described in the Bible), the Cottingley Fairies, and crop circles. The book, however, also includes a fascinating survey of lesser-known hoaxes. Boese covers hoaxes perpetrated by respected luminaries like Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain as well as inveterate pranksters such as Joey Skaggs. The book's presentation of the early history of hoaxes is very good and enlightening. Sir John Mandeville, Marco Polo, and other early explorers were accused--with good reason--of faking some of their seminal travel observations and journals.

The Museum of Hoaxes begins with a good (if arguable) discussion delineating differences between hoaxes, pranks, urban legends, frauds, and tall tales. There's some overlap, but he settles on the careful definition of hoax as "a deliberately deceptive act that has succeeded in capturing the attention of the public."

Boese provides an insightful discussion of the public's role in hoaxing. Hoaxes do not occur in a vacuum; the public's reaction to the hoax is an important element of the hoax. With an historian's perspective, Boese points our that current notions of truth are quite different from medieval ones. These days, we have a modern sophistication (and desire to discern truth) that might have seemed bizarre to our ancestors. Truth, after all, is the basis by which a hoax, tall tale, or other deception is measured. A mutable (or postmodern) truth leaves little basis upon which to discern fact from fraud. "The medieval world treated the concept of truth allegorically and spiritually, while we treat it scientifically. Claims that we would regard as obviously false were regarded by the medieval mind as true if they revealed a deeper underlying metaphysical meaning about the world.... Public life was highly localized and fragmented. Sharing of information between communities was sporadic and unreliable. As a result secrecy , not openness, became the fountain of medieval knowledge."

There are many books on hoaxes. Some, like Gordon Stein's Encyclopedia of Hoaxes and Carl Sifakis's Hoaxes and Scams, are excellent encyclopedic resources. Others, such as Outrage: The Story Behind the Tawana Brawley Hoax, are exhaustive, detailed analyses of a particular hoax. But among this lot, there is usually little discussion of the nature of hoaxes. The Museum of Hoaxes admirably fills the gap between the exhaustive catalogues of hoaxes and single-case studies. The book does a fine job of serving as a reference source; it not only has an index but also lists hoaxes by category and includes an extensive chapter-by-chapter list of references for further reading.

There are some apparent omissions. In the section on literary hoaxes, there's no mention of The Amityville Horror, or Mark Helfrich's 2000 book Naked Pictures of My Ex-Girlfriends (though the story of Sony's fake film reviewer David Manning is briefly recounted). There's also no mention of terrorism hoaxes, such as the literally thousands of hoaxes that followed the September 11, 2001, attacks and the anthrax-laced letters to politicians (though perhaps the book's deadline was too early to include a discussion of these).

I was often left wanting more information on a given topic or hoax, and it was at times frustrating to read an entry of only a few paragraphs. Still, a book the size and scope of The Museum of Hoaxes (like any museum) cannot hope to be complete and authoritative; new hoaxes occur all the time. The best a book like this can do is to bring readers a general survey of hoaxes, their nature and perpetrators, and offer some tips on how to avoid being hoaxed. In that, The Museum of Hoaxes is a valuable skeptical book for both serious research and casual amusement.

Benjamin Radford is managing editor of the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER and writes about hoaxes in his upcoming book Media Mythmakers (2003, Prometheus Books).

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