What is the biggest scientific lie in the history of the world?

Answer 1

The theory of evolution. It is taught as being factually true, and it is taught world-wide.

Answer 2

Human influenced Global Warming is the biggest scientific lie in the history of the world, what other lie has effected everyone?

Answer 3

Pierre de Fermat's claim to have a proof of "Fermat's Last Theorem". That's probably the biggest mathematical lie. It is thought that he had an idea but this idea didn't really work. It took mathematicians over 300 years to come up with a valid proof. I say its the biggest because for those 300 years attempts to prove the theorem created and cultivated many areas of mathematics, so it had the most influence on its discipline than any other lie, albeit a positive influence.

Answer 4

The biggest lie is that some scientists still claiming that the universe existed even when there were no consciousness. What I mean is the claim that consciousness came in the later stages of the Big Bang

Answer 5

The Cardiff Giant is considered one of the biggest hoaxs of all time. Follow the link, the article is pretty interesting.

"Many have declared the Cardiff Giant to be the greatest hoax of all time. Whether or not this is the case, its huge size and mysterious presence certainly tapped into some strange element of the post-Civil War American psyche. Although the massive public interest in the giant gradually died down, it remained popular. Even today people still make the journey to visit it at its permanent home in the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown, New York (down the road from the Baseball Hall of Fame)."

Answer 6

Perhaps the greatest of all time were the claims by Frederick A. Cook to have discovered the North Pole in 1908, and the subsequent claim by Robert A. Peary to have discovered the North Pole in 1909.

Answer 7

There are certainly scientific mistakes but I am not so sure
about scientific lies..
There are scientists that have lied but again, I don't know that
scientists as a group ever deliberately support an outright lie.
I would be interested to hear the answers..

Answer 8

Like others, there haven't been quite as many outright lies as mistakes. In the scientific world, however, there is enough secrecy, mystery, and intrigue to write a pretty good novel. research groups are constantly fighting to make the breakthrough first. Even within a single institution, the competition is pretty cut throat, and research groups will do whatever they can to prevent other groups from knowing what they are doing and to find out what the other groups are doing.

Answer 9

maybe lamarkian evolution. or maybe that science they had in the mid19th century where they thought that the shape of your head determined things about your personality. or for a more modern example, most people think handwriting analysis is more or less pseudoscience these days.

on the other hand, these weren't so much lies as they were mistakes. which is a pretty big difference really. I can't think of any scientific lies though.

Answer 10

Lysenkoism

http://skepdic.com/lysenko.html

Lysenko & some others before him, came up with a poor theory of evolution. It became a dominant theory for a while in the USSR, not because it was a good theory, but because it was promoted by Soviet/Communist ideology.

Answer 11

"The Earth is flat" is probably the biggest scientific lie.
"Global warming" is probably the biggest poly/sci lie.