Legendary Hoax
Explore a legendary hoax from the Museum of Hoaxes. Describe the elements and details of the hoax.
Applying what you know about how to evaluate arguments, pretend you were presented with this hoax
and outline the steps you would take to evaluate it. How does this hoax encourage critically evaluating
sources of information? Explain three methods by which you can prevent yourself from being fooled by
hoaxes or other sources of misinformation.
Legendary Hoax
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Museum of Hoaxes provides a collection of various hoaxes during the 19 th century. One
of the legendary hoaxes was that of “Composite Princetonian”. This hoax appeared in the front
page of one of the dailies – The Daily Princetonian. The photo was alluded to have been created
after analysis of 2100 students of Princeton, out of which 12 were selected and combined to
come up with the composite photo. This hoax was revealed later that the doctored photo was
that of Errol Flynn but it did not include his mustache (Hoaxes. org. 2014). The haircut was also
interfered with a little bit.
In case the hoax was presented to me, I would have taken various steps to evaluate it to
determine indeed whether the allegations are true or not. The first step is to find out the person
responsible for its publication. I will evaluate the credential and the affiliation of the the
organization presenting the information. This will aim to determine their level of authority and
reliability of the publishers (SDSU.edu. 2010). Then I will analyze the content as well try to
check if other source of information has such information. Will as well ponder on whether the
publisher tempered with the information.
The hoax provided require one to critically evaluate the source of information because,
the information provided is questionable. It elicits doubts in the mind of an individual on how
photos of different people can be fused into one. This is something that would have attracted
different media attentions and therefore, there was no way only this one publication could
capture such a story.
To prevent oneself from being fooled by hoaxes or any other misinformation, it is
important to take time to reflect about the photo or information. Ask various questions such as
what is the source of the information, credibility of the source, the intention behind the photo, the
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alternative source of information available, the style, content and accuracy and completeness of
the information, the sponsors of the photo or information among many others. These questions
will help to provide insights about the credibility of the photo or information
References
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Hoaxes.org. (2014). The Hoax of Museum Blog: the composite Princeton.
SDSU.edu. (2010). Evaluating sources of information.
