Word: hoaxes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...notice has been served on Rorvik and Lippincott-and, indirectly, on other authors and publishers-that it may well be costly to print as fact books that are fictitious or, even worse, hoaxes. Charging that Rorvik and Lippincott have done just that, Oxford University Geneticist J. Derek Bromhall last week filed a $7 million libel suit against them. Bromhall, a respected scientist, notes that he would not have brought suit had Image been published as fiction. But as nonfiction, he says, the book has "defamed" him by quoting from his research "so as to create the impression that Bromhall...
...point. Gustavo Curtis, the former chief of Beatrice Foods in Colombia who was held by terrorists for eight months, is suing his company for $185 million. His complaint: though the firm had had prior indications that he would be a terrorist target, Beatrice Foods treated his disappearance as a hoax at first, then dawdled over negotiating his release, condemning him and his family to a long, anxiety-laden ordeal...
...that these paleolithic hunters left in caves in France and Spain. When the first of these subterranean galleries was discovered in Spain nearly a century ago, Europe's savants, still reeling from the shock of Darwinian evolution, refused to believe that the find was anything more than a hoax. Since then, nearly a hundred richly decorated prehistoric caves have been found in Spain and France, and the existence of paleolithic painting has been established beyond doubt. The ancient artisans also left behind tiny sculptures of exquisite beauty, meticulous carvings on mammoth bone, and other stunning objects. Like the tableaux...
Read treats this new wrinkle in an otherwise familiar story as fact-until, in a final section oddly called "Corroboration," he suggests that the Nazi connection was another tickle, a hoax designed to hook the publisher. Read then exits rather sheepishly with the classic copout, "Let each reader decide upon its veracity for himself." In an era of recycled journalism and package publishers who may be soon calling books "entertainment systems," everybody aboard The Train Robbers appears to have it both ways. Even the reader, who can spook himself with the thought that the SS rides again or ignore this...
...PUDDING produced A Thousand Clones each night for two months to mixed reviews, but when author David Rorvik announced in February that a child had been cloned in a laboratory, the response was immediate and deafening, raising questions involving scientific, journalistic, and human ethics. Scientists called the claim a hoax and demanded documentation, but none was forthcoming as Rorvik fell back, using a journalist's privilege to protect his sources. The publisher was criticized for publishing his book as non-fiction without being sure of its accuracy, and it responded by speeding up the printing of the book...