for questions about claims related to the history of science.
Questions tagged [history-of-science]
36 questions
77
votes
2 answers
Did Euler make the elementary mistake √-2 √-3 = √6?
The following extract is from Tristan Needham's Visual Complex Analysis,
Even in 1770 the situation was still sufficiently confused that it was possible for so great a mathematician as Euler to mistakenly argue that √-2 √-3 = √6.
I found this to…
Agile_Eagle
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73
votes
1 answer
Are the claims made by Indian Ministers / personalities regarding ancient Indian inventions true?
In the past couple of years, several Indian Ministers / personalities have made claims regarding existence of modern inventions in Ancient India.
Prime Minister Modi claimed that genetic science and plastic surgery existed in Ancient…
Agile_Eagle
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58
votes
1 answer
Did Robert Hooke publish his spring force law as an anagram?
Did Robert Hooke (and other contemporary scientists) ever publish their discoveries as anagrams?
This Wikipedia article claims that Robert Hooke published his spring force law as a anagram. It also goes on to say that,
This was a method sometimes…
Agile_Eagle
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42
votes
1 answer
Did Louis Pasteur keep a gun in the laboratory while developing the rabies vaccine?
Is it true that while developing the vaccine for rabies Louis Pasteur kept a gun in his laboratory and had instructed all his lab assistants to shoot anyone in the head who accidentally got infected with the virus?
I could only find this in a Reddit…
baba
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37
votes
2 answers
Did Rudolf Steiner prove the contagiousness of varicella in 1875?
Pages like those from the National Vaccine Information Center NVIC or the Centers for Disease Control CDC make the following claim:
In 1875, Rudolf Steiner discovered that chickenpox was infectious to others after he took liquid from the chickenpox…
LangLаngС
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31
votes
2 answers
Did Alexander Graham Bell write "the unchecked burning of fossil fuels would have a sort of greenhouse effect" in 1917?
Quoting from a clearly low-quality journal:
In 1917 Alexander Graham Bell wrote. The unchecked burning of fossil fuels] would have a sort of greenhouse effect", and "The net result is the greenhouse becomes a sort of hot-house." Bell went on to …
Rebecca J. Stones
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22
votes
3 answers
Was ape tool use "well known and not the least bit controversial" in 1735?
Before Jane Goodall's discoveries in the 1960s, it had been widely asserted/believed that Man was the only animal that made and used tools.
However, Frans de Waal (2016) states that in 1735,
Ape tool use was well known and not the least bit…
user62611
21
votes
2 answers
Did the precedence of operations in arithmetic change since 1917?
The internet has been so bored lately that it spent most of the week arguing about a simple math statement. That statement:
8 ÷ 2(2+2) = ?
Mostly, people are arguing that the answer is either 16 or 1. Depending on the order you calculate the…
user11643
17
votes
1 answer
Was a misplaced decimal point responsible for the popular belief that spinach has a lot of iron?
Daniel Engber writes in Who Will Debunk The Debunkers?:
Popeye loved his leafy greens and used them to obtain his super strength, Arbesman’s book explained, because the cartoon’s creators knew that spinach has a lot of iron. Indeed, the character…
Christian
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15
votes
2 answers
Did a turkish man invent a steam engine 200 years before the industrial revolution and only made it to spin doner kebab?
I've seen this picture being reposted in many different places recently:
Is it true? Where can this machine be seen? What is it if it's not a steam engine?
Update: The pictures posted above show exhibit 75 in the Istanbul Museum of the History of…
Ruslan Oblov
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14
votes
3 answers
Is the fossil KNM-ER 1470 evidence that other dating methods other than the fossil record are inaccurate?
The skull was originally dated to be almost 3 million years old. This led Richard Leakey, the son of famed archeologist Louis Leakey to comment, "Either We toss out this skull or we toss out our theories on early man. It simply fits no previous…
user1873
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14
votes
2 answers
Did the Catholic church prosecute Galileo because he was teaching unproven ideas?
There is a popular Youtube video, Priest Debunks Common Catholic Myths, in which Casey Cole, a Catholic and Franciscan, "debunks" the idea that the church wrongly tried Galileo.
The Church certainly held a trial against Calilio and stripped him of…
Blue
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14
votes
2 answers
Whose account of the response to Michael Mann's original "hockey stick" analysis is correct?
New York has filed a lawsuit against several Big Oil firms on the grounds that they fomented contrarian opinion to undermine some findings in climate science.
In one part of the suit they claim the following (paragraph 86, my emphasis):
In the…
matt_black
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14
votes
1 answer
Was Ignaz Semmelweis ignored by the medical community when he advocated hand washing?
Daniel Engber writes in Who Will Debunk The Debunkers?:
Ignaz Semmelweis, the Hungarian physician who noticed in the 1840s that doctors were themselves the source of childbed fever in his hospital’s obstetric ward? Semmelweis had reduced disease…
Christian
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12
votes
1 answer
Did Feynman write 'Orange Juice' as a response to Pauling's advisory on Vitamin C?
Apparently, according to the Nobel Prize's official Facebook, Richard Feynman composed a song on the congas known as 'orange juice' after fellow Nobel-laureate Linus Pauling wrote to him claiming that his cancer could be cured with vitamin C.
Source…
Nico Damascus
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