Mark Boslough

Mark Boslough is a physicist most famous for his April Fools' Day 1998 joke involving Pi. To poke fun at New Mexico's legislature for attempting to require schools to teach creationism, he wrote an article claiming that Alabama state legislature voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the 'Biblical value' of 3.0. This was passed around to people via email and caused an outrage. The hoax was finally discovered when people started calling the Alabama legislature to protest.^[1] National Geographic News highlighted Boslough's article when it compiled a list of "some of the more memorable hoaxes in recent history."^[2] It was elevated by the Museum of Hoaxes to number seven on its "Top 100 April Fools Hoaxes of All Time" list.^[3] It eventually took on a new existence as an urban legend and has had to be debunked by Snopes.^[4]

Within a year, Boslough launched another internet hoax in which he fabricated an unfortunate Darwin Award recipient's untimely death. That story also had to be debunked by Snopes after it was printed as an actual event by the Denver Post.^[5][6]

Boslough's day job includes research into asteroid and comet impacts, and he regularly appears in television documentaries on that subject. His work was featured in the BBC program Tutunkhamun's Fireball,^[7] was one of Discover Magazine's Top 100 Science Stories of 2006.,^[8] and has written about climate change denial in the Skeptical Inquirer,^[9] in particular reference to the "Climatic Research Unit email controversy".

In February 2011 Boslough was elected as a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry^[10]

Boslough grew up in Broomfield, Colorado and attended Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

See also

• Indiana Pi Bill

References

1. ^ http://www.nmsr.org/alabama.htm article
2. ^ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/03/0331_040331_aprilfoolshoax.html
3. ^ http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/
4. ^ http://www.snopes.com/religion/pi.htm
5. ^ http://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/microwave.asp
6. ^ http://www.sweetreason.org/2.htm
7. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5196362.stm
8. ^ http://72.32.189.109/issues/jan-07/cover/
9. ^ http://www.csicop.org/si/show/mann_bites_dog_why_climategate_was_newsworthy
10. ^ "CSI announces new Fellows". http://www.csicop.org/news/press_releases/show/csi_announces_new_fellows. Retrieved 2011-08-07. 

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