[the_af]

Arthur Conan Doyle famously embarrassed himself with the Cottingley Fairies fake [1]. A grown man, believing in fairies -- small women with butterfly wings -- based on some dodgy (doctored) photographs. He went beyond believing in them; he actually promoted the case.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies

[standardUser]

That Wikipedia page is worth the read. It's amazing how many people they duped! The photos are unedited but they include cardboard cutouts. It's immediately obvious to my 21st Century eyes that the fairies are drawings, but apparently they fooled a lot of people.

The 5th photo is the only one that doesn't look immediately like a cutout. It's believed to have been the result of a double exposure, but one of the women maintained until her death that the 5th photo was genuine.

The photos: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/english-literat...

[the_af]

I don't laugh at the technology itself -- today those photos look ridiculous but I believe people could find them realistic back then.

The dumb thing is believing fairies exist at all. If I see "convincing" evidence of fairies, with today's technology, I would still remain skeptical. It would take a lot more for me to even begin to wonder. Because fairies don't exist, we know where they come from in folklore and literature, and there's so much evidence they don't exist (along with unicorns, the Yeti, gremlins, etc) that a couple of convincing photographs or videos is simply not enough.

Conan Doyle wouldn't have been fooled had he been a skeptical, inquiring mind. Alas! He was just gullible.

Famously, Conan Doyle had Sherlock claim:

> When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Unfortunately Doyle, because he so wanted to believe, didn't really eliminate the impossible. He carelessly dismissed the most obvious option: that the two girls were playing him for a fool.

[galaxyLogic]

Yes but we must also consider what he thought would be the benefit of promoting the fairy stories for him? Of course, fame. The famous person who discovered and proved to the world that fairies exist.

Doyle was not a scientist but he admired scientists, discoverers of truths and he desired to be one. He also desired that other people should believe him, that would give him great power.

Think about all those conspiracy theories floating in US today, why do people spread them? It's a Ponzi-scheme, the originators of a conspiracy get great power by having many followers who believe them.

The other side of it is that of course people want to believe great stories that might prove to them afterlife will be better than the current one. JFK is still alive, anybody?

Fairies Wear Boots - Black Sabbath

[bratwurst3000]

Hahaha this is a good article. I love the part where the father didn’t believe them but the mother did and kind of published the photographs. And they did it only because of an argument with their mother.

Could something like flat earth theory have started like this? A bad joke that people believed and it got hyped not because it is true but because idiots believing it is kind of fun.

[the_af]

Today? I think most flat-earthers are indeed having fun with an elaborate, long-running joke. Some even sort of admit it. (And some are truly deranged, of course).

Back then? Flat earth made all the sense in the world, according to the empirical observations possible at the time. Only it wasn't able to explain some phenomena (e.g ships "sinking" over the horizon), and so evidence accumulated against it, eventually.