Many Of Us,

 will have heard of scientific hoaxes,

like this one, that fooled the National Geographic magazine in 1999, the magazine claimed that the fossil was a 'missing link' between birds and terrestrial theropod dinosaurs, called the Archaeoraptor, it fooled many before it was finally unmasked as a fake, if you like this sort of thing over a coffee this is a good place to start, from Undiscovered Elements in 1998 to the Piltdown Man in 1912 and The Tasaday Tribe in 1971 to the wickedly clever and cruel Johann Beringer's lying stones in 1725, they are all here at Business Insider.