How Hoaxes Spread: teacher key

How to Check If Something Is True, grade 10 edition, written for 10th grade. Hoaxes spread because they sell, flatter or fit what people already expect. A fake Moon story, faked fairy photos, a faked skull and a radio play that was said to cause panic show how a false story can last and how it is checked.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. Why might the Moon story have sounded real?
   • Its readers had seen the Moon creatures
   • It said it was copied from an Edinburgh paper and a science journal (answer)
   • It was printed in a science journal
2. What happened to the paper's sales after the Moon stories?
   • They fell
   • They stayed the same
   • They rose (answer)
3. What did the 1953 tests show about the Piltdown jaw?
   • It was an ape's (answer)
   • It was a human's
   • It was a dinosaur's
4. Why did newspapers have a reason to exaggerate the 1938 panic?
   • Radio had taken away their advertising money (answer)
   • Radio had never reached many homes
   • Newspapers did not cover radio
5. What does it mean for a fraud to differ from a conspiracy theory?
   • A fraud is never proved
   • A fraud can be proved with evidence, as Piltdown was by tests (answer)
   • A fraud is always a secret plot

Words

• hoax: deliberate fake
• retraction: public correction
• composite: joined pictures
• conspiracy: secret plot
• bias: leaning one way