Viral 'human bird wings' video fake, probably an ad, expert says

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/22/viral-human-bird-wings-video-fake-probably-ad-expert-says/

by _htpa • 14 years ago

14 22 14 years ago

dlikhten• 14 years ago

I reject anything from fox news. If any other news source says it I'd even read it. Sorry fox is dead to me.

jff• 14 years ago

What a close-minded person you are. This is essentially an ad-hominem attack, as HN loves to point out--because it comes from a certain source, you dismiss it immediately and attempt to discredit it.

locopati• 14 years ago

Actually, it's an evidence-based attack.

http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/11/21/fairleigh_dickinso...

mistercow2• 14 years ago

Discounting based on a source repeatedly shown to be unreliable is not ad hominem; it is proper evidential weighting.

It would be bad reasoning to say "because [source] says [claim] and [source] is unreliable, [claim] is probably wrong." But it is correct reasoning to say "[source] says [claim], but [source] is unreliable, so my beliefs about [claim] are virtually unaffected."

Edit: of course, if you saw the original video, you should already believe it to be fake. An article from foxnews.com should not change that. And yes, I realize that this is only being reproduced by foxnews.com, and is not their original material. Still, "don't click [unreliable source].com links" is a worthwhile policy to have because the human mind is not very good at tracking sources.

JeremyBanks• 14 years ago

That's brilliant, particularly given that this post wasn't even written by Fox: http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2260-human-bird-wings-vi...

cjdrake• 14 years ago

This article isn't even remotely political. I wouldn't have posted it if the title was "Obama's bird wings are a hoax." :).

hcarvalhoalves• 14 years ago

OH RLY? Does anyone really thought it was real? I bet $ 100 it's a viral for Red Bull :)

garbles• 14 years ago

A new Pilot Wings game, maybe?

draggnar• 14 years ago

Someone wants to give you wings maybe?

wouterinho• 14 years ago

The guy that did the video was just on Dutch TV. He said it is fake. He's a movie maker and this was a 8-month long experiment.

joejohnson2• 14 years ago

Do you have a link for this? I can't find it on Google.

microtonal• 14 years ago

http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/5133/Media-technologie/article/det...

Google Translate should do a decent job ;).

By the way, the real name of the guy is 'Floris Kaayk'.

sh1mmer• 14 years ago

However the "expert" was an expert on ads not engineering. Which perhaps qualifies him to assess viral video but not physics.

strags• 14 years ago

Some further analysis, and a theory that it's a viral marketing campaign for Kid Icarus.

http://metabunk.org/threads/480-Debunked-Human-Birdwings

jenhsun• 14 years ago

Human bird winds project Jarno Smeets on Dutch TV said it's fake. Video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OESwdRb48jM

mkramlich• 14 years ago

I'm no "expert" but I concluded it was fake and probably a promotional stunt. Too many wrong signals and clues to be otherwise.

simplefish• 14 years ago

grins I hope some of the more credulous commenters here on HN[1] like the taste of crow. Especially the ones that attacked other commenters as being closed-minded for pointing out obvious problems with the video.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3732385

Viral 'human bird wings' video fake, probably an ad, expert says

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