Hoax : :
1 : an act intended to trick or dupe : IMPOSTURE 
2 : something accepted or established by fraud or fabrication.   

Researchers Beware!
Although there are vast resources of valid and useful data on the web, there is also a lot of garbage. Ultimately, you must decide whether the information you find is valid and should be used in your research through careful evaluation.

Most information is biased in some way, but web pages can are incredibly confusing and misleading. Pages may simply provide opinions or hearsay, with no facts to back it up. But, false information is also published deliberately. Sometimes authors don't realize the inaccuracies in their information, and publish it without checking. Sometimes organizations skew information to promote an agenda. Some pages are intended as jokes, parody, or satire.

Gallery of Hoax Websites
From the Museum of Hoaxes, these hoax websites aren't sites ABOUT hoaxes. These are sites that are, themselves, hoaxes. Some are real art pieces.

Fun Stuff: Parodies, Spoofs, and Satire
Buy Dehydrated Water.com (Yes!)
California's Velcro Crop under Challenge (And with the economy bad already....)
Feline Reactions to Bearded Men (A scientific study?)
First Male Pregnancy (as seen on Time Magazine)
Ladies Against Women (LAW) (!)
McWhortle Enterprises, Inc. (biological defense mechanisms)
The Onion (America's Finest News Source?)
Ovaprima.org (Research site about which came first...)
The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus (Help save it from extinction!)
Postmodernism Generator (Each time you RELOAD, a computer generates different essays.) 
The White House (whitehouse.org)  vs. The White House (whitehouse.gov)

Deliberate Parody by a University Professor 
Even respected print journals sometimes publish garbage. Alan Sokal, a physicist deliberately wrote and got published and article in a leading scholarly cultural studies journal. He says, "So, to test the prevailing intellectual standards, I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies -- whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross -- publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions?" Click here and read all about "The Social Text Affair".

Examples of Serious Bias (Racism and Revisionism)
Stormfront: White Nationalist Resource Page
Institute for Historical Review
Arthur R. Butz Home Page
Statement on Butz (discusses the free speech and intellectual freedom issues)

Other Resources About Hoaxes and Urban Legends
Hoaxbusters
Snopes.com
Museum of Hoaxes
Break the Chain (searchable archive of hoaxes spread via email)