5

Electricity Turns Everyone into Trolls

Before the 18th century, we had a tough time wrapping our minds around electricity (things like lightning were best described as "Zeus' space magic" and went no further than that). However, once electricity was better understood and batteries were finally constructed in the form of Leyden jars, one of the first practical applications people discovered for this newly harnessed energy was using it to shock the balls out of each other.

UCLA
"There is no possible better use for this technology."

4

Sir Richard Owen Trolls His Rival's Death

Sure, Sir Richard Owen once got into a bitter flame war with Charles Darwin that seriously devalued the discussion of evolution as a legitimate theory and brought about his own professional ruin. But that's not what makes him one of the greatest trolls science has ever seen.

Sir Richard Owen was a scientist who pioneered the field of paleontology by plagiarizing the work of a colleague named Gideon Mantell, then used his clout to crush Mantell, leaving the man to die poor, crippled, and unrecognized. And after Mantell was dead, Owen only stepped up his campaign.

Holy shit, that's Scrooge!

First, Mantell's obituary was written by Owen himself (under a pseudonym) and predictably boiled down to "Ha ha, look at this dead asshole." Then, Mantell's spine was placed in a museum for scientific study. He had badly broken his back years earlier in a carriage accident, and his lower vertebrae had twisted and fused back into place in a manner that can only be described as "tit-blastingly wrong." And who should be in charge of the museum that took control of Mantell's mutant spinal column? None other than Sir Richard "I shit on your grave" Owen, who immediately seized this opportunity to skip the rope of dickitry across Mantell's already belittled legacy.

After stealing Mantell's life's work and diminishing his career to the level of "sparse Wikipedia entry," Owen took the spine and had it pickled in a jar to demonstrate "the severest degree of deformity," where it was placed on display alongside other "monstrosities," presumably on a shelf labeled "TROLLOLOLOL."

"This is nothing compared to the size of the bone I gave your mother. I fucking dare you to haunt me."

3

Alan Sokal Trolls Academia With a Bullshit Paper

The 1990s saw the rise of postmodern academics that insisted that "science," as we know it, was based more on prejudice than actual objective discovery. Most scientists didn't know what to make of this argument, because they were under the impression that they'd been doing math problems and pouring things into beakers, not trying to fulfill some latent patriarchal and/or racial agenda. Thus the "science wars" began, which sounds like something that should have been astounding, but wound up being fought inside universities with protracted silences and strongly worded letters, rather than spaceships and laser cannons.

Enter quantum physicist Alan Sokal.

Sven Klinge
Otherwise known as "Generico Scienceface."

By 1996, he was sick of postmodernism and decided to troll the community in hopes of exposing their bullshit (which to be honest has been the mission statement of every troll in history, albeit with varying degrees of applicability). Sokal submitted a bloated, meandering nonsense pile of an article to a postmodern academic journal, seeing if they would publish his paper simply because it supported the postmodern viewpoint of science being an ideological hammer made of sexist white supremacy (this would be similar to Fox News running a story written by some Appalachian lunatic with self-made dentures whittled from squirrel bones simply because it agreed with fiscal conservatism). And they totally published it.

2

Carl Siegel Throws His Colleague's Thesis into the Ocean

1

Galileo Trolls the Pope

Everyone knows the Galileo story as another instance of the Catholic church flexing its muscles and putting science in the corner. But the actual story is far more complex, and at the center of it lies a pretty spectacular troll.

You see, back in Galileo's day, there were three competing models of the universe. Two of them were your basic theology-approved geocentric theories, while the third, called the Copernican model, held that the Earth and the rest of the planets orbited the sun. Scientists of the time pretty much stuck to the "everything revolves around the Earth" school, because they didn't want to get stoned to death. Also, there were a couple of Mr.-Stay-Puft-sized holes in the Copernican theory, most notably the lack of observable stellar parallax, which is how astronomers determine the relative distance of celestial bodies (while simultaneously being a howlingly bitching name for a space rock band).

Photos.com
"Ladies and gen- wait, really? We wasted that name on these fucking idiots?"

Basically, all the best evidence of the day pointed to geocentrism. Galileo himself was never able to offer conclusive proof of the Copernican theory, and he got key details, like the shape of planetary orbits, completely wrong.

So, Galileo was instructed to teach the Copernican model only as one of many possible theories. After a few chats with Pope Urban VIII about the relevant science (because that was a thing people used to have to do), Galileo told His Eminence that he was going to write a book presenting the theories as objectively as possible and in layman's terms. What he did instead was spray out Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems like a hateful jet of burningly contrary diarrhea into the face of the man who could have his fingernails pulled out for coughing in church.

"You're lucky I'm busy delivering toys to all the world's children this month."

The Dialogue was standard-issue pop science, essentially an Al Gore movie without all the wistful sighing. It was written as a discussion between three characters, although Galileo makes it painfully clear which character he believes is correct and which characters he believes are nose-picking shitheads. To top it off, he used arguments the Pope had made to him in private conversation and had them spoken by the character Simplicio, who was depicted as a 17th century Pauly Shore. He might as well have called the character Idioticci and included illustrations of him in a papal hat. You may recognize this as a world-class piece of troll bait.

And as a result, the "moderators" (the Inquisition) stepped in and banned Galileo from the "forum" (public life). Yeah, trolling doesn't always work out the way you want it to.

Andrew Bensley can be found occasionally writing semi-humorous words on the Twitter, and you can troll Steve on his shoddy blog BuyDemocracy.

For experiments that seem like trolling, check out The 10 Craziest Scientific Experiments Ever Conducted and 5 Psych Experiments That Sounded Fun (Until They Started).

If you're pressed for time and just looking for a quick fix, then check out 'The Dark Knight Rises': The 30-Second Version.