can only be regarded as a deception, without the accompaniment of wit.
Forging differs from hoaxing, inasmuch as in the latter the deceit is intended to last for a time, and then be discovered, to the ridicule of those who have credited it; whereas the forger is one who, wishing to acquire a reputation for science, records observations which he has never made. This is sometimes accomplished in astronomical observations by calculating the time and circumstances of the phenomenon from tables. The observations of the second comet of 1784, which was only seen by the Chevalier D'Angos, were long suspected to be a forgery, and were at length proved to be so by the calculations and reasonings of Encke. The pretended observations did not accord amongst each other in giving any possible orbit. But M. Encke detected an orbit, belonging to some of the observations, from which he found that all the rest might be almost precisely deduced, provided a mistake of a unity in the index of the logarithm of the radius vector were supposed to have been made in all the rest of the calculations. Zach. Corr. Astron. Tom. IV. p. 456.
Fortunately instances of the occurrence of forging are rare.
