Chinese Newspaper Uses Homer Simpson 'X-Ray' To Illustrate Article On Multiple Sclerosis Discovery

from the whooops dept

Fri, Aug 3rd 2007 3:35pm — Mike Masnick

You may remember back in 2002, when the Beijing Evening News accidentally believed a story from The Onion and wrote up a whole article (apparently without a single fact check) about how Congress was threatening to move away from Washington DC unless they were given a new capitol building with a retractable dome. For a while, the paper denied that it had simply copied the story and not done any fact checking, until it realized that it was too difficult to deny. Then it issued a hilarious non-apology, basically blaming The Onion for purposely tricking the reporters in an effort to make money ("Some small American newspapers frequently fabricate offbeat news to trick people into noticing them, with the aim of making money. This is what the Onion does... According to congressional workers, the Onion is a publication that never ceases making up false reports."). It appears that there's still some sloppy reporting going on over in China. The English-language Xinhuanet has a story up about the discovery of two genes that may lead to multiple sclerosis. However, the image they used (which they've since taken down) to illustrate this finding happens to be an amusing drawing of an "x-ray" of beloved cartoon character Homer Simpson's head. Now, obviously, there have been a ton of promotional tie-ins with the new Simpson Movie, but somehow we doubt this was done on purpose. We can't wait to see if the news agency figures out a way to blame this one on the Simpsons as well.

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Filed Under: china, homer, simpsons

17 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 3 Aug 2007 @ 3:57pm

DUH!
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matt, 3 Aug 2007 @ 4:07pm

lol
i bet it left the editor saying "DOH!" then slowly getting his fatness out of his office chair, and waddling over to the fridge to get a duff beer. i can't believe how irresponsible some people are.
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GoblinJuice, 3 Aug 2007 @ 4:09pm

"File photo"
=D
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Jeff, 3 Aug 2007 @ 5:03pm

Of course...
...it's Homers fault, he got an x-ray even though he's a cartoon 'n shit. That's besides the point though, what's really important is that HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Aug 2007 @ 5:23pm

whats next, a news story about a pig that walks on ceilings? the headline "LOOK OUT!! FOR SPIDER PIG"
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Eric the Grey, 3 Aug 2007 @ 5:55pm

Re:
No, no no. You've got it wrong.

It should be "Doh!"

EtG
[not even a Simpson's fan.]
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Aug 2007 @ 6:35pm

D'oh
I thought it was "D'oh"
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Some dude, 3 Aug 2007 @ 6:54pm

Eric is right
It's Doh!
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Peet McKimmie (profile), 4 Aug 2007 @ 1:59am

Can you imagine...
...the Google Images search they used...?

+"x-ray" yellow skin
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guy, 4 Aug 2007 @ 6:33am

ha ha
(nelsons voice) " HA HA "
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Aug 2007 @ 8:17am

Homer X-Rays
I work for a hospital chain in IT and have seen these Homer Simpson x-ray films floating around our hospitals, I am not sure where they came from but I am guessing they are some demo gimick from our x-ray equipment vendors (i.e. Kodak or 3M).
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Aug 2007 @ 10:59am

article with pic
article with pic
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2007 @ 5:18am

have you seen some of the other articles from that news site? some of its terrible and you'd only expect to find in a tabloid.
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James, 6 Aug 2007 @ 8:09am

LMAO
They should write a Simpsons episode where the family visits China (again if they have already), and, homer gets an x-ray which inadvertently gets in the hands of the newspaper.... lol
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Ami Simms, 6 Aug 2007 @ 12:41pm

Just what I
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Ami Simms, 6 Aug 2007 @ 12:47pm

Just what I's expect.
This is clearly a result of China' censoring of the internet. You can't even find X-Rays of real people! Here is a link to the cached story. It loads much faster than the link above. Link to Article
D'oh!
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Ted Brown, 6 Aug 2007 @ 2:58pm

*cough*
You can't show depictions of skeletons in China. So the editor probably wanted a real x-ray, but had to settle for a cartoon imitation instead.
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