Yesterday I stumbled into the coolest thing I’ve ever done as a Wikipedia editor: uncovering a hoax article.

The biography for composer Jacob Isaacson was created on Wikipedia on June 29th, 2008. 17 years and 238 days later, I nominated it for deletion.

The article is about an American composer who supposedly died in 1980:

Jacob Isaacson (May 5, 1911 – September 8, 1980) was an American composer and musician. Isaacson was most noted for his own Colortone musical notation and his early works within this system. His association with the Fluxus movement was played down by Isaacson, who held European classical tradition in high regard, although his experimental and minimalist compositions drew inevitable comparison.

I initially nominated the article for deletion because it had no reliable sources. I couldn’t find anything about Jacob Isaacson on Google Search, Google Scholar, or the Internet Archive. In fact, the only mention I could find was in the description for a July 2008 event called FLUMMOXED at the Flatpack Film Festival:

And finally, Scott Johnston (Film Ficciones) and Matthew Eaton (Micronormous) will be performing American composer Jacob Isaacson’s final ‘Colortone Experiment’. The piece, called Lucent Harmonic Color, fuses Isaacson’s experiments in sound (inspired by his own synaesthesia) with the cut-up cinema of Burroughs and Balch.

Probably, Isaacson is just some ridiculously obscure composer, with a bio created by a family member or fan. But the experimental nature of the FLUMMOXED performance and the mention of Fluxus in Isaacson’s bio suggested there might be more going on here. Other participants in the deletion discussion pointed out some other weird inconsistencies in the biography.

So, I investigated further.

Investigating the hoax

The creator of the Jacob Isaacson article had only made edits to one other article: Pram (band)

Reading the Pram article tells us that Pram’s members are Rosie Cuckston, Matt Eaton, Andy Weir, and Samantha Owen. Further, the band “collaborated with visual artist ‘Film Ficciones’ (filmmaker Scott Johnston)” in 2010.

Wait! Matt Eaton and Scott Johnston are the supposed performers of Isaacson’s work at FLUMMOXED. That’s too strong a connection to be a coincidence.

I wanted to send a message to Pram. Despite being formed in 1988, Pram still has active social media! I sent an email to a hotmail.co.uk address I found listed on their Facebook, asking if they could resolve this mystery.

Shockingly, I got back a reply within the hour from Matt Eaton himself:

So finally Jacob Isaacson has met his match !

I did indeed create Isaacson as part of a one off performance I did with Scott Johnston at Flatpack Film Festival 2008. The theme of the piece was in part misdirection and misinformation with some good old fashioned Sci-Fi tropes woven in. The biography of this minor western composer somehow felt very close to home…

My apologies for putting my fictions on Wikipedia, it’s a resource I love and very occasionally donate to.

Straight from the horse’s mouth!

Thanks very much to Matt for resolving this mystery. It was fun to notice the connections between Isaacson and Pram and I’m pleased that we are able to clean up Wikipedia and get a good story out of it at the same time.

I told Matt there’s not much harm here: Isaacson’s biography got less than one human pageview per day and no other articles linked to that page. It also shows how much Wikipedia’s policies have changed: an article like that wouldn’t survive for more than an hour today.

There are still tens of thousands of unsourced Wikipedia articles created more than ten years ago. A few might be hoaxes like Jacob Isaacson, but most just need attention and care. If you want to help, WikiProject Unreferenced articles is running its March 2026 drive soon, and it’s a great way to jump in as a new Wikipedia editor and immediately feel like you’re making the world a better place.

Further reading