Thank you for sharing this. The attention he received for it was absolutely unwarranted. Anyone who reads the paper and understands what was written would also understand that. Unfortunately, not many people take the time to do that. I've not heard of anyone else attempt it -- it took me several hours of intensive thought to finally figure out what he'd done. At the end of it I felt so disgusted that it was being presented as "rat brain flies plane" that over the years I've often been tempted to do a write-up chastising the author for advancing his scientific career by tricking people rather than discover something new or build something innovative.
This story has been reposted to HN a few times over the years. My reaction to this particular repost was to feel intensely guilty that so many people were still being tricked by the same old snakeoil. Then I looked up what the author had done in the subsequent years, and it's a pleasant surprise: DeMarse has worked on some wonderfully interesting projects which are quite unique.
I'm glad that I never tried to expose this "brain in a dish" as the lie that it is. Everyone deserves to make a mistake once in awhile, and his, I think, was merely to be flattered that reporters were interested in his work at all, which is quite a natural reaction. I'm sure he regrets that he wasn't as careful as he should've been with correcting the reporters' assumptions.