Piltdown
Hoax Blog Post
The Piltdown Man was a
paleoanthropological hoax in which bones found were presented as fossilized remains
of early humans by Charles Dawson at Piltdown, East Sussex England in 1912. The
scientific establishment believed that the large modern brain preceded the
modern omnivorous diet, and the forgery provided exactly that evidence. In 1949
a fluorine test was performed on bones and it was discovered that skull was about
100,000 year old and of a modern human instead of the skull being million years
old and of unknown early human. Jawbone of an orangutan deliberately combined
with the cranium of a fully developed modern human. The hoax was exposed in
1953 as a forgery and the suspects have included Dawson, Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin, Arthur Keith, Martin A. C. Hinton, Horace de Vere Cole and Arthur
Conan Doyle. The Piltdown man fraud significantly affected early research on
human evolution.
Scientist’s greed and ambitious
need for scientific prestige and to belong to royal society took over not
realizing they would affect the scientific work of others. The ethical and
honesty of the whole evolution theory was put into question.
The only positive aspect of the scientific process is that
the hoax was exposed by using science (fluorine test) and was able to be proven.
It is not possible to remove human factor from science to
reduce the chance of errors and avoid another hoax. This would only be possible
if the whole process would be run by a computer in the future and the process
to be less manual “run by a human” to avoid the possibility of it happening
again.
The life lesson is that even though the information comes
from a reliable and seemly trustworthy source there is always a need to have
proof or evidence that claim is valid.
You jump straight to the significance and don't tell the story that led up to that point. Yes, Piltdown did support the idea that large brains evolved early in human evolution, though this wasn't as broadly supported as you suggest. Who else was involved in this hoax? What bones were actually found? How did the scientific community respond to this discovery? How was the hoax exposed and by whom? Expand.
ReplyDeleteI agree that greed and ambition played a role in driving the creation of this hoax. How about the scientific community? Why did they accept this find so readily without proper scrutiny? What might have inspired them (particularly the British scientists) to not do their jobs properly when it came to this particular fossil?
"The ethical and honesty of the whole evolution theory was put into question."
Well, I agree that this was one of the unfortunate results, but was this justified? Did this demonstrate an error in evolutionary theory or just in how scientists carried on the process of science?
Do humans only contribute negative aspects to the scientific process? Do they bring anything positive to the process that you would not want to lose? How about curiosity, ingenuity and innovation? Could we even do science without these factors?
Okay on your life lesson, but this should have been expanded. Single sentence responses is not really sufficient.
Neglected to address the third paragraph. So the fluorine test was the only positive aspect of science that helped here? Why were scientists still studying this find some 40 years after it was uncovered? What aspect of science does that represent? Needed more explanation on the fluorine test itself and who carried out this test.
Delete