A small village of England named Piltdown, became famous for the forgery of archeological finds. In 1912, an amateur archeologist named Charles Dawson found and ape's jaw with the teeth craved down to appear as a humans with the help of a geologist named Arthur Smith Woodward and a paleontologist named Father Teilhard de Chardin. British paleoanthropologists came to accept this finding as a specimen with a human cranium and an ape's jaw. This became significantly important because it was thought up to be the missing link between apes and humans. The hoax was not uncovered up until the end of World War II in 1953. Other prehistoric human remains were discovered around the 1920 and said to be from an earlier time than the Piltdown Man. This brought up questions and a full on investigation was brought about and by the use of fluorine, the Piltdown Man bones were found to be only 100,000 years old. Scientists were astonished to find out they were duped.
Some human faults such as greed, and desperation are to blame for this incident. Charles Dawson could have wanted to be known so he could have came up with that fake remain that fooled everyone. Or maybe he was just desperate for the attention that he came up with that scheme.
Tests were conducted on the Piltdown Man fossils using a fluorine test which allows scientists to roughly date them. They discovered the fossils were not that old and analyzed the fossils a lot more thoroughly.
I do not believe it is possible to take the "human" out of science, it would not be the right thing to do because the whole aspect of science is to explore the unexplainable. Taking out the human from science will leave humanity at a stand still. Humans have the thirst to thrive and prosper, and the best place to do that would be in science.
I have learned that from this historical event, it shows us to not believe everything we see, there is always another side to a story that should be taken under consideration.
Good synopsis. Was this really thought to be a "missing link" or was the significance something different? It was the first fossil of early man found in England. It also suggested that humans developed larger brain before evolving other modern traits.
ReplyDeleteIs Dawson the only one in this scenario that demonstrated negative qualities? Are we sure he is the perpetrator?
I agree that the fluorine analysis are important positive factors, but are there any positive aspects of the scientific process that contributed to the uncovering of this hoax?
I very much agree with your discussion on removing the human factor from science.
I'm not sure this is an issue of there being another side to the story. In this case, there were NOT two equally valid side. In other words, this in not an issue of being "fair and balanced". There was a right side (which was eventually revealed) and a wrong side. The point of this is that you need to not accept the first version you hear without validating the information yourself to figure out which information is correct and which is wrong.