Piltdown Man Blog

          The Piltdown hoax started in the early 1900s when an armature archaeologist  Charles Dawson discovered what looked like a piece of an ancient human skull in the small town of Piltdown. Leading geologist Arthur Smith Woodword and french paleontologist were invited to help dig some more. Martin Hinton a helper at the museum was also there watching closely.  This was the first ancient bone found in England.  Dawson dug up the most astonishing fossil of of a jaw bone of what appeared to be from the same skull. The jaw was interesting because it was the shape of an apes jaw but had the teeth of a human.  It looked like they had found the link between apes and humans.  Woodword announced the discovery in 1912 of England's first and possibly oldest in the world ancestor.  Arthur Keith was a big supporter of the findings because it back up his theory that the brains were big before they could walk up right, though we know it was the opposite today.  There were many other finds that made peoples doubts about the findings go away although some scientist probably still had them and just kept it to themselves in fear of the backlash it might have.  For a decade piltdown man was the talk of the town and after Dawson died no more fossil remains were ever found.  Around 1920 more fossils around the world were found and were less human then piltdown man and younger. It didn't add up.  It was hard to tell because the dating methods back then didn't work well. In 1949 a new technology to test how old fossils are came out and showed that these fossils were rather young.  In 1953 they showed that the fossils were falsely worn and that they had filed down teeth to make it look like the two pieces matched when they came from separate skulls and the jaw turned out to be a orangutan from a 100 years ago. Some one had forged the fossils nobody thought of scientist doing that because they were such scholars.  Dawson is suspect number 1 because he made the first and last finds.  They think Dawson had help but not by Woodword because he searched for fossils years after Dawson's death.  Kieth had motive because this discovery helped with his theory.  In 1975 artifacts were found in a Trunk and they tested them and found they were stained exactly like the Piltdown fakes.  The trunk belonged to Hinton and he became the main suspect although his motivate was weak we still are looking into it and are not sure who did it.
          The faults that scientist have are the same everyone has.  They want prestige and recognition for their hard work. This could make some one who has worked their entire life on something and not accomplish much in their eyes or succeeded in the way they want to become bitter and possibly falsify their work.  This can negatively influence science just like in the above story and set us back years maybe even decades that's why we should be careful and triple check all findings and experiments.
          The positive aspects of the scientific method that helped find out it was a fraud were all of the test that were done on the fossils, the other fossils discovered around the world and people who saw that it didn't add up.  The new new technology that helped measure fluorine content to tell how old it was and later the other age test that came up. as long as we advance in science the less fraud cames out.  Also the more we discover the more we can piece things together and find the inconsistency in science.  Lastly people's curiosity in our world also help.
          No I do not think it is possible to remove the "human" factor from science and nor would I want to.  Humans are curious and driven and part of that is why we have accomplished and know what we do about science and all aspects of life taking that away would not help science.  There will always be people who try to fake or cut corners, but that is why we test and retest over and over again making sure we have the right answer.
          The lesson you can learn from this event is that taking things at face value isn't always the best idea and that you should always ask questions and analyze to make sure what your seeing is the right things. there were many missing pieces of the skull that rasied questions, but no one asked.  Always ask question and test everything.