Piltdown Hoax

 On February 14th, 1912 in a small village in the rural county of Sussex, England, a local amuatuar geologist named Charles Dawson wrote to Sir Arthur Smith Woodward about an exciting new discovery. A bed dating back to the Pleistocene age was found at Piltdown along with the bone of a human skull. This caused Woodward to join Dawson at the bed and eventually they found an ape-like jawbone with human-like teeth, nicknamed the Piltdown Man. The most significant thing about this discovery was not that it was considered the missing link between, but that it proved Darwin’s theory and that the earliest humans had come from England and not Africa. The first suspicion that people had about the jawbone was that it possibly did not match the prior skull bone found at the site and that the canine tooth was missing. Later a canine tooth was found at the site to prove that this jawbone was one of the first early humans and another piltdown man was found a few miles away. The hoax was revealed in 1953, more than 40 years later, by Kenneth Oakly of Britain’s National History Museum. British scientists felt embarrassed by the fact that a hoax was living right under their noses. A new way to date fossils had been discovered, chemical dating estimated the amount of nitrogen in the bone and found that the bone was young. The skull was stained and the teeth of the jawbone were grinded down to match what human teeth would look like.The jawbone ended up being a random orangutan’s. It turned out that every single one of the finds at the Piltdown were also forged. 

Human faults are always going to play a part in scientific discovery just because humans are doing the discovering. It is clear that human faults played a factor into the hoax of the Piltdown man. Before the Piltdown man early ape and human fossils have been found in France and Spain, but not in England so someones national pride might have played a part in the creation of the hoax. Other factors that have been brought up as motives for this hoax are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s revenge on the scientific community, Charles Dawson’s ambition to make a name for himselfs, or Hilton’s rivalry with Woodward. Whatever the case human factors did impact the scientific process in the name of discovery and publicity.

The most positive and important aspect of the scientific process is the peer edited reviews of scientific works. This peer inspection of the fossils from the Piltdown site combined with the new technology and attention to detail led scientists to figure out that it was not what it originally seemed. Another part of the scientific process that helped fix this problem was the general rule of always reevaluating old material to find out if it matches up with new theories or not.

I do not believe it is possible to take humans out of science to reduce errors because the positives of humans outweigh their faults.Because humans are living, breathing creatures there is always going to be some bias no matter how hard scientists try to eliminate it. Humans however are the ones to ask questions just out of curiosity or in response to a problem and attempt to solve it, not computers. There are things like peer review to try and make science as objective as possible. Humans are essential to science as ignition is to fire, they bring the spark to start the research.

I have learned to not take everything that I hear for granted because it could prove to be false in the future. I would always research other sources and cross reference them to see if the facts are true. I would also try to hold off on any opinions on unverified facts until I know for certain that it is true or if more information ends up coming to life because skepticism is the best when hearing from unverified soucres.