The Piltdown Hoax

The Piltdown hoax was basically a hoax that said that the remains of an unknown early human had been newly discovered. The remains included part of a fossilized “human” skull and jawbone which were found in a gravel pit in Piltdown, England in 1912 by an amateur archeologist named Charles Dawson. These artifacts were presented to the scientific community as being authentic, which made people believe that England could have been the home of the original birthplace of mankind. As it turns out, the “human” remains were not human at all. They were not the artifacts that would prove to be the missing link between humans and apes, but actually the artifacts of a female orangutan which had been manipulated in order to look real. This caused some members of the scientific members to be stunned, not knowing why someone would do such a thing. The hoax was discovered through the use of new technologies such as measuring the fluorine content in fossils. This allowed the scientists to roughly estimate the date of the fossils. The varying responses it received from the scientists involved were that it was not only a scandalous forgery, but it was an embarrassing incident for the scientific community as well. It helped create an even bigger distrust of scientists in that of the public’s point of view. In the related fields of evolution, scientists were quick to try to distance themselves from the Piltdown hoax.

The human faults that came into play in the Piltdown scenario were greed, envy, and pride. Charles Dawson was a prideful man who wanted to make to make a name for himself, and wanted to do it quickly. He was envious of those that had already done so and had devised a plan that would allow him to become as famous as he thought he wanted to be. It was his greed that would prove to be the undoing of him. These faults negatively impacted the scientific process because it caused the public to doubt the scientific community. Instead of believing them when there was a new breakthrough or discovery, everything from then on would be meticulously observed and tested. And even then, the public wouldn’t be certain of the accuracy of the scientific processes used.

The positive aspects of the scientific process that were responsible for revealing the skull to be a fraud were the invention of a new technology after World War II that was able to measuring fluorine contents in fossils, and the first full scale data analysis with better dating methods in 1953. The initial fluorine testing that was used was able to date the skull and prove that it was much younger than what it should have been. The full scale data analysis discovered that the fossils had been stained, pieces of the jaw and skull had been cut in order to make it look more human, and that the teeth in the jaw had been filed down. These processes were able to prove that the Piltdown skull was not a human skull after all.

Although it would be nice to remove the “human” factor from science in order to reduce the chance of errors like this happening again, it is not possible. Even computers and other scientific instruments which some consider to be extremely useful in the scientific process are built by human hands and can have design flaws. Even though it’s not possible, it’s a nice idea to think of being able to remove the human factor in science. But one has to keep in mind that even when we figure out results using our computers and lab equipment, it is still necessary to make sure we double check our results by human hands to see if we made any mistakes in our work.

The lesson I can take from this historical event regarding taking information at face value from unverified sources is to not just believe something because someone says it to be true. Do research and try to prove it one way or the other. Remember, if people had chosen to not question what they were told and believed that the world was flat when they were told so, we would most likely still  believe that we would fall off of the edge of the world when we came to it.