Piltdown Man

         
      The Piltdown hoax was a  fraudulent scientific discovery made in the early 1900’s. In 1912 an amateur archeologist named Charles Dawson was digging in a gravel pit in the southern English village of Piltdown. He claimed to have found the remains of an ancient human skull. Shortly after his discovery, Dawson invited England’s leading geologist Arthur Smith Woodward to help with the analysis. Dawson also invited French paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Together, the three made astonishing finds in the gravel pit. At the time, the Piltdown man discovery was one of the most prolific scientific discoveries ever made. It had a tremendous impact on the scientific community, the site was said to have dated back around a million years, also at the time scientists had discovered primitive human remains in Asia, Germany and France but never before in England. The most astonishing find in the gravel pit was that of a jaw bone, it appeared that the three men had come upon the “holy grail” of paleontology, the missing link between apes and humans. Later in 1912 at the Royal Geological Society the men made their first public announcement of their discovery. Finally England,  like other great countries had ancient human fossils, and England’s ancestors might turn out to be the oldest primitive human remains ever discovered. Newspapers and the scientific community were ecstatic over the breakthrough. Over the next few years the three men uncovered more fossil remains at Piltdown, which gave little room for skeptics. For nearly  a decade, Piltdown man was the model for human evolution. However scientists began making discoveries throughout Asia and Africa, the ancient human fossils the found didn’t coincide with that of the Piltdown man. At the time there was no easy way to tell if the Piltdown man was an actual human skull because certain testing and accurate dating methods had yet to be developed.         
       The turning point didn’t come until after World War II with the advent of new technology, by measuring the fluorine content in fossils, scientist could roughly date them. In 1949 scientists conducted this experiment on the fossils, and the results showed them that the remains of Piltdown man were only 100,000 years old as opposed to the million or so years old that scientists had previously thought. In 1953 scientists launched the first full scale analysis of the Piltdown man. They revealed that the staining on the bones was superficial, the material had been cut when it had already been fossilized, and the teeth had been filed down by a modern tool, and the jaw bone dated back to less then 100 years, and the jaw bone came from a female orangutan.  All of this evidenced concluded that someone had forged the findings of the Piltdown man.         
The faults that come into play in this scenario are the human trait of competition, naturally England being the prominent country it is would want to compete with the rest of the world for scientific discoveries and in showing the rest of the world that their ancestors dated back further then anyone else’s. Because whoever conducted the hoax was so worried about competing with the rest of the scientific world, decades of work went to waste and all the time and work that some scientists did relating to the Piltdown man went completely to waste because they were basing their hypotheses upon false artifacts.        
       If anything positive can come from this its taught the scientific world to “check all their bases” before coming to any solid conclusions. Because the hoax was such an embarrassment to science, it has taught scientist to make sure they’re conducting multiple accurate tests. When the seed of doubt was planted about the Piltdown man scientists conducted multiple experiments trying to prove the remains to be valid or false; they dated the material, used microscopes to examine the evidence, and used chemicals to prove that the remains had been stained. Once they learned that the remains were in fact that of an orangutan, scientists learned to forever use the scientific process in all their scientific discoveries and not to simply trust the “good word” of others.        
      I don’t think its possible to remove the human factor from science, however if it were possible I do think that if removing the “human” factor were possible it would drastically reduce the chance of errors like the Piltdown man from happening. For example, much like the theory of evolution there are some scientists out there who believe in gravity which is a factual scientific discovery but they let their religious views prevent them form recognizing the theory of evolution which is also a factual scientific discovery.         
       The lesson that can be taken from this is, “just because someone says it, doesn’t necessarily mean its true.” The entire scientific community took Dawson, Woodward and Chardin’s word and look what happened; they were fooled; the biggest hoax in paleontology history could have been prevented had someone taken the time to check the facts rather then just assuming that the three men were telling the truth. Take the time and do some research and educate yourself.