Piltdown Hoax

1. The Piltdown hoax was the forgery of fossils said to be of the 'missing link' between modern humans and our ancestors. The bones are said to have been collected by Charles Dawson in 1912 in Piltdown, East Sussex, England. It appeared to show that humans developed large brains before the ability to walk upright because it appeared to be over one million years old and had the same basic shape as a modern human skull and the same type of teeth, though it had a jaw similar to a gorilla's. This was the view of a few scientists at the time including Arthur Keith, an anatomist, and it seemed to be proof that they were correct although we now know that this is false due to other finds. In 1953 it was proven that the Piltdown finds had been a hoax when Time Magazine published evidence found by  Kenneth Page Oakley, Sir Wilfrid Edward Le Gros Clark, and Joseph Weiner proving that the Piltdown Man was a forgery. It was shown that the Piltdown Man skull actually consisted of a medieval human skull, a 500-year old orangutan lower jaw, and chimpanzee teeth that had been filed to look more like human teeth. After these discoveries it was shown by analyzing Dawson's other 'finds' that many of them were also fakes.

2. One human fault shown in this hoax is greed. These findings made Dawson look extremely credible as a scientist and made it seem as if he had found a huge misstep in the history of evolution and wanted to be praised for it. When it was found that the findings were fake, it made supporters of science look less credible and this was used as an argument against science.

3. One piece of new technology that helped scientists find the truth behind this is the fluorine absorption test, a new type of dating technology at the time.

4. I suppose it is possible to take the human factor out of science by not doing anymore experiments or attempting to make discoveries but this would not be a good idea. if we did this then  scientific progress would go at an incredibly slow pace because we would be forced to observe these things as they occurred in nature, which sometimes is impossible. I would not want to remove the human factor from science. 

5. This event shows that it is never wise to take anything at face value without some other form of recognition. It is always wise to look to outside sources and to investigate to assure that what you are seeing is fact.