piltdown hoax
Piltdown Hoax
The Piltdown Hoax happened in the 1912 in a small town called Piltdown. Charles Dawson was the founder of the Hoax Fossil. The effect on the scientific community is that question everything if someone finds a new discovery. Challenge them and ask all of the questions to make sure it is actually a true and new discovery. This also made the community puzzled when they actually found new discoveries and it did not match Dawson's fossil. All of the people involved and the prestige of a scientists so they faked the discovery so they can achieve that status. Arthur Kieth was one of the masterminds because they believe that the discovery proved his theory and that it gave him that status at the time too. Another person related was Martin Hinton. They found an old trunk that belonged to him that had forgery fossils that were made by him. This experience has taught scientists that this could happen and to not trust anyone without all of the evidence present.
The fault that the scientist had responsible for the hoax was greed. If they did not have the idea that they will become famous after the fact they probably would not have made a hoax about it. This affected the scientific process because they were trying to go out of their way to make something that was false and make it true.
When actual fossils were found they showed that old humans were more ape like and not human like. So this discovery disproved the Piltdown scientists and caused the truth to come out. It showed that it was dyed and that the teeth were filed down. They used a microscope to figure hat out. The other element was in 1953 when they could measure the fluorine content and they realized that the fossil was only about 100 years old at the time and it did not reach the prehistoric period that they claimed.
It is possible to remove the human factor of science but scientist now have to ask all of the right question and follow the rules of science and prove it to be true. I would not want to remove the human factor of science because we need humans to ask question and come to a conclusion on certain theories that will come up in the future.
Always check your sources to make sure that they are reliable sources. Never take someones word without an experiment and proof that it is true. Always take multiple sources into question and then make your final conclusion if it is true or not.
The Piltdown Hoax happened in the 1912 in a small town called Piltdown. Charles Dawson was the founder of the Hoax Fossil. The effect on the scientific community is that question everything if someone finds a new discovery. Challenge them and ask all of the questions to make sure it is actually a true and new discovery. This also made the community puzzled when they actually found new discoveries and it did not match Dawson's fossil. All of the people involved and the prestige of a scientists so they faked the discovery so they can achieve that status. Arthur Kieth was one of the masterminds because they believe that the discovery proved his theory and that it gave him that status at the time too. Another person related was Martin Hinton. They found an old trunk that belonged to him that had forgery fossils that were made by him. This experience has taught scientists that this could happen and to not trust anyone without all of the evidence present.
The fault that the scientist had responsible for the hoax was greed. If they did not have the idea that they will become famous after the fact they probably would not have made a hoax about it. This affected the scientific process because they were trying to go out of their way to make something that was false and make it true.
When actual fossils were found they showed that old humans were more ape like and not human like. So this discovery disproved the Piltdown scientists and caused the truth to come out. It showed that it was dyed and that the teeth were filed down. They used a microscope to figure hat out. The other element was in 1953 when they could measure the fluorine content and they realized that the fossil was only about 100 years old at the time and it did not reach the prehistoric period that they claimed.
It is possible to remove the human factor of science but scientist now have to ask all of the right question and follow the rules of science and prove it to be true. I would not want to remove the human factor of science because we need humans to ask question and come to a conclusion on certain theories that will come up in the future.
Always check your sources to make sure that they are reliable sources. Never take someones word without an experiment and proof that it is true. Always take multiple sources into question and then make your final conclusion if it is true or not.
A little disorder in your synopsis. You jump back and forth between the discovery of the fossil and the discovery of the hoax much later, leaving out some key details. What bones were actually found? Can you describe them? What was the response by the scientific community? How long did it take to uncover the hoax? Why so long? And what happened in that time period that helped push scientists to re-examine Piltdown to uncover the hoax?
ReplyDeleteAlso missing is the issue of significance, i.e., what would this have taught us about how humans evolved? You reference Arthur Keith's favorite theory but don't explain it. That is directly related to the potential significance and would have helped you explain this fully.
Good discussion on the faults that led the perpetrators to create those hoax. Other than the culprits, can you find fault with anyone else? How about the scientific community? Why did they accept this find so readily without proper scrutiny? What might have inspired them (particularly the British scientists) to not do their jobs properly when it came to this particular fossil?
"that old humans were more ape like and not human like"
Understand that humans ARE apes, so this doesn't really make sense.
Good discussion of the technology used to uncover the hoax, but what made scientists come back and retest Piltdown? What was happening in paleoanthropology in those 40 years that pushed them to re-examine this find? What aspect of science does that represent?
I agree with your conclusions in the "human factor" section, and we can see even more positive influences of humans on science. Could we even do science without the curiosity in humans that push them to ask those initial questions? Or their ingenuity to create tests of their hypotheses? Or the intuition that helps them draw connections and conclusions from disparate pieces of information?
Good life lesson.