The piltdown hoax was first discovered in 1912, in Sussex England, in a village of Piltdown. The hoax was began by the amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson. Alongside with him he had Geologist, Arthur Smith Woodward, and Paleontologist Father Pierre Teilhard to back up his analysis. His findings were what he thought to be a human skull which would have proven that England's humans were the eldest of all dating further back to 100,100 years ago and also giving Arthur Keith's theory that "humans developed big brains before walking upright," which is incorrect. The scientific community was not able to necessarily challenge this theory because the National history Museum did not let people examine the remains and further challenge the discoveries that were made. Therefore nobody was able to challenge it thoroughly to make any sense of it. The remains were later tested again through measuring fluorine content, which was called relative dating, fluorine analysis that revealed that the artifacts were that of a female Orangutang that was less than 100 years old and that the fossils had been altered to fit a human figure, but were only that of a female orangutang who's teeth were filed down and who's jaw was changed and all stained to attempt to be dated as older.
The human faults that come in to play for this is false data that was altered to try and prove new findings for one's advantage towards their credit. Dawson wanted to be credited for something great and was called, "ambitious," which can be easy to say that he wanted good status for his name and not to be named an amateur anymore. His ego came into contact with this hoax because he wanted a greater name for himself, which he did not gain correctly. This is an often human fault, for example at work if you take credit for something you may have not done and get noticed for it, it dis credits one person and gives you a higher name, which is unfair.
The positive aspect of this process to revealing that the skull was fraud was measuring the fluorine content. Which is relative dating as I explained above, which helps reveal the correct date it was actually from.
I don't believe it is possible to remove human error because it occurs inevitably like any other error could. I would not want to remove it from science because it allows others to help recover the correct data and sometimes error is necessary to produce efficiency because it could be checked again for error.
The lesson you could take from this is that you must not judge a book by it's cover, this comes into play for the hoax when the evidence was held away from other scientists to examine and just led everyone to believe that it was true because that is what they were told, the same as looking at a book cover and if it's not appealing you shouldn't read it or look further into it.
Hello Mercedes,
ReplyDeleteReading your post I found it to be very detailed as well as informative. I think the explaining of the Piltdown hoax was very good because you went into great detail of the history of the hoax as well as the people who were associated with it. I put something similar for human faults. I totally understand your viewpoint in that false data was used to give someone credibility and gain recognition. I agree that humans will make mistakes inevitably and nothing can be changed about that because we are humans. Overall great post!
Hi Mercedes,
ReplyDeleteI think we came to a lot of the same conclusions through this assignment but I especially appreciate your thought process when it comes to human faults. You touched on a very interesting and important point of trial and error. Errors are inevitable but can be extremely helpful if we are able to gain knowledge from them and then improve upon our practices with said knowledge! Great work :)
Hi Audrey, thank you for your comment ! i'm gonna look upon your right now because I'm curious as to what you wrote ! Thanks for your response.
ReplyDeleteHi Brian,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you found my post informative and I hope to look into yours right now to see what kinds similar ideas we came up with, thanks for your comment. And yes us humans make mistakes !
Very good synopsis, including the discussion on the significance of this fossil, had it been valid. The only important piece of information that should have been in here is the time period that passed before the hoax was revealed. How long did it take between the discovery of Piltdown to when the hoax was discovered? This is a key piece of information in this story.
ReplyDeleteGood discussion on the issue of faults that led to the hoax being created, though it is important to understand that we still don't know who the actual culprits are. Also, make sure you distinguish between faults (like ambition) and the actions that result from these faults (like the falsification of data). 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?
There were several other techniques that helped to provide evidence of the hoax, though the fluorine analysis was the key piece of new technology. But why were scientists still studying this find some 40 years after it was uncovered? What aspect of science does that represent?
You seem to be assuming all factors are negative. Is that the case? Do humans bring nothing positive to the scientific process? How about curiosity, ingenuity and innovation? Could we even do science without these factors?
Good life lesson.
Hi Professor, they accepted it so rapidly because they did not allow them to closely identify the fossils until later on and because of the scientists that worked beside him gave him a sense of credibility that others did not feel the need to question, although some people still did out of curiosity!
DeleteI believe that humans bring greatness into the scientific process, because like others stated in trial there is error and there is room for improvement that brings upon new findings with errors, so without human error we are sometimes unable to further our discoveries.
Thanks for the response.
DeleteWhile I do see your point, this doesn't mesh with how science and scientists work. First, if any researcher would bar other scientists from accessing his data or the materials he used to test the data, other scientists would have been in an uproar and it would have automatically cast down on his research and his conclusions. It wouldn't be accepted and it shouldn't have been quietly accepted back then. This excuse doesn't get the scientific community off the hook.
Second, scientists challenge each other all the time, regardless of their "status" or fame or claim to authority. In fact, there is a certain measure of fame a scientist can achieve by challenging a well-known scientist and perhaps demonstrating an error in their work. So if the scientists of the Piltdown age really were cowed by the prestige of the Piltdown scientists, they were not doing their jobs and this doesn't get them off the hook.
To be honest, neither argument holds water, given the realities of science, peer review and the process of research, that requires testing and re-testing and intense scrutiny of all new discoveries.
I raise the point British scientists in my first comment, but you don't address it. In particular, it was the British scientists that were happy to accept this discovery and quietly tolerate the limited access to the fossils. Why? If you were a British scientist, would you like to be the one to shoot down their countries first and only claim to hominid fame? Not sure I would. National pride likely was the fault that came into play here.
I appreciate your response to my comment on the issues of the 'human factor', but you aren't actually responding to the comment itself. You are just restating your original argument.