The Piltdown Man Hoax Revisited

            The Piltdown Man was discovered in the early 1900’s in a southern English town called Sussex. Charles Dawson found the remains of, what he said, was an ancient human skull. Arthur Smith Woodward and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin were also summoned to validate the discovery. The jaw was very animal like however it contained human teeth. This led scientists to believe that this specimen was an ancient human fossil that showed evolutionary connections between humans and apes. Also, that humans developed big brains before they walked up right which was the personal theory of Arthur Keith.  Another aspect to this discovery that was so astounding was that there had never been any early human discoveries made in Britain before. However, this group of scientists continued to search in that same location and found several more artifacts, which quickly deterred any doubt in the validity of the discovery. It seems that at the beginning the discovery was so unbelievable that many did not believe it, but then took it at face value.

The Piltdown Man Hoax brings to light human error in science. Like mentioned in the video, scientists during that time were considered to be gentlemen and that is why people were so stunned by this fraud. However, I think we tend to forget that scientists are humans just like the rest of us. With humans, come human nature and the typical greed and success driven motivations. Humans have a tendency to place greed as a number on motivation in their day to day lives and in this situation, I think that was the case.

After the skull was discovered, it was locked away in the Natural History Museum, and no one really had access to it. Because of the prominent names that were backing up this discovery, not many people thought to question or challenge it. However, where science seems to have shown through is with the scientific method.  Scientists chose to date the Plitdown Man fossils, once the dating technology was created. Even though, Piltdown man was discovered a while before that, scientists still desired to prove the validity of the fossils.

I do not think it is possible to remove the human factor in science.  Even though science is based upon facts, there is still some sort of interpretation and bias involved. Much like a few chapters ago when we learned about the scientific method and bias in science, that bias is still evident today. Although there are negatives to human nature, there are also some positives. The drive to make new discoveries and explain our evolution is what drives science today in my opinion. Without it, we probably wouldn’t have discovered as much as we have already. So even though there are some down sides, there are equally as many advantages. The only thing we can do in the future is continue to learn and stick to the scientific method.

The Piltdown Man Hoax has taught the scientific community a lot. There is also a psychological stand point at play here in regards to authority. In human nature it is common for us to believe something, or take it at face value, if the information is coming from an authoritative person. In this case, the Piltdown Man was being supported by very important members of the science community and evolution discoveries. In a sense, they are considered an authority in the scientific community, and therefore people just believed them. If scientists were to stick with what they know and always verify sources and test hypothesis, then they would have found out much sooner that it was a fake.