Piltdown Hoax

1. The Piltdown hoax happened in the early 1912's, in the southern English town of Piltdown. Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist found what he thought was the fossil of an ancient human skull. He than asked a leading geologist, Aurthor Smith Woodword from the Natural History Museum, to help him excavate the area for more fossils. Dawson also asked a french paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Although Dawson was the primary excavator, finding the skull fragment, and the jaw bone piece. His fellow scientist did help him to uncover more pieces of the skull. This finding had a huge impact on the scientific community because they where able find the connection between apes and humans. This also put England on the map. It showed that England like other countries had fossils of ancient primates but also one of the oldest to date. Woodword's statues allowed the finding to go undoubted by the scientific community. In the 1920's, fossils where being found in Asia and Africa that contradicted the Piltdown evidence that the large brain came before the upright walking. The fossils that where excavated in these two countries gave way to evidence that the skulls of ancient people where less human. These fossils did not coincide with the findings of Piltdown. In 1949 scientist measured the fluorine in the Piltdown skull to find that it was roughly 100,000 years old. In 1953 with better methods of dating, scientists relieved that the fossils where cut, stained and filed to fit the particular fossil outline. It was clear to see that the fossils where not real and had been forged. Scientists where stunned, and Dawson was the main suspect that was looked at to be the culprit of the fake fossils and Woodword had been fooled all along.

2. The human faults that come in to play in this scenario seem to be that these scientists are so eager to find fossils that show the rest of the world that England has remains from millions of years ago, that they do not even try to go forth with the scientific process to see if the remains are real or fabricated. It seems that ego gets in the way of falsification. People where so emotionally tied to the fact that the remains where in England that they did not see that it could possibly be staged. These human faults gravely effect the scientific process because if Aurthor Woodword had not been on the work site, than most likely other scientists would have tried to petition the realness of these fossils. They would have been more reluctant to accept these findings to be true. But since he was prominent and well known than people accepted his work without fact which compromises the scientific process.

3. The positive aspects in the scientific process that where responsible for revealing the skull to be fake was the fact that scientists repeatedly went back to the fossils to make sure that they where accurate. Scientists used the fluorine measurements to measure how far back the fossils dated to. This showed that the fossils where actually not as old as everyone has believed them to be. When further tests where being made it was clear to scientists that the fossils had been stained to look aged. Fossils had been cut to look a certain way with a knife. When looking at the jaw bone and teeth under a microscope they found that the teeth had been filed down and they could see scratch marks from the filing to prove it. Also, the jaw bone dated back from less than 100 years that came from a female orangutan. Pieces had also been removed or broken off so that the form of the jaw bone would not give way to the fact that it did not belong to the skull and in fact was to the orangutan. The scientific process of checking and rechecking work to make sure it is accurate comes into play in this scenario.

4.I don't believe there is a way to take the "human" factor out of science to take the chance of errors like this happening. Because being human allows us to have trial and error, and in this trial and error we find what is truth. If humans did not have this process than we would not know fact from fiction. The scientific process is a process of steps that asks questions and hypothesis and that is part of being human. We need to ask questions to learn and understand. The scientific process than allows a human to test these questions and see if they are to be true (fact), or not (false). Making mistakes is how humans correct the process, learn to make clearer judgments, and make sure it does not happen again. I wouldn't want to remove the "human" aspect from science because I feel that "humans" are the ones that have created science. We are the only ones that can come up with new ideas, ask new questions and make new hypothesis. If humans where to be replaced with a computer I don't believe that we as a species would be able to grow and learn from our mistakes and misjudgments.

5. I can take the life lesson from this historical event by realizing not everything you hear is true, and not everything someone says is true. I, myself, need to take the proper steps in making the decision that something is true or false. I can't believe everything just because some one tells me its true. I need to do research and find the facts in order to believe it to be so. I think doing research is a very important aspect of verifying sources. If research isn't made than how will I know if some thing has been proven to be true or false, already in the past. Also research allows me to make my own judgement if the conclusion hasn't been made already.