The Archeologist Swindler
In a small English town in Piltdown a scientist named Charles Dawson created a discovery that has changed the view of science. It all started in 1912 Dawson an archeologist found an ancient human skull, he invited two colleagues named Arthur Smith Woodman of the natural history museum and father Pierre Tay a French palentologist. These men continued to dig where the discovery was made and found bones, animal fossils, tools, but most importantly a jaw bone that resembled an ape like human. This was the first time in England this discovery has been made it was a big deal, they made this announcement public that same year calling it Piltdown Man. One of their supporters was Arthur Keith a scientist who believed humans developed large brains before they walked up right, these fossils backed up his hypothesis. It was curious though because other discoveries after Piltdown Man in Asian and in Africa didn't match up to their fossil, it was less human and didn't match up. The Museum was very strict and didn't let anyone investigate their fossil and never received an expanded study.
Time passed and in 1916 Charles Dawson died, finally after WW2 scientists were able to test the fluorine level and the remains ended up being 100,000 too early. Following in 1953 a discovery was made after looking closely to the fossil, the fossil was tampered with having scars of a knife and the teeth being filed down. It was a hoax! A human cranium attached to an orangutan jaw. This lead scientists to have a pause in this area believing the human brain was developed larger even before its jaw adapted. The prime suspect was Dawson, Woodman had been searching the same area for decades and Tay had not been in Piltdown that long. Scientists were shocked, nothing like this has happened in the past and now they would be questioned.
Human Faults: Charles Dawson wanted people to look up to him and have a respected name; he let his self-pride and self-interest get in the way. He could have made a discovery that actually benefited science instead was blinded by his own mind. At the end of the day a true scientist would want to be benefiting science and not putting a pause on discoveries.
Positives of Science: The best thing about science is that the truth will always come to light. Scientists are constantly trying to understand discoveries to a full extent and won't allow themselves to be blinded because they look at facts and research. there is no "missing link" they are trying to discover that link. This process and using new technology is how they discovered the hoax.
Human Factor: Having a human factor in science makes it so that we create a process to making new discoveries even if it is not as planned it helps us learn from our mistakes. Making mistakes is what helps us grow and move forward. This is why I personally wouldn't want to remove the human factor.
Life Lesson: The main lesson I can take home with me after learning about Charles Dawson and his Piltdown Man is never trust what is too good to be true. Just because someone says something take it with a grain of salt. Always follow your gut instinct and ask questions.
Excellent job on the synopsis. You do a great job of telling the story, including all the key events and players, and you also correctly identify the "significance" of Piltdown (had it been valid), namely representing the "first Englishman" and supporting the theory that humans evolved large brains early in their evolutionary history.
ReplyDeleteFaults: Good discussion on the faults that led the perpetrators to create those hoax (keeping in mind that we still aren't really sure who the actual culprit was). 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?
Positives: While I agree with your points here, they are more general than needed. What are the specific positives of the scientific process that came to light from this event? I see two key candidates:
1. The new technology of fluorine analysis that helped correctly date the fossil.
2. The process of returning to re-examine the Piltdown fossil when it became clear that all subsequent fossil discoveries contradicted the conclusions of Piltdown. This retesting old conclusions in light of new facts is a crucial trait of the scientific process.
Human Factor: I agree with your point on mistakes, but do humans bring anything more positive to the process of 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.
I enjoyed reading your snopysis! Like you said the good thing about is, it can't be fooled forever and that is very evident in this case of this archelogy swindler. Your reason for wanting the human factor to remain in our world is very interesting. While I agree that we learn and grow from our mistakes as humans, wouldn't you also agrree that there are some factors that can be exploited when it comes to science, for example in this case of the piltdown man. We had seen how everyone was so overjoyed that they forgot to do the most important things before even making this information known to the public. That alone destroyed the lives and legacies of many men who had spent their lives on some swindlers dreams.
ReplyDeleteI like the approach that you took to humans making mistakes. I didn’t think of it that way. There will always be errors in science, which is why the scientific method is an endless cycle. When there are errors in experiments, there are always minor tweaks or edits that will fix these mistakes.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your synopsis on the Piltdown hoax, especially in the second paragraph. It gives a great background about the impact of the changes in the Piltdown fossils after Dawson's death and you provided a great perspective and understanding! I also really liked reading the human faults. I definitely agree that Dawson's self-interests and selfishness for a title in this scenario held back on the scientific process. especially because the discovery would have been a huge impact, his lies held back the discovery for many years. This is a great life lesson about how deception and lies can be very misleading and isn't a place in science. I think it takes a lot of physical evidence and research in cases like this.
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