1. Being revealed in the early 1900’s in the small English town of Sussex, Mr. Charles Dawson got away with his findings due to the lack validation methods. In reviewing the Piltdown man hoax, it’s easy to understand why the scientific community of the time did not question the authenticity of the findings as there was any other method that could have disputed such discovery.
2. Through persistent and inquisitive scientists in conjunction of newly developed method of evaluation by chemical absorption, 40 years later the hoax was exposed ridiculing its discovery and embarrassing the British scientific community.
3. By using others methods already available, other known scientist of the time compared the skull size and other parts found in the original pit, which started the suspicion of being of fossils of various apes due to its size and composition and leading a campaign that later exposed the biggest fraud in anthropology’s history.
4. This is a clear case of how a racially motivated and nationalist ideals of a man was able to deceive an entire community whom he represented by proposing a series of elaborate fake fossilized bones and jaws by using commonly available chemicals.
5. At the same time, thanks to skepticism by a few who doubted all along that the proposed “missing link” promoted further investigation, leads to conclude that science overall benefited from this bad experience by allowing extensive research and validation to support the earlier existence of man.
I agree with you, there was a sense of nationalism and it was very racially motivated. Those two were factors in the hoax, huge factors. The British scientist wanted to get recognition and also “proof” that the evolution of mankind took place in Western Europe, England to be exact. Skepticism is good and in this case it proved to be extremely helpful in discovering the hoax, but there are those that are skeptics even when the facts are right in front of them. I believe those skeptics, that fail to recognize facts, hurt science.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comment that science benefitted from this event. Science demonstrated how it can effectively (if sometimes slowly) weeds out false ideas and helps the accurate ideas rise to the top.
ReplyDeleteYour comments about how race was involved was intriguing, but you didn't explain further! What do you mean by these comments? How was race involved?