Piltdown Hoax
1. The infamous Piltdown hoax is the even that refers to the finding of an ancient fossil by the trio, Charles Darwin, Aurther Smith Woodward, and Pierre. The findings were fascinating to many; among these findings, the jawbone fossil was the most intriguing. This took place in a small English town in 1912 near town called Lewis, in the little village called Piltdown. The jawbone was shaped as an ape and the teeth seemed to be human. The discovery was announced at the Geological Society meeting in 1912 and their story was accepted for the most part by the scientific community. At the time this was a considered huge discovery since it gave credence to humans descending from apes. Later new fossils were found from a differing site and it differed from the Piltdown fossils that were found. As technology arose, dating the fossils could be possible using fluorine. The fossils seemed to be very young and was stained by a chemical that was similar to stained bones found later on in a museum(I talk about this more in #3). The jawbone was analyzed under a microscope and evidence of filing down the teeth was apparent. All this pointed to the fossils being a hoax.
2. The first problem was accepting the discovery after it was announced, without the proper verification with precise tools that were not yet available to them. This acceptance may have been because of all the excitement that was brewed. The bigger problem was the tampering with the fossils for the sake of recognition in the scientific community. At the time it may have been a dream for many scientists to become a fellow of the royal society, and because of this desire, the hoax occurred and negatively impacted scientific progress.
3. The ability to use fluorine to date the fossils was a positive aspect. 1953, scientists launched a full scale analysis on the jawbone. Looking at the teeth under a microscope, there was evidence of grinding down the teeth to make them look like the shape they were. Most of the findings in Piltdown were stained using various chemicals and scientists were able to verify that they were stained much like the bones found at the national history Museum in 1975 in and old trunk. In 1996 the stained bones were compared to the fossils that were found at Piltdown and the staining was chemically the same.
4. To completely remove the factor of "human" from science would be practically impossible. In a field such as physics, humans create the giant machines and experiments for which particle collisions occur. It also takes a human to interpret the data from experiments or findings. We can most definitely reduce the amount humans are involved in experiments, however. One might argue that the machines that we build involve no human involvement and the results are outputted by machines. This may be true, but it takes humans to think of how to build these machines and to program the machines to output the data. There will always be some human factor in science in my opinion.
5. The immediate lesson is to not take information at face value. One must dissect the information and logically deduce the validity of the information. For me, as a physics student, I've learned that math describes any system in nature, and is the language for which to dissect phenomenon in. So if someone says that all objects fall at the same rate, I can now turn to math and then test the idea with experiments and see how accurate the idea is. This is my way to take in ideas/information from unverified sources. For other things I can't turn to math so I try and research and verify information with experts and sources that are verified. Although, even with verified sources there may be a lingering doubt with some concepts and this is only natural for me but as I delve more into the subject I gain a sense of understanding. Things start to make a logical flow and it is usually easy to tell whether something has been falsified or unproven because of how I've been trained to analyze information, thanks to school <3.
Piltdown was discovered by Charles *Dawson*, not "Darwin".
ReplyDeleteThe jawbone on its own was not all that remarkable. The thing that was interesting is that the jaw was more like non-human apes, while the teeth and the cranium were more like modern humans (and I do see you reference the teeth later, but you don't mention the cranium). This is related to the issue of significance. Can you make that connection?
"At the time this was a considered huge discovery since it gave credence to humans descending from apes."
No. Piltdown, had it been valid, would NOT have demonstrated a link between humans and apes. First of all, humans ARE apes, but beyond that, Piltdown would have been a branch on the hominid family tree. It would have had nothing to say about the connection between humans and non-human apes. It didn't go back that far in evolutionary time.
So the issue of significance remains. Yes, this was significant because it was the first hominid found on English soil, but there was also *scientific* significance. Had Piltdown been valid, it would have helped us better understand *how* humans (not *if*) evolved from that common ancestor with non-human apes. Piltdown was characterized by large cranium combined with other more primitive, non-human traits, suggesting that the larger brains evolved relatively early in hominid evolutionary process. We now know this to be incorrect, that bipedalism evolved much earlier with larger brains evolving later, but Piltdown suggested that the "larger brains" theory, supported by Arthur Keith (one of the Piltdown scientists) was accurate (and this is the tie in with my comment above).
You offer good detail in your synopsis otherwise, but some information should have been provided. For example, when was the hoax revealed? What was the span of time between when the fossil was presented and when it was revealed as a hoax? Why do you think it took so long?
You are on the right track in the next section regarding "faults" but you don't actually identify the faults themselves, i.e., why did people choose to behave the way they did? So if the culprit created the hoax to advance himself professionally, that would be the fault of ambition, correct? You rightly point out that there was fault involved in the scientific community for not reviewing the fossil with more skeptism, but suggest this is related to "excitement". But we are talking about scientists here. Scientists can gain prestige by shooting down the claims of another scientist, so there is no incentive to accept a conclusion without question... in fact, it is the JOB of a scientist to question, so beyond incentive, scientists actually failed to do their job properly when they accepted Piltdown with so little skepticism. This needs to be explored. So why did the scientists fail to do their jobs? Remember that Germany and France had already found their own hominid fossils. This would have been England's first. Would you like to be the British scientist that killed England's chance to be on the hominid map? Could national pride have played a role here?
Good discussion of the technology used to uncover the hoax, but what made scientists come back and retest Piltdown? What was happening in paleoanthropology in those 40 years that pushed them to re-examine this find? You reference this in your synopsis. What aspect of science does that represent?
I agree with your conclusion regarding the human factor. 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.