Piltdown Hoax 05/13/14

          In December 1912 in a little town called Piltdown located in East Sussex England a man by the name of Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist, had been handed fragments of what appeared to be a jawbone and part of a skull.  When he himself later visited the site he found more fragments, alongside stone tools and animal fossils  Although he did enlist the help of a few other scientists (i.e. Woodward) it was Dawson himself who found these fragments. The most incredible find was that of a jawbone that appeared to be "ape-like" but the teeth were stunning the scientists because they were flat like a humans; it was soon praised as remains of early humans and perhaps even, the "missing link" between the connection of apes and human evolution (the term "missing link" is now used relatively lightly since scientists believe there is not one "missing link" there is perhaps an "indefinite number of missing branches").  This was all later determined to be a huge elaborate plan to dupe everyone in to thinking they were the "missing link".
          Arthur Woodward was a highly prestigious scientist back then, although his main expertise was of fish fossils, the people took his word of the findings at face value and had no reason to doubt his findings due to his reputation in the community.  Not to mention most of the public was silenced after more fossils came to light further proving what the remains actually were and even if someone had doubts, you'd have to be a brave soul to challenge scientist of such high caliber. Arthur Keith was also a scientist who backed up these findings because they backed up his personal theory on human evolution, which is humans developed larger brains before being able to walk upright (which has now proven false and England has since found a fossil proving that the upright walked happens long before the brain enlargement).
           The world was fooled for almost forty (40) years until further testing was done on the fossils  by pouring fluorine content on them which proved they had been artificially stained by man, and the teeth that were such a key component had actually been hand filed down by something abrasive to replicate that of a humans tooth.  Not to mention the fragments found had been manually cut by a human hand. Examination under intense microscopes saw the abrasion marks on the teeth from the filing.   The jaw and teeth were not even the same age as the skull. Years later in fact remains were found in Asia and Africa that negated the findings of Piltdown and showed that evolution began with bipedalism and not the increased brain size.
         In the end it's the pride and own self interest of some, yet to be proven, man(men) (although Dawson was suspected he's innocent until proven guilty) that led to this massive deceit for so long.  They were so consumed with wanting England to be the point of interest for the first discovery of a break through fossil that would be the answer to human evolution that he/she/they didn't care about deceiving the public, that was his/her/their human fault.  Some other faults that may come in to play is that they kept these remains under such tight lock and key for so long, that even those that wanted to do their own research on the findings were forbidden access to them.  That to me can't happen as it disallows further testing to be able to falsify the evidence.  I don't feel as though you should completely remove the "human" factor in science as it leads to new discoveries and hypothesis', but as history shows you can't take people (even "scholars" and "gentlemen" of science) at their word, you have to let the evidence speak for itself.  Clearly in this case, proper testing was not done on trying to falsify these findings, even when doubts arose.  This human error happened because of one mans greed and self interest, so for that purpose naturally the human factor proved negligible.
         As for the life lesson taken from this unthinkable historical event, is that we must not take people at their word without proper and clear testing and evidence to support it.  This post was kind of fun for me because I almost feel like I am being challenged as a hypocrite since I have always preached that in science "you need evidence you need evidence!" and here in this case, evidence was presented yet fooled so many for so long. Although early scientists such as Woodward and Dawson did not have the magnitude of resources we now have today, who's to say there's not some other scientist with ulterior motives out there waiting to fool us all?