1. Piltdown Hoax was an archaeological site in England where in the year 1908 and 1912 human, ape and other mammal fossils were found together. And In 1913 at a nearby site diggers appeared to have stumbled upon an ape's jaw with a canine tooth worn down like a human's. Being surprised at the rare fine diggers decided to hand over the remains to an amateur archeologist named Charles Dawson who lived in the town of Piltdown. The general community of British Paleoanthropologists came to accept the idea that the fossil remains belonged to a single creature that had had a human cranium and an ape's jaw.But In 1953 the Piltdown 'man' was exposed as a forgery by Kenith Oakley with the help of modern techniques.This sparked an uproar in the scientific community. The skull was in fact modern and the teeth on the ape's jaw had been filed down. Piltdown hoax confirmed A hypotheses about our early ancestors that were in fact wrong specifically that the brain case developed before the jaw. with this being confirmed it through researchers off track for decades. Every man who was involved in the hoax knowingly or unknowingly was shamed and embarrassed.
2. the Piltdown hoax is taken to be proof that science and scientist are more or less not always right. It proves that scientist can be wrong and have made the mistake on trusting other scientist. the Piltdown forgery demonstrates the fallibility of scientific knowledge. It demonstrates how theories and facts are related in science. Most of the fault lies mostly on the museum which housed the remains of the finding .The hoax is another instance of desired fame for leading a scholar into dishonesty. Far from being a triumph of Science the hoax points to common and dangerous faults. The hoax succeeded in large part because of the careless nature of the testing applied to it; careful examination using the methods available at the time would have immediately revealed it as a hoax. This failure to adiquetly examine the fossils went unmarked and unnoticed at the time in large part because the hoax admirably satisfied the theoretical expectations of the time.
3. scientists used a fluorine solution to reveal the date of the fossil which gave it a date backing it to more than 100,000 years. once a date was reached, they decided to do more tests using large scaling dating. it accurately dated to 100 years or more making the skull younger than what it was originally said to be. This analysis proved that the skull was in fact stained and the teeth had been filled to make it seem like human which was shown using a microscope. This alone showed positive aspects and new innovative tools such as the microscope to help determine the hoax.
4. it will not be possible to remove the human factor in science, mainly because it is vital for the development of mankind to go through trial and error to improve on our own and learn new ways of understanding new findings. Errors like this have helped science in determining hypothesis, research or anything scientific for that matter by proving them right or wrong. And without the human factor computers or intelligent AI wouldn't be able to come up with such bold theories like “the big bang” or “evolution” its the human touch that has helped our advancement as a society.
5. Life lesson? well people are liars for one! and that having evidence to prove something means you should question it no matter how wrong or right you may be after all humans make mistakes. And as a future career in law enforcement ill have to do my own research to determine the sources of a crime no matter if it comes from a criminal or a person with a phd.
Nice blog post! Agree with you 100% that humans make mistakes. We should never believe what we are told unless there is credible evidence Also, great way of tying in your future career path with what you learned! You included an abundant amount of background information that made it very interesting to read.
ReplyDeleteGood Post. I agree that humans make mistakes and are not perfect. Removing humans would be difficult because, like you said, we need errors to not make the same mistake twice and better our knowledge. I did state, in blog post, that having machines, such as robots in science would possible help us but I do not think that will come about for a very long time and it would take a lot of trial and error to create that robot. I agree with your life lesson as well, that people are liars. Charles Dawson created this hoax for fame and to be accepted in to the royal society.
ReplyDeleteGood job on making your arguments clear, I like how you connected all your ideas together. Charles Dawson took his chance to become famous by doing something immoral and scientists were fooled by it. But as you said, humans do learn from mistakes and I doubt that this sort of hoax would happen again, Good Post!!
ReplyDeleteIn general, good information on your scenario, particularly the discussion on its significance as providing information on *how* humans evolved. Careful on details. For example, workmen found the initial bone shard and immediately passed it onto Dawson, who then pulled in the other scientists to help continue the excavation and construction of the cranium and jaw.
ReplyDelete"Every man who was involved in the hoax knowingly or unknowingly was shamed and embarrassed.
Actually, I believe that every possible perpetrator was dead by the time the hoax was revealed, so I doubt they felt much shame!
" the Piltdown hoax is taken to be proof that science and scientist are more or less not always right."
I agree with this statement regarding to scientists but not to science. It was the process of science that eventually led to the evidence that revealed Piltdown to be a hoax. Careful about conflating the products of scientists with the products of the process of science. They are two separate things.
I strongly agree that the scientific community itself was at fault for not treating this fossil find with the proper scrutiny all new fossils deserve. Good explanation for this. But what about the perpetrators of the hoax? What faults were involved there? What caused them to create this fraud in the first place?
Good description of the technology used to uncover the hoax. What about the process of science itself? What aspects of the scientific process helped to provide evidence that this fossil was a fraud? Why were scientists still studying this fossil some 40 years after it was discovered?
I agree with your conclusions on the issue of the *human factor*, though I would focus more on those positive aspects humans bring to the process of science, beyond the negative contribution of human error. Without humans, who would ask the initial questions, drawing our innate curiosity of the world around us? How about the intuition to draw connections between two disparate pieces of information? How about the creative ability to create new technology to solve problems? Could we even do science without these very human traits?
"...well people are liars for one!"
I realize it is tempting to draw this conclusion, but I was hoping a more positive take would rise to the top. Yes, *some* people are liars and try to cheat the system, but think about how many people worked to not only help uncover the hoax, but to also continue the work in paleoanthropology, producing other non-fraudulent fossils that demonstrated the contradictions in Piltdown, providing good reason to revisit and analyze this fossil even 40 years later. Think also about how the process of science itself helps to weed out human errors produced by these "cheaters". It takes time, but science is quite effective in this way. So, yes, some people are cheaters and we need to be skeptical about all new finds, not with the assumption that they must be fraudulent, but because we this is how science works. It demands evidence to help weed out human error, whether it be intentional or unintentional.
I really enjoyed this! Very well written, you explained the hoax very beautifully! No detail was spared. Everything flowed together incredibly well--the only critique i could come up with was elaborate on the trait/fault in humans that creates situations like the Piltdown Hoax.
ReplyDeleteVery well written! I enjoyed reading this very much, it went together nicely. It was very straight forward and tod the point. I agree with you that humans are liars, there is and will always be liars in the world, weather they are like you stated "a criminal or someone with a phd".
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