the piltdown was a finding of a skull fossil in the 1900's by Charles Dawson, he first stumbled on a skull piece then a jaw bone which was believed to be a piece of evidence that linked between humans and apes. Although after studying these pieces , they appeared to be at least 1 million years old but after further examinations they came to the realization that they where much more recent than that. The scientist knew right away something wasn't adding up, so charles dawson came to mind. charlesdawson was an ametur to science when he stumbled upon his findings. so in a sense this helped him build up credibility to his name as a paleontologist.The piltdown happened in sussex, england. After World war two II in 1953, the scientist were able to fully and thoroughly evaluate the skull piece, teeth and jaw bone that were believed to belong to the 2nd piltdown man, it was at that point the findings where claimed as fakes. someone had gone back to file, stain and remove teeth of the fossil to make it appear a lotolder then what it actually was. charles wanted to get his name out in the scientific world to be well known and respected, so he along with the help of a very well educated scientist falsified the information being presented on the fossil.it leaves us wondering on why someone would do something like that,but it all boils down to pride and ego of some people. in my opinion all science should be done with the purest of all intentions, it should be to help provide humanity will the best facts and evidence so we can advance asa species.
i believe a positive outcome out of all of this is that humans have developed the ability to be able to catch and distinguish the real fossils from the fake ones. i also believe that humans arent perfect, we make errors but we also learn from them and move forward.The human factor will always be a part of science, its going to include humans to do their part of collecting data and taking note of all facts. you can not eliminate it. being a scientist you know to not take things at a face value; you must dig deeper and dissect the items presented to only keep record of only the most accurate information possible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUaJeNSkbC0&feature=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOxHLWMiULU&feature=related
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man
Can you give a few more specifics on the find itself? When was it found? You don't specify other than the "1900's".
ReplyDeleteBy this time, it was generally understood that humans and non-human apes were related, so the importance of this find wasn't tied with "if" human and non-human apes were related, but "how" humans descended from their common ancestor. So what would the Piltdown fossil, had it been valid, have taught us about how humans evolved?
How many years passed between the discovery of Piltdown and the uncovering of the hoax?
"charles wanted to get his name out in the scientific world to be well known and respected, so he along with the help of a very well educated scientist falsified the information..."
We still don't actually know who the culprit was, but I agree that ambition probably did play a role in this hoax. But why did people in the scientific community accept this find so readily with so little skepticism?
The question on "positive aspects" asked what positive aspects of the process of science were involved in uncovering the hoax. So what technology helped to provide evidence that Piltdown was a hoax? Also, it took 40 years for them to figure out that Piltdown was faked. Why were they still analyzing the fossil so many years after it was found? What positive aspects of the process of science does this represent?
In this day and age, computers could do much of the data and fact collecting. Do we really still need humans? Wouldn't it be better to get rid of factors that can produce hoaxes like this? Or do humans bring anything positive to the process of science, such as curiosity, ingenuity and intuition?
Good conclusion.
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I agree with your conclusion that even if mistakes such as this hoax shouldn't have been made ideally, we learn from them and ultimately push science onwards towards more accurate conclusions!
ReplyDeleteI like that you included that humans aren't perfect and make mistakes because that is definitely true. We think that because scientists or researches know more than us they don't make mistakes. But i don't think that this was a mistake, this was definitely a hoax and they tried making everyone believe that they had found something big that no one else knew about.
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