Piltdown Hoax

The Piltdown Hoax was discovered in Piltdown, England in 1912 by Charles Dawson. The news that an ancient human jaw bone had been found spread quickly among the community.Dawson quickly acted on his discovery by contacting Arthur Woodward, a geologist, who joined Dawson and helped to discover more skull fragments. Many people thought of this discovery as the "missing link" between humans and apes until it was recently discovered that this finding
was just a hoax. Scientists researched this discovery and in determining the age of the fragments with fluorine, discovered the fragments were much too young to have come from the time period expected. Once they found that the age was impossible, they began to look for more clues and found that the fragments had been stained to appear older. They also discovered that the teeth on the jaw fragment had been filed and shaped to look like
that of a human.

The human fault that comes into play in the scenario is this: humans are selfish by nature and will do what ever it takes to get a step ahead. This scientist could have cared less about the meaning behind his hoaxed discovery, instead he had his eye on something else. Something that would help him get ahead and look good to the community. Hoaxes and the truth behind human nature negatively effect the scientific process because once a hoax is discovered, researchers must go back in time and reanalyze all evidence pertaining to the particular case. This also leaves us wondering what other discoveries could be nothing more than hoaxes.

The positive aspects responsible for the revealing of the skull to be a fraud are fluorine, which helped the scientists by revealing the fragments' actual age. While examining the fragments after finding out that the age was a hoax, scientists also found that the bones had been stained, filed and cut to appear older, more human like, and to camouflage the evidence of them being orangutan skull fragments rather than human.

I do not think it is possible to remove the human factor from science. If humans were to be removed from science there would be no new discoveries being made and no advances in technology. This is because humans would be replaced with machinery that was created by man kind, thus resulting in the same amount of chance of errors and mistakes happening again. Not to mention we would never fully be able to remove humans from science because the machines that would be created as replacement would be scientific creations requiring maintenance that only the creator can provide. I do not think that the human factor should ever be removed from science because the removal would cripple advances in technology and discoveries.

The life lesson i have learned from this historical event is to never take someone's word. I learned this because this event proves that anyone can lie at anytime about anything and depending on the person is able to do so without being questioned. For example, if a doctor were to tell a patient that cancer is caused by close contact with water in a certain area, the patient is more than likely not going to question the doctor, instead he will stay away from the "affected" area. In turn, if you or i were to say such a thing to the same patient, the patient would question whether or not we had a medical degree and probably not pay any attention to the information at all.