Tuesday, March 6, 2018
Week 5 Piltdown Hoax
In the early 1900's Darwin pulled off a hoax that would take years to discover the truth.
While digging in a southern town of Lewes, Piltdown. Darwin claimed to have found a piece of a human skull. Darwin invited a couple of men, geologist Arthur Smith Woodward and Paleontologist Pierre Tay. The three men claimed to make some great finds at the gravel pit.
They were excited because they thought they discovered evidence that England had ancient human fossils like other countries and they suggested that maybe this would be the oldest fossil of all. One of Darwin's greatest supporter was Arthur Keith, who wanted to prove his personal theory "humans developed big brains before they walked upright." We now know that this is incorrect and that "bipedalism, " developed before the big brain.
The hoax was finally discovered in the 1950's. By this time they had much better dating methods and allowed more people to analyze the fossils found by Darwin and Co. By measuring fluorine content of the fossils, scientists could roughly date 100,000 ya, which was considered rather young instead of 10 million ya.
Human fault would be that everyone in the (science world) would accept these finding as concrete evidence. They didn't have reason not trust these three professional men. Darwin wanted to be famous and was eager to put out his information not thinking of the consequences which later on would be, him making science look like a joke and disgrace.
Thanks to better testing methods, such as "The Fluorine Method" Dr. Kenneth Oakley was able to test the fossils by absorbing the fluorine into the bones from water and soil where they originally were found. The fossils did not match. the jaw and skull gave a smell proving that the jaw was older than the skull. This was done by drilling into the bones. They also did a "Nitrogen test" Proving once again that they were completely two different fossils bones.
I believe humans and machinery are both flawed and they need to work hand in hand in order to get a full grasp on scientific theories. I believe that they both compliment each other because machines can give out facts and humans can build off of that.
My life lesson would be to always trust your gut. If you feel something is wrong then investigate it until you have proof of it being right or wrong. Whether it be related to science, or your own life lessons. Do not just stop because someone "swears" it to be true. (for example a lying significant other).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No, not Darwin! Careful! The possible culprit here was Charles DAWSON. I hope you understand that this was not Charles Darwin who did this. That would be a horrible misconception to take away from this assignment.
ReplyDeleteOther than that misnomer, your other information is good and I appreciate that you accurately describe the significance of fossil discovery, had it been valid.
"They didn't have reason not trust these three professional men. "
The problem with this is that it doesn't accurately describe how science works. 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?
Other than that, why did the culprits create the hoax in the first place? Greed? Ambition?
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? What aspect of science does that represent?
Okay on your "human factor" section, but you seem to be assuming all factors are negative. Is that the case? Do humans bring nothing positive to the scientific process? How about curiosity, ingenuity and innovation? Could we even do science without these factors?
Good life lesson.