In 1912, archaeologist Charles Darwin found a human- like skull in Piltdown village in Sussex England. This is where he claimed to have found a connection between the human skull and an ape skull. This is because the skull had similar teeth to humans, and a jaw-lie structure similar to apes. The scientific significance would tell us that humans and apes have a connection and possibly derived from the same ancestor. This left many effects on the scientific community. For the most part, the scientific world accepted Scientist Smith Woodward and Charles Darwin began finding more bones and tools in the same area and they claimed that these all belonged to the same animal; however, as scientists began searching for more bones in areas like Asia and Africa in the 1920's and their findings did not match up with Darwin and Woodward's claims. These skulls revealed that the Piltdown Man was actually a piltdown hoax. Skulls that should have derived long after the Piltdown man actually showed that they were less human than more human. In 1949, Dr Kenneth Oakley utilized a fluorine test to determine the age of the piltdown findings.The remains found were only 50,000 years old which ultimately debunked that the Piltdown Mans connection between humans and apes because humans were already homo sapiens at this point. In 1953, further research proved that the Piltdown skull was actually superficial and that the teeth on the jawbone were filed down. Ultimately, Scientists discovered how easy it is to create a hoax and that further research should be checked before determining if it is true.
Because Scientists are human they can often times have faults. Darwin's ambition to discover lead him to create a hoax. He wanted to discover new things and create new connections that are linked to human kind. Because of this, he created a hoax and even got scientist Smith Woodard involved. Another human error is that because humans often times trust others, scientists were not skeptical at first and trusted his findings.
New technologies were created in the midst of the Piltdown Hoax. Fluorine tests were created which could determine the age of a fossil finding. This is still convenient in today' scientific world and can help prevent incidents like this to happen again in the future.
It is not possible to eliminate human factors all together from science. It is possible to double check, verify, and reduce, but not altogether eliminate human factors. I would not want to remove human factors from science because it makes things more personal. Discovering things through human nature is also the best way to learn from mistakes.
Ultimately, the Piltdown hoax proved and reminded scientists that fact checking work before releasing it is extremely important and no matter what title someone holds, to always double check their work.
Because Scientists are human they can often times have faults. Darwin's ambition to discover lead him to create a hoax. He wanted to discover new things and create new connections that are linked to human kind. Because of this, he created a hoax and even got scientist Smith Woodard involved. Another human error is that because humans often times trust others, scientists were not skeptical at first and trusted his findings.
New technologies were created in the midst of the Piltdown Hoax. Fluorine tests were created which could determine the age of a fossil finding. This is still convenient in today' scientific world and can help prevent incidents like this to happen again in the future.
It is not possible to eliminate human factors all together from science. It is possible to double check, verify, and reduce, but not altogether eliminate human factors. I would not want to remove human factors from science because it makes things more personal. Discovering things through human nature is also the best way to learn from mistakes.
Ultimately, the Piltdown hoax proved and reminded scientists that fact checking work before releasing it is extremely important and no matter what title someone holds, to always double check their work.
I too like you think that we cannot completely remove the human element when it comes to science. As accurate as machines, computers ,and robots are supposed to be they still have errors and clitches. There really isn't anything quite like the human. Without the human there wouldn't be a hunger to seek out more and ask more probing questions, and get a fire and passion for what science has to offer to our world. Great post!
ReplyDeleteNo, not Charles Darwin. This was about Charles *Dawson*. This is an important difference.
ReplyDelete"The scientific significance would tell us that humans and apes have a connection and possibly derived from the same ancestor."
Again, no. This fossil was not old enough to allow us to draw conclusions on the human/non-human ape (notice how I said that?) relationship. It was only a small twig on the hominid family tree and could only have taught us about human evolution, nothing else, had it been valid. There is a section in the assignment module about the problems with the concept of a "missing link". The mistake you are making here is related and you should go back and review this resource to understand the problem here.
So the issue of significance remains. Piltdown was characterized by large cranium combined with other more primitive, non-human traits, suggesting that the larger brains evolved relatively early in hominid evolutionary process. We now know this to be incorrect, that bipedalism evolved much earlier with larger brains evolving later, but Piltdown suggested that the "larger brains" theory, supported by Arthur Keith (one of the Piltdown scientists) was accurate.
I appreciate the information you provide in your synopsis, particularly including the information on other fossils found that contradicted Piltdown. Be careful about errors in detail (i.e., "Darwin" and "missing link" references) that detract from your work.
I agree that *Dawson* was likely driven by ambition, though we still aren't sure who was the actual culprit, so it is safer to say that the perpetrator(s) were driven by ambition and possibly greed.
"... scientists were not skeptical at first and trusted his findings."
Actually, not in the scientific community. 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?
Can we get a bit more detail on how the fluorine analysis works? And who conducted this test? Beyond this, 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?
"I would not want to remove human factors from science because it makes things more personal. "
Why is that a good thing? That needed to be explained. Science should be *impersonal* as scientists should be looking for facts and not drawing conclusions based upon emotion. But do humans bring no other positive factors to the process of science? Could we even do science without the curiosity in humans that push them to ask those initial questions? Or their ingenuity to create tests of their hypotheses? Or the intuition that helps them draw connections and conclusions from disparate pieces of information?
The last section asks you to explain how you would apply what you learned here to your own life, not to science in general. I get your point, but make sure you answer the questions as asked.
Hi, I concur with your conclusion about the ethical necessities of science, but I think your explanation is a bit sparse. Why exactly do we need to double check our work? What kinds of errors arise and how does one address them?
ReplyDelete