The
Piltdown hoax began with the discovery by Charles Dawson in the little town of
Piltdown in southern England. This discovery setup a revolution as to
the actual evolution of man throughout history. The discovery vouched for
concepts brought about by Arthur Keith showing that the brain capacity developed before the upright walking
did. The discovery also plagued the scientific community for nearly 40 years with its false proof. This completely false find shows that scientists are capable of being
swayed by their own personal ambitions.
This find, due to its assumed truth,
caused nearly forty years of falsehood and supposed proof that humans
developed advanced brains before walking upright as well as the location of the
specimen itself. The scientific method with its additive process allowed for an
initial idea that the Piltdown specimen was completely out of place. The
specimen in Asia and Africa hundreds of thousands of years later still had relatively
undeveloped brains, but walked upright. Then after World War II, the
advancement of radiation based dating showed that the specimen was not nearly a
million years old, it had to be less than even 100,000. With research now in
full swing, the artifact was dated to be less than 100 years old and the teeth
had been filed down and other placed had been cut with steel.The scientific method proved to weed out this false science.
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| Charles Dawson |
It is not possible to completely
remove the human factor from science. The reason for this being that science is
based on human discovery and human questions. Therein lies a contradiction.
However, it is possible to remove the falsification and dishonesty in the
community be following the scientific method and weeding out falsehoods. I do not
want to remove humans from the process of science due to the nature of who is
asking the questions. Also, science is not simply finding out answers, it is
finding out what is not the answer and that may be the greatest part.
The overall lesson from this story
is do your homework, mark your sources, and do not trust people simply because
they are recognized within a community. Most of all, questioning other people's
findings is not disrespectful, it is science.
i do agree with you that it isn't dispespectful to question people's findings. We are entitled to second guess because like you said, it is science. i also do agree with you that removing humans from science wouldnt be the same. yes, we can remove dishonesty and also humans bring passion and facts to science.
ReplyDeleteYour discussion with regard to the positives of science that became apparent from this hoax was wonderful. You told the story well of how it was uncovered.
ReplyDeleteYou were a little spare on the human faults involved. Yes, ambition was involved, but that doesn't tell the whole story of the impetus behind this hoax and all the possible factors that came into play, including the international/political factors given the events in Europe at this time.
Otherwise, the coverage of the scientific implications of this find, had it not been a hoax, was excellent and your final discussion on the human factor and life lesson were also well done. Like Vanessa, I agree that questioning findings are not disrespectful, as long as they are done based upon factual and logical reasoning. I think it is actually wrong to question findings just because you don't like them, though perhaps this isn't disrespectful, just illogical and foolish.
You make a very good point when you say that you should not trust people just because they are recognized within a community... it is sort of like saying if someone jumped off a bridge would you jump too? Not necessarily in the same sense but same sort of concept on trusting people that you may or may not know. There will always be questions in science and people who try and manipulate data, but how will we know if everything else we have ever discovered was also manipulated by someone else?
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