Piltdown Hoax

  In 1912 Charles Dawson found a piece of an ancient human skull. He then invited Arthur Smith Woodward, and a French paleontologist to continue the search for earlier human life. Until this date no fossil had been found in England. Then Dawson found a jawbone that had the shape of the ape. Dawson made the announcement that England had discovered what could have possibly have been the oldest fossil and called it Piltdown man. England rejoiced and he became one of the most respected men in science until it was discovered that the whole thing was a hoax. Dawson dies in 1916 and in 1920 Asia and Africa found more human fossils that dated back to earlier times.  Suspicions started arising because Africa and Asia's fossils were supposed to younger than the Piltdown man but for some reason their fossils were less human than the Piltdown man, not more which did not make any sense. In 1949 Fluorine test showed that the fossil was stained which meant the Piltdown man was tampered with. This outraged the scientific community as this made them look bad in the way that they were not able to detect that it was a fraudulent fossil for forty years.
   Human do have faults which we clearly saw in this video. Dawson was a very ambitious man who wanted to fit in and stand out in the scientific community. He wanted it so badly that he forged the Piltdown man. After his death it was discovered that Dawson had tampered with half a dozen more artifacts. This impacted the scientific process because instead of taking the evidence and making sure that the jaw bone was human Dawson made it look like it was by breaking off the end of the jawbone. Dawson violated the scientific process by making his own conclusion and striving for fame in his scientific community. He needed to be patient and keep looking for evidence and testing out more fossils instead of just forging them . Instead of taking all the steps he jumped to the last step in the scientific process and reported his findings.
   The whole scientific process was responsible for the finding of the fraudulent Piltdown man. Asking a question led the scientific community to wonder and form a hypothesis as to  why the fossils in Africa were younger than the Piltdown man, yet they were less human. Then testing the hypothesis by doing an experiment led scientist to try the fluorine test. This advent came after WWII with the technology that helped measure the fluorine content and scientist could roughly date them. After the scientist analyzed their data they came up with their conclusion and in 1949 the fluorine test revealed that the fossil was about 100,000 years old. This could only mean that the fossil was a fake.  They then communicated their findings with the rest of the world.
    I do not believe we can remove the human factor from science. As much as humans want to be professional and not let their ambitions get in the way , they always will. I just believe that there are good ambitions and greedy ones. If we did not have the human factor in the scientific world, I believe nothing would get done. Ambition is what drives scientist to great discoveries. I just think you have to learn to control your ambitions, and how you perceive things. Getting rid of the human factor, would turn us into robot like people. We would just go through the motions without really caring.  So no I do not think that we can remove the human factor from science and I don't think that if we could, we should. Being human even in science is what helps get things done. Good science depends on objectivity and when national pride or self interest overcome objectivity, then that's when mistakes happen.
  What I took from this lesson is that scientist make mistakes just like the rest of us. They can also be very vulnerable. Up to this point in history nothing this drastic had ever occurred. Which shows that everyone trusted each other's work. After the news broke out, doubt was on every ones mind on how far one can go to just gain the five minutes of fame. I ultimately learned that ambition and self greed can drive even the most respected people out there to do the most outrageous things.