Piltdown Hoax

The Piltdown Hoax was collected on December 18, 1912 at Piltdown, East Sussex, England. The Piltdown Hoax was founded by Charles Dawson. Dawson born the eldest of three sons, Dawson moved with his family to Hastings, Sussex when he was still very young. Charles initially studied as a lawyer following his father and pursued a hobby of collecting and studying fossils. The affects Dawsons had on the scientific community was good at first but everything was transferred to hatred when fraud was brought to the table. According to Dawson, workmen at the site had discovered the skull shortly before his visit and had broken it up in the belief that it was a fossilized "coconut".  After the findings he took them to Arthur Smith Woodward,  greatly interested by the finds, Woodward accompanied Dawson to the site where Dawson alone recovered more fragments of the skull and half of the lower jaw bone. Then after Woodward announced that a reconstruction of the fragments had been prepared that indicated that the skull was in many ways similar to that of a modern human's, except for the brain size which was about two-thirds that of a modern human's.

In November 1953 Kenneth Page Oakley, Sir Wilfrid Edward Le Gros Clark and Joseph Weiner proved that the Piltdown Man was a forgery and demonstrating that the fossil was a composite of three distinct species. It consisted of a human skull of medieval age, the 500-year-old lower jaw of a Sarawak, orangutan and chimpanzee fossil teeth. The focus on Charles Dawson as the main forger is supported by the accumulation of evidence regarding other archaeological hoaxes he dedicated or the two prior to the Piltdown discovery .

Positive aspects of the scientific process which were helpful to prove the fraud were specific tools that advanced the science community like a type of technology for dating sites and fossils, also tools that are used to find fossils are even more useful because the site might have had other evidence lingering around that was found to be proven fraud. Other tools that were used for the investigation were chemicals which showed the age of the fossils.

I don't think its possible to remove the “human” factor from science because humans are the ones who discover new things which cause the world to advance in everything. Without us humans the world would not advance and scientist would not have theories which would possibly be right or wrong. Even though humans do make mistakes or theorize wrong ideas it doesn't mean we will always be wrong it just means we all make mistakes and maybe someone out there can correct my mistake and make a better hypothesis out of my theory of what ever it might be.

By being informed of the  Piltdown Hoax I've learned that even if your desperate at times to be a big person in a discovery that can change the world do it the right way. What I'm trying to say is that your not the only person who has brains or is the biggest thing to the science community there are others and those people can creep up on you and prove that your discovery can be a fraud and change the whole perspective of your reputation. Even though Charles Dawson did committee fraud his discovery did open eyes to many people out there which later on discovered other early life fossils which changed our whole science world. Which brings me to my point with one mistake it opened up so many other doors which advance us in so many other things and ways.