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The Piltdown Hoax rocked the small town in
southwest England in the 1900s. In the town of Piltdown a laborer discovered a
strange skull at Barkham Manor. The scientific community was affected by it immensely
being attacked with questions. This hoax tricked the world for 50 years until
uncovering the truth. The skull went under examination and found that the bones
were not as old as they assumed the bones were made to look old, also
scientists believed that the jaw did not belong to this skull making it
difficult to put the pieces together.
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Other countries around the world had their own
discoveries, finding evidence of the early living man. England was disappointed
that Germany and France were finding historical artifacts that once the skull
was found at Barkham Manor they were ecstatic. Thus the reason the
investigation did not go any further. Jealousy
played a big role in this, England decided not to investigate whether the
findings were real they believed the findings were true because they wanted to
compete with other countries.
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The hoax was discovered by the research done on
the skull. A piece of the jaw bone was broken off making it frustrating to
picture the missing piece. The scientists believed that the jaw did not match
the skull and felt as if it was placed there. Scientist believed that the only
thing missing was a canine tooth and later went back to the Barkham Manor and
discovered the canine tooth bringing their investigation together.
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It would be quite impossible to take the human
factors out of scientific discoveries. These discoveries deal with human
influences daily it would be difficult to remove human emotions in science. It
would be a good idea to remove the human influences from science. Research would
be made thoroughly if there was no human factor. The lessons could teach those
not to assume something is true you need evidence to prove what is true or not.
You've hit some key points, but you are missing answers to some key questions. After the laborer found the fossil, who claimed it and did the follow-up work? Who else was involved? Who is possibly the culprit in this hoax? Was the hoax uncovered immediately or much, much later? If it was later, than why wasn't it uncovered sooner?
ReplyDeleteWhat was the scientific significance of the fossil, had it been valid? What would it have taught us about human evolution.
I agree that national pride came into play here, but why did the initial perpetrators commit this hoax to begin with?
I'm a little unclear about the order of events that led to uncovering the hoax. What was the new technology that was used to falsify the fossil? Can you describe it? What aspects of the process of science itself helped to reveal the fossil to be a fraud?
While it would be helpful to remove human error (which is what the scientific method is designed to do), are there no positive aspects of the human factor that we need for science to occur? How about curiosity? Ingenuity? Innovation?
Okay on your final section. I would have liked you to expand upon this and explain it a bit more.