One Man Is to Blame for the Infamous Piltdown Man Hoax

[Eugene]

Source: Discover Magazine

One Man Is to Blame for the Infamous Piltdown Man Hoax

By Nathaniel Scharping | August 10, 2016 2:43 pm

A new study identifies the perpetrator of one of the most famous scientific hoaxes of all time.

The hoax involved the purported discovery of the long sought-after missing link between apes and humans in a gravel pit near Piltdown, England. Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist hungry for fame, claimed to have found fragments of a skull that was part human and part primate. The find neatly filled a hole in the theory of human evolution—a little too neatly.

The skull featured human and primate parts because that’s exactly what it was, an amalgamation of two medieval human skulls and the jawbone of an orangutan. Now, we know who to blame for one of science’s most infamous lies.

Modern-Day Detective Work

Suspects over the years have included a range of archaeologists involved with the find and even at one point Arthur Conan Doyle. But researchers from Liverpool John Moores University, employing a range of techniques including DNA sequencing and spectroscopy, determined Charles Dawson deserves all the blame for the forgery—after all, he was the only person involved with both the initial discovery in 1912 and a second “find” in 1915. They published their findings Tuesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

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Read more: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/08/10/piltdown-man-charles-dawson/#.V6vHwigrLDc

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Source: Royal Society Open Science

New genetic and morphological evidence suggests a single hoaxer created ‘Piltdown man’

Isabelle De Groote, Linus Girdland Flink, Rizwaan Abbas, Silvia M. Bello, Lucia Burgia, Laura Tabitha Buck, Christopher Dean, Alison Freyne, Thomas Higham, Chris G. Jones, Robert Kruszynski, Adrian Lister, Simon A. Parfitt, Matthew M. Skinner, Karolyn Shindler, Chris B. Stringer
Published 10 August 2016.DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160328

Abstract

In 1912, palaeontologist Arthur Smith Woodward and amateur antiquarian and solicitor Charles Dawson announced the discovery of a fossil that supposedly provided a link between apes and humans: Eoanthropus dawsoni (Dawson's dawn man). The publication generated huge interest from scientists and the general public. However, ‘Piltdown man's’ initial celebrity has long been overshadowed by its subsequent infamy as one of the most famous scientific frauds in history. Our re-evaluation of the Piltdown fossils using the latest scientific methods (DNA analyses, high-precision measurements, spectroscopy and virtual anthropology) shows that it is highly likely that a single orang-utan specimen and at least two human specimens were used to create the fake fossils. The modus operandi was found consistent throughout the assemblage (specimens are stained brown, loaded with gravel fragments and restored using filling materials), linking all specimens from the Piltdown I and Piltdown II sites to a single forger—Charles Dawson. Whether Dawson acted alone is uncertain, but his hunger for acclaim may have driven him to risk his reputation and misdirect the course of anthropology for decades. The Piltdown hoax stands as a cautionary tale to scientists not to be led by preconceived ideas, but to use scientific integrity and rigour in the face of novel discoveries.

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Read more: http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/8/160328

[AlbertCat]

1. even at one point Arthur Conan Doyle.

Arthur Conan Doyle was no Sherlock Holmes. He was completely gullible.

from Wiki:

"The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright (1901–88) and Frances Griffiths (1907–86), two young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England."

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"Doyle's article in the December 1920 issue of The Strand contained two higher-resolution prints of the 1917 photographs, and sold out within days of publication. To protect the girls' anonymity, Frances and Elsie were called Alice and Iris respectively, and the Wright family was referred to as the "Carpenters".[20] An enthusiastic and committed spiritualist, Doyle hoped that if the photographs convinced the public of the existence of fairies then they might more readily accept other psychic phenomena.[21] He ended his article with the words:

The recognition of their existence will jolt the material twentieth century mind out of its heavy ruts in the mud, and will make it admit that there is a glamour and mystery to life. Having discovered this, the world will not find it so difficult to accept that spiritual message supported by physical facts which has already been put before it.[21]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies