Fossil fools: Return to Piltdown

BBC ^ | Thursday, 13 November, 2003, 03:33 GMT | Paul Rincon

[camle]

looks like Gollum

[GrandEagle]

For reference...

[asformeandformyhouse]

looks like Gollum

I was thinking James Carville.

[camle]

that'll work. he's a cro-magnon lizard if ever I seen one!

[js1138]

Not everyone was fooled:

The association of a human cranial vault with a pongid mandible into the taxon Eoanthropus dawsoni (1) was not accepted by all authorities. The dualist theory, that the two elements were associated by chance in the same gravels, was proposed as an alternative by David Waterston, professor of anatomy at King's College, London (2); and the distinguished zoologist Gerrit S. Miller, of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., strongly supported this point of view (3, 4).

Miller went so far as to restrict Woodward's name to the cranial fragment, describing the jaw as that of a new species of chimpanzee, Pan vetus (3 ) . His paper contains this remarkable statement, which now reads like prophecy:

"Deliberate malice could hardly have been more successful than the hazards of deposition in so breaking the fossils as to give free scope to individual judgement in fitting the parts together."

The late T. D. McCown told one of us (C.P.G.) in 1966 that Miller had confided to him his suspicion that things were not quite right about Piltdown but had been persuaded by his colIeagues not to publish his suspicion on the grounds that without positive proof this would be too serious an allegation of scientific fraud.

It may be that Miller already suspected fraudulence when he wrote his 1915 paper. For a number of reasons, however, this seems unlikely; in particular, his description of the mandible as a new species of ape was too serious a committal if at that time he believed its features might not be wholly natural.

Americans suspected something was wrong as early as 1915

[NicknamedBob]

A fraud? I could swear I used to work with this guy;

He had a spot worn on the time clock where he leaned, waiting for the time to punch out.

[js1138]

Piltdown ping.

[VadeRetro]

Within a few decades, Piltdown Man was looking like an odd, very isolated data point.

Roger Lewin quotes Sherwood Washburn as saying

"I remember writing a paper on human evolution in 1944, and I simply left Piltdown out. You could make sense of human evolution if you didn't try to put Piltdown into it."

Piltdown Man, by Richard Harter.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Piltdown was accepted as genuine until 1953,...

More correctly, British scientists accepted Piltdown. American, French, and German scientists were more skeptical, at least according to the published papers. (Similar to the French and the N-Rays.)

[Doctor Stochastic]

Piltdown is an example of a designed entity rather than an evolved one.

[VadeRetro]

The only evidence there ever was for the "Out of England" theory and it just didn't hold up.

[js1138]

The timing here is critical. Within a couple of years of the "discovery" England was at war with Germany and not inclined to take any scientific criticism from them.

The specimens were locked away in a vault and not available for examination for 40 years. (another world war, a depression, and a lot of national pride got in the way)

This is an example of what can happen when you place the testimony of men above the examination and analysis of evidence.

In the long term scheme of things I think of this the way I might think of a murder investigation in which the allege perp has gunpowder residue on his hand, the victim's blood on his clothing, his fingerprints on the victim's wallet, his image on surveillance cameras, and a bit of false testimony from the arresting officer. Do you throw the case out because the police botched Miranda? In the legal system, maybe, but it makes not a whit of difference as to what really happened.

[js1138]

Off topic, but you have a really great home page.

http://www.freerepublic.com/~colosis/

[PatrickHenry]

We had a Piltdown Man thread last week: The rise and fall of Piltdown Man, a 20th-century hoax.

[js1138]

Yes but it did have my number 6:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1020785/posts?page=6#6

[Doctor Stochastic]

Not to mention Piltdown Rides Again.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Piltdown was accepted as genuine until 1953...

Guess it depends on who you believe. There were folks as early as 1913 who questioned Piltdown.

[RadioAstronomer]

Not to mention Piltdown Rides Again.

Don't forget Piltdown_Woman. :-)

[whattajoke]

Piltdown is an example of a designed entity rather than an evolved one.

21 syllables, limitless wisdom. Well done.