Science and the Hoax That Helped Mold It

The year is 1908 in Piltdown, UK., Charles Dawson is said to have been given a fragment of a skull, an ancestor to humans, a ‘missing link’ they called it, despite the ‘missing link’ idea being incorrect, by workmen. Charles, whose history of forgeries had yet to be unearthed, is said to have taken this monumental discovery. 4 years and multiple returns to the supposed sight later, he would be in front of the Scientific community proclaiming its significance. Arthur Woodward, the keeper of the geological department at the British Museum, was shown the fragments and bones that Dawson had supposedly discovered and accompanied him for 4 months, never once finding anything himself, never once questioning the validity of this. After Dawson death in 1916 not another fossil was found in Piltdown, despite Dawson seemingly finding an abundance of them. It would take almost 50 years and leaps in technology, such as Fluoride-based tests, for the truth to be revealed. 

Charles Dawson, who lived from July 1864 to August 1916, was an amateur archaeologist from Britain. He was somewhat prolific in the scientific community at the time, for if he were a nobody he would not have been taken as seriously as he had been. Regardless of this stature, why did it take so long for these, in hindsight, obvious red flags to be discovered? One man alone was able to make this monumental discovery and no more were found after his death? The workmen were 4 years ago and thus difficult if not impossible to track down? Arthur didn’t make a single discovery in his 4 months in the field? In hindsight, and because we know they were hoaxes, these seem like obvious red flags that should have warranted further investigation. But there’s a larger story at play. 

It’s attributed that the Enlightenment age took place in the 18th century, Capitalism emerged in the 16th and 18th centuries in London, and  Nationalism started taking hold in the late 19th to 20th century. These factors in their own right may seem to be disconnected ideas that took place hundred(s) of years ago, but these pressures led to human errors in the Piltdown Hoax. The Enlightenment was an explosion of the sciences, philosophy, art, and greater thinking about us and our place in the world. It brought together scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, and artists, all with the common goal to broaden human understanding and reason. This idea of broadening human understanding was the modus operandi for scientists, they believed they were working together towards a common goal. But as Capital Economics continued to expand its pressures, people felt more and more the need to justify, monetarily, their discoveries. A large discovery could lead to more funding, better equipment, notoriety, paid speaking gigs, under this system one large discovery could set you for life. These outside pressures thus corrupted the goal of science, while there was a majority of scientists still dedicated to the mission of science, the addition of monetary incentives created a new brand of Scientist, the opportunist. Along with that, the rise of nationalism, specifically Anglo nationalism, also played a contributing role. Britain was seen as the powerhouse of the Western world, it also has millennia of history of being the powerhouse of the West if not the world, and because of this, Britons saw themselves as unique, special, and integral to human development. But that idea clashed with the reality that there were no early human remains in Britain, as there were in Africa. Africa had already been colonized by this point, and Darwin had postulated the idea that humans came from Africa only 30 years before Dawson was “given” the fragments. There was a vested interest in proving that the ‘mighty Anglos are the true first humans and not the lesser Africans’. Anglican desire to be seen as the baseline for humanity has been a racist and inaccurate belief that has been around for hundreds of years, and that was challenged no more than 30 years prior, only a generation ago. 

Human bias isn’t all bad, though. It was human bias that led to the hoax, which led to more scrutiny. Once new technologies, such as Fluoride-based tests and carbon dating, were introduced they allowed scientists to better and more accurately check their work. Once these tests were done and the hoax was discovered, it opened scientists eyes to the possibility that people aren’t as truthful as they say and may have some apprehension when things seem to not add up fully. Even though it hurt science to discover the hoax, science was made better overall by it. The same thing happened after the Watergate scandal, especially after World War 2 people genuinely believed in their politicians and government, but after Watergate that opened the public’s eyes to just how corrupt government can be and since politicians didn’t use this to better scrutinize themselves and government, the distrust only grew further and further. While the same did happen in science, scientists took the opposite approach and added more scrutiny to people’s findings, though it isn’t perfect and some still slip through the cracks. 

Even though science has been reinforced because of the hoax, what do we do about the ones that still fall through the cracks? Do we remove the human element and have machines made of scientists? Well no, because science is in and of itself human. While science is the discovery of truths in the world, what we classify as science, what we call science, the framework of science is a human creation. Therefore any framework that is to study science is the framework created by humans. You cannot remove humans from a human concept, for we made the name for a singular item 1, for we call it gravity, for we call it science. There is a world where the study of gravity is purely a mathematical school of thought and has nothing to do with science, but we say it does, therefore gravity falls into the study of science with the assistance of mathematics. If we were to have an inhuman robot to study science, what it chooses to study, the framework it categorizes, and the concepts it adheres to are all human creations. The world and its mechanisms exist without humans, but science is a human creation and therefore inseparable from humanity. 

I am already a skeptical person. If something doesn’t pass the ‘sniff test’ chances are I will need to do more research into the topic. If something isn’t adding up, or sounds too convenient, or sounds like a leap in logic, think twice about it. If a single study gives me a result that reinforces my worldview while all the others say the opposite, which do you believe? It depends on who conducted the study, their methodology, and their interpretation of the results. So many factors come into play when trying to achieve knowledge and correct answers, and it’s up to you to be that scrutiny. Even if it’s something small and insignificant, knowledge is power no matter how small the amount of information you receive. But this isn’t just for science, it applies to scams, advertising, and the news. Institutions are meant to provide us with accurate and reliable information, but they aren’t infallible. For they manufacture consent, they have Capital interests, they have human biases. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t trust these institutions, but you shouldn’t blindly trust them either.