The “Science Fraud of the Century” – Lessons from Piltdown for today.
With the Great War on the horizon, a group of British paleontologists unveiled their answer to Heidelberg man: Piltdown Man, the “first Englishman”. It would take a full 40 years to unravel the “science fraud of the century”. Diligent work since then has given us a much clearer picture of how, and by whom, the hoax was accomplished. Piltdown is now held up as an example of the self-correcting nature of science, or, by some, as evidence of the gullibility of scientists. We are entering a new age that furnishes would-be swindlers with sophisticated tools to falsify scientific results.
Join Alex Straiker in a conversation about the hoax from a history of science perspective, and what we might learn from it about the conduct of science in the 21 st century.