"The Greatest Hoax". Something about the Piltdown man. I don't think I've seen it before. So the question is whether by "greatest" they mean good or awesome.
Posted by Verily the Younger (Member # 6705) on :
They probably mean by sheer scale. The Piltdown hoax had the entire scientific community fooled for over forty years. And that's not easy to do.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Its worth pointing out that the community knew it was wrong quite a bit before it was exposed as a hoax from other evidence, which helps show the strength of science. Despite that it had been generally accepted, as new fossils were discovered which piltdown man didn't fit in with, people started dismissing it. For instance, years before it was exposed as a hoax the American Museum of Natural History "classified it as a mixture of ape and man fossils."
Alas, it was the Boldest Hoax and not the Greatest Hoax.
I guess the question of who did it was never fully settled, but one of the prime suspects was a guy who doubted the evidence from the beginning. The find of the pleistocene cricket bat was pretty funny, and meshes well with the idea that he was setting up his rival to look like an idiot. Colleagues found test runs of chemical aged bones among his personal effects.
They guy who found the first fossils had a long history of finding fakes, but the evidence against it being him is that there were several high quality fossils mixed in with the forgery. So whoever conducted the forgery was probably well connected with a museum.
The other two suspects- the lead paleontologist and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, were exonerated based on their reputations. Whatever.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:The Piltdown hoax had the entire scientific community fooled for over forty years. And that's not easy to do.
Throw enough funding at a project, and scientists will practically SCAMPER to be fooled.
Look at Kyoto. . .
Kidding! KIDDING! Kyoto's a good thing.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
Nova Now, a hip new format, apparently. Three short stories on breaking science news. Today, mirror neurons, hurricanes and ... I forgot. But the mirror neurons is very interesting.
Makes me wonder about sassurean communication dynamics on hatrack. How do we get that 80% of non verbal communication across? Is there cues from post length and frequency, connectedness to other posters, grammaticality? And of course religion and politics.
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)