Editing Piltdown Man (section)

==Legacy==
[[File:Sterkfontein Caves 1.jpg|thumb|upright|A replica of the Piltdown Man skull.]]

===Early humans===
In 1912, the majority of the scientific community believed the Piltdown Man was the "[[Transitional fossil#Missing links|missing link]]" between apes and humans. However, over time the Piltdown Man lost its validity, as other discoveries such as the [[Taung Child]] and [[Peking Man]] were made. R. W. Ehrich and G. M. Henderson note, "To those who are not completely disillusioned by the work of their predecessors, the disqualification of the Piltdown skull changes little in the broad evolutionary pattern. The validity of the specimen has always been questioned".<ref>"Culture area", in ''International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences'', vol. 3, pp. 563–68. (New York: Macmillan/The Free Press).</ref> Eventually, during the 1940s and 1950s, more advanced dating technologies, such as the [[Fluorine absorption dating|fluorine absorption test]], proved scientifically that this skull was actually a fraud.

===Influence===
The Piltdown Man fraud significantly affected early research on human evolution.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/science-of-natural-history/the-scientific-process/piltdown-man-hoax/ |title=Natural History Museum: "Piltdown Man – the greatest hoax in the history of science?" |access-date=9 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130524111732/http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/science-of-natural-history/the-scientific-process/piltdown-man-hoax/ |archive-date=24 May 2013 |url-status=live}}</ref> Notably, it led scientists down a [[cul-de-sac#Other uses|blind alley]] in the belief that the human brain expanded in size before the jaw adapted to new types of food. Discoveries of [[Australopithecine]] fossils such as the [[Taung child]] found by [[Raymond Dart]] during the 1920s in South Africa were ignored because of the support for Piltdown Man as "the missing link," and the reconstruction of human evolution was confused for decades. The examination and debate over Piltdown Man caused a vast expenditure of time and effort on the fossil, with an estimated 250+ papers written on the topic.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Washburn|first=S.L.|year=1953|title=The Piltdown Hoax|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1525/aa.1953.55.5.02a00340/asset/aa.1953.55.5.02a00340.pdf;jsessionid=00BC7B49DABDD1C005CB6E298CD43BC8.f04t03?v=1&t=j32b9i78&s=533537981e76f853148d65977fda7ce9d9b3605f|journal=American Anthropologist|volume=55|issue=5|pages=759–62|via=Wiley Online Library|doi=10.1525/aa.1953.55.5.02a00340|doi-access=free}}</ref>

The book ''[[Scientology: A History of Man]]'' by [[L. Ron Hubbard]] features the Piltdown Man as a phase of biological history capable of leaving a person with subconscious memories of traumatic incidents that can only be resolved by use of Scientology technology. Recovered "memories" of this phase are prompted by one's obsession with biting, hiding the teeth or mouth, and early familial issues. Nominally, this appears to be related to the large jaw of the Piltdown Man specimen. The book was first published in 1952, shortly before the fraud was confirmed, and has since been republished 5 times (most recently in 2007).<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/explore-the-phoenix-roots-of-l-ron-hubbard-and-scientology-6455537 |title=Explore the Phoenix Roots of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology &#124; Phoenix New Times |access-date=2021-07-07 |archive-date=2016-03-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160315070110/http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/explore-the-phoenix-roots-of-l-ron-hubbard-and-scientology-6455537 |url-status=live }}</ref>

[[Creationism|Creationists]] often cite the hoax (along with [[Nebraska Man]]) as evidence of an alleged dishonesty of paleontologists who study human evolution, although scientists themselves had exposed the Piltdown hoax (and the Nebraska Man incident was not a deliberate fraud).<ref name=talkorg>{{cite web|url=http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/piltdown.html|title=Creationist Arguments: Piltdown Man|last=Harter|first=Richard|year=1997|access-date=29 August 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070820030207/http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/piltdown.html|archive-date=20 August 2007|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_expose/piltdown_hoax.html|last=Caroll|first=Robert Todd|title=Piltdown Hoax|access-date=29 August 2007|year=1996|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071113003421/http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_expose/piltdown_hoax.html|archive-date=13 November 2007|url-status=live}}</ref> In November 2003, the Natural History Museum in London held an exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of the exposure of the fraud.<ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/corporate-information/annual-reports/report/report2004/text/ouryear.html|title=The Natural History Museum Annual Review 2003/2004|access-date=17 November 2007 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20051105143956/http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/corporate-information/annual-reports/report/report2004/text/ouryear.html |archive-date= 5 November 2005}}</ref>

===Biases in the interpretation of the Piltdown Man===
The Piltdown case is an example of how race, nationalism, and gender influenced scientific and public opinion. Newspapers explained the seemingly primitive and contradictory features of the skull and jaw by attempting to demonstrate an analogy with non-white races, presumed at the time to be more primitive and less developed than white Europeans.<ref name="Goulden2009">{{cite journal| last1 = Goulden| first1 = M.| title = Boundary-work and the human–animal binary: Piltdown Man, science and the media| doi = 10.1177/0963662507081239| journal = Public Understanding of Science| volume = 18| issue = 3| pages = 275–91| date = May 2009| s2cid = 145291598| url = https://zenodo.org/record/1005522| access-date = 20 February 2018| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180220152202/https://zenodo.org/record/1005522/files/article.pdf| archive-date = 20 February 2018| url-status = live}} {{closed access}}</ref> The influence of nationalism resulted in the differing interpretations of the find: whilst the majority of British scientists accepted the discovery as "the earliest Englishman",<ref>{{cite book |last=Woodward |first=A. Smith |author-link=Arthur Smith Woodward |url=http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_report_finds/earliest_english.html |title=The Earliest Englishman |year=1948 |publisher=Watts & Co. |series=[[Thinker's Library]] |volume=127 |access-date=31 May 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120521125206/http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_report_finds/earliest_english.html |archive-date=21 May 2012 |url-status=live}}</ref> European and American scientists were considerably more sceptical, and several suggested at the time that the skull and jaw were from two different creatures and had been accidentally mixed up.<ref name="Goulden2009"/> Although Woodward suggested that the specimen discovered might be female, most scientists and journalists referred to Piltdown as a male. The only notable exception was the coverage by the ''Daily Express'' newspaper, which referred to the discovery as a woman, but only to mock the [[suffragette]] movement, of which the ''Express'' was highly critical.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Goulden | first1 = M.| s2cid = 145337633| title = Bringing Bones to Life: How Science Made Piltdown Man Human| doi = 10.1080/09505430701706699| journal = Science as Culture| volume = 16| issue = 4| pages = 333–57 |date=December 2007}} {{closed access}}</ref>