Anthropology’s Greatest Hoax

Scientists are sometimes deemed objective observers of the world in which we live, but that’s not entirely true. They’re still human and can find themselves victim to fraudsters just like the lot of us.

Hosted by: Stefan Chin (he/him)

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[lubrew]

Piltdown Man is now taught in a lot of higher level science classes as how bias can go wrong and better science will uncover inaccurate data.

[AbbieBrockhurst]

i didn't realise this hoax was so famous. I'm sussex born and we talk about it but i hardly expected Scishow to cover it!
Man really put the sus in sussex

[mariannetfinches]

I especially loved the "when someone tries to pass off a frog in a geode as a genuine specimen, maybe we don't base decades of research on his other discoveries" 😅

[combez]

Gotta love how the british wanted to believe they were the first humans when they weren't even the first british

[seedyProfessor]

There is no way that someone would alter a skull to make Piltdown man, other than the man who would be credited for it. That isn’t a popular prank idea …
From the man who brought you toad in the hole comes ‘this species that will be named after me.’

[Deeplycloseted]

I love learning about the ridiculous bias in many of the most intelligent people from not that long ago. What ridiculous biases exist within our own consciousness today, that people will laugh at in just a few generations?

[Daktangle]

Given eugenics began in the UK, I'm not surprised that people at the time would want evidence to support those ideas. How others just missed our own history of multiple peoples coming to the islands of Britain and Ireland over centuries, if not millenia, is baffeling though.

[laexploradoraaaXD]

I knew EXACTLY what the title referred to without clicking because that's because I don't think there's a single anthropologist who doesn't. So much of what makes this hoax interesting is what it says about society at the time.

[sneeringimperialist]

That piltdown skull looks good, though. They went through a lot of trouble grinding the teeth to fit. I can see why people believed it for so many years...

[bunnygirl]

Another example of something similar: Did anyone else but me notice that when we found out that Europeans and Asians had Neanderthal DNA, that Neanderthals immediately changed from dumb brutes, to a much more intelligent hominid on par with Homo Erectus and modern humans.

[TheBusyJane]

So the first question, when they realized it was a hoax, was 'who's the liar?' not 'whose skull is this?'

[RustyWalker]

It seems counterintuitive that anybody in Britain would think we could have been the ancestral origin for humanity given it was a strongly Christian nation at the time and believed a near East origin, and because Britain was settled in multiple migrationary waves over millennia

[thisisme]

I remember hearing about a private museum in the US who had exhibits which proved the Bible. When the owner passed away the family tried to sell the collection and found that the collection was fabricated and mislabeled and worthless.

[guest_informant]

PBS Eons covered this is some detail. It's on youtube, and a podcast. Adds flesh to some of the bones here.

[shrimpbisque]

me, right before clicking on the video: Piltdown Man?
me, three minutes into the video: Piltdown Man.

[RickySTT]

I still run into young-Earth creationists dredging up Piltdown Man to “disprove” evolution.

[trigonzobob]

SciShow: but what if I told you there was another British...
Me: Alfred Russel Wallace
SciShow: ...Charles
Me: Oh, dang

[rexnemo]

I read somewhere that The Piltdown man was even found with an antiquated cricket bat .🤣I'm not sure if that is true but it did make me laugh .

[nab-rkob]

When I was in junior high me and a friend had a contest to memorize tas many digits of pi as we could. He won. I was surprised when you started recited the digits that I could go along with you except for the last two--this was over 40 years ago.

[medusianAllure]

I'm always really appreciative of videos done by Stefan and his focus on critical scientific history. It cheers me up to see a crossover with my field of study.