Throughout life, I have been taught to always stand up for what I believe in and, to never be afraid to challenge an opinion when that opinion affects me directly and if what I say or do would cause me, my family or my job any embarrassment or pain, than it's wrong. Unless we start teaching machines emotions, we can't have "robots" and machines examining fossils, excavating sites, testing and gathering data and formulating and giving factual educated theories or opinions. They need to show that they care to get things right. Scientist need to have passion for their science and studies. I wouldn't want to remove the human factor from science simply because you would also be removing the "common sense" factor among other important factors. Everything about the subject of science and the studies, to the individuals studying science has the humans factor in it. Humans are "Science" and science was made and studied by humans. I don't believe you can take the "human factor" out of science. Scientist used the accurate dating method to date the jaw bone discovered by Dawson and his team. The fact that scientist were able to test Dawson's discovery and theories using the scientific method and were able to test and analyse the discoveries themselves is a positive aspect in the scientific process. The fact that other surrounding countries had made "real" human fossil discoveries and England appeared to be falling behind, Dawson and his team might have felt that they needed to stay keep pace with other countries in the discovery of human fossils. Even though the above mentioned traits appeared to have played a large part in the incentives for the scientist making the discovery, it appears that jealousy was the main fault here. Dawson also appeared to be self-serving with minimal morals, ethics and integrity. Charles Dawson was an ambitious individual, and even thought this trait is a good trait to have most of the time, it appeared that this was not the case in this discovery. I believe there were numerous human faults which came into play in this incident. During those scientific test, it was discovered that the fossil discovered by Dawson's team was in fact a jaw bone of a female orangutan.
Those fossils were eventually compared to the fossils discovered by Dawson's team in 1912. After Charles Dawson died, other fossils were discovered in the same general area and were submitted for testing and comparison.
This was a major discovery, made by credited and respected scientist (At the time), and even though the location was not accurate according to other scientist, those other scientist didn't have the courage to challenge this discovery or the team who made the discovery. The discovery was made in "Louis", a small town in the village of Piltdown, in England. Along with Dawson there was a geologist by the name of Arthur Woodward, a paleontologist, Father Pierre Teilhard De Chardin and Arthur Keith. The group was led by an archaeologist named Charles Dawson. The Piltdown Hoax occurred in 1912 when a group of scientist discovered a fossil, believed to be of a human jaw bone.