THE PILTDOWN HOAX

The "Piltdown Hoax" refers to a fossil discovered in Piltdown, England in the early 1900's. A strange piece of skull was discovered by a laborer digging in Barkham Manor near the village of Piltdown. He passed his discovery on to an amateur archaeologist named Charles Dawson, who then set about digging in the same area to try and find more fossils of what he believed to be the first early man discovered in Great Britain. This was very important in Great Britain at the time, because most of the surrounding countries had found remnants of early man, but the British to that point had come up empty.
In December 1912, Dawson along with Sir Arthur Smith Woodward presented their findings and claimed that the earliest man had lived right there in England. Shortly after a second sight unearthed more remains from what was believed to be "Piltdown Man", and the scientific community in Britain was ecstatic. However, in 1953 the news comes out that the entire Piltdown Man theory is a hoax. the fossils were put through a chemical test and determined to be much younger than Dawson and his team had claimed them to be.
As far as significance, Dawson and his team believed this to be the "missing link", however we know this term to be incorrect. Instead, this find would been another example of how closely related humans and our ape ancestors are. This is the case because the find itself was an ape-like jawbone with human-like teeth.
As far as the scientists and the faulty data, I think emotion played too big a role in validating the findings. The circumstances being what they were at the time, Dawson had to have felt a lot of pressure to deliver something that was a major discovery for Great Britain. It isn't hard to imagine the findings being hurried along and fudged scientifically in the name of Great Britain and Dawson himself.
The events that proved the Piltdown Man fossils to be a hoax began over 40 years after the discovery. In an effort to authenticate and date the fossils, a representative from the museum they were being kept in performed a chemical test. What it proved above all else was that the skull was far less old than  was initially proposed(it had also been stained a different color), which proved Piltdown Man could not be who they had claimed him to be. Upon microscopic examination, they also determined that the teeth had been filed down. This was done to make it appear to be human when in fact it was not. The jaw that was found was also not human-it was very likely from an ape.
With regard to a specific test, it was a fluorine absorption test that disproved the stated age of the skull. This would test the level of fluoride found in bone, which it would have soaked in from the groundwater in soil it was preserved in-which in turn would prove its' age.
I suppose it is possible to remove the human factor from science, but it would be a catastrophic move in my opinion. Scientists are the ones that form their hypothesis based on tests they conduct, and sometimes it is a hunch that provides the spark for these tests. No machine would ever have the hunch or intuition of the great scientific minds we have all been fortunate enough to benefit from.
With regard to the life lesson that can be learned, it always critical to have a healthy dose of skepticism when findings have not been properly tested or verified by the right sources. Science does not root for any particular findings, it just tells us the truth if we test correctly and are willing to accept what we discover.