In general, both Dawson and Hull wanted to make money from their hoaxes but their main motivations were different. In Dawson’s case, he wanted to aid England’s social standing among the other major European countries by producing an archaeological find that is “better” and possibly older than those in Germany, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. If the remains are older and more humanoid than those in other countries it would “prove” that England is more advanced overall. He also used the Piltdown remains as “proof” of the “brain-centered” scientific ideology that the brain develops and physical abilities follow, rather than the other way around. Hull, however, was driven by religious ideology, or the lack thereof. He planted the Cardiff Giant to prove how gullible religious people are to readily believe that everything in the Bible is true. The only motivation in common between the two men was fame and money. Dawson received scientific notoriety as an actual researcher rather than an amateur. On Hull’s side, the Cardiff Giant made between $550,000 and $1,100,000 in today’s standards in the span of about 4 months between the discovery of the giant and the official revelation that the giant is a fake(“The Cardiff Giant”).

Their success had much less in common than their motivations. Dawson’s success was due to scholars believing in his ideas and the validity of his discoveries. Through the grinding of the teeth on the mandible, the staining of the bones and artifacts and the other Pleistocene animal fossils, Dawson worked hard to make a compelling argument, at least to fool the public(who couldn’t recognize the falsity behind them). However, he still managed to fool the scholarly community, for the most part, as well. Many scientists readily believed the claims for the same reasons that Dawson planted the fossils: for England and the “brain-centered” paradigm. Hull’s success relied on the prevalence of religious Americans in 1869. His motivation was his atheism but he was so successful because, in the 1860s, most of America was still religious, as is demonstrated by the fact that he was considered outcast at the time for his lack of religion. The population was willing to travel to Cardiff, Syracuse and everywhere else the Giant traveled because it was a religious symbol to them; a way for them to prove the Bible’s truth. Thousands of people visited the Cardiff Giant and their reasons have changed from the religious aspect to curiosity about the hoax but the only thing it was not successful in doing is what Hull had planned.

The Piltdown Man and the Cardiff Giant affected the public’s scientific understanding in ways that ended up “proving” the claims of Bible Literalists. The Piltdown remains “helped” scientists get a clearer image of evolution and supported the “brain-centered” claim of this time period but the hoax itself was not discovered for 40 years so many scientists used it as valid evidence when they were making other theories. After scientists proved that the Piltdown remains were fake they sent the scholarly community into turmoil trying to figure out what had and hadn’t been affected with the discovery or any of its “evidence”. It also caused religious groups to claim that this hoax proved that all of the fossils found by archaeologists were fake and that evolution as a whole was fake. The Cardiff Giant, however, only lasted about 4 months before definitively being proved wrong and scientists never really believed that the gypsum statue was a “petrified man”. But this discovery, again, affected the religious population because they identified it as proof that there were real giants that roamed the Earth and they viewed the Giant as all the proof necessary to show that the Bible is true to non-believers. This also, once again, meant that the scientists were “wrong” about evolution and everything other explanation that disagreed with the Bible.

In terms of the two implications, I don’t think either of them completely apply. I believe that the Piltdown Man hoax fits both implications because scientists were not objective in their findings(due to their nationalistic values) but the scientific method ended up revealing the truth eventually. However, in the case of the Cardiff Giant, there were very few scientists involved. The Giant was discovered by Newell who was a farmer and planted by Hull who was a tobacconist(Szalay 2016). The only time science plays a role in the hoax is revealing the truth but the scientists who saw the giant knew it was fake so they were completely objective in their observations and findings. Also, the second implication doesn’t fit the situation because there was nothing for the scientific method to correct.

Works Cited:

Szalay, Jessie 2016 LiveScience. Electronic Document, https://www.livescience.com/55787-cardiff-giant.html Accessed September 12, 2019

Museum of Hoaxes. Electronic Document, http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_cardiff_giant Accessed September 12, 2019