One thing we’ve learned from the tales of the Cardiff Giant and Piltdown man is that people across all swaths of life desire to trace their origins, to discover the source of what makes them human. Fuse this desire with the “necessity” to be correct or to profit, and we see the darkside that leads to things like the Piltdown and Cardiff hoaxes.
Piltdown man, a hoax that was perpetuated for decades, was largely driven driven as a means to reinforce the scientific idea of both brain-centered evolution, and that of linear evolutionary change. Dawson’s elaborate forgeries not only seemed to prove this missing link, but also gained the British Empire a place on the forefront of the paleontological community. Cardiff, on the other hand, finds itself as a means for avaritic profit and as a joke to prove one man’s point about the gullibility of religious believers. Both were incredibly successful in fooling masses of people, with Piltdown being more so in its reach across decades. Whereas Cardiff profitted well, in some ways proving George Newell’s point, preying upon the literal beliefs of the biblical past, Piltdown built itself on scientific “credibility” and actual scientific “proof”.
As for their impacts on the scientific community, Piltdown still has the most malignant legacy. Cardiff was quickly pointed out in its fraudulence, but Piltdown was taken seriously by many scientists, and even hosted by such an institution as the London Museum. The highest institution to take Cardiff seriously was Barnum and Bailey’s Circus. Piltdown harmed the scientific establishment by eroding its credibility at providing evidence for something as fundamental as evolution. “If Dawson and his conspirators faked Piltdown, how can we know any others are real? Those could be fake as well!” Had Homo floresiensis been discovered near the time Piltdown was exposed, no one would have taken it seriously.
It is on my view that the latter statement holds more truth than the former. While no scientist cannot be truly objective in every case, the idea of the nature of science’s self-correction hold far more water. We saw in both cases that, eventually, through more careful inspection and research exposed the frauds. Science is never settled, and even now evidence can correct or expand any concept if its found, observed, and tested.
I really love a lot of the points you made in your post here. While we learned about these two hoaxes in quick succession, they are very very different. Piltdown has more of a malignant energy to it than the Cardiff giant does, unless we want to count capitalist extortion of the masses as being very malignant. But in terms of something that really really made a blow to the scientific community, it was Piltdown all the way. You mentioned how it did a blow to the credibility of fossils found relating to human evolution, and that is one of its biggest legacies. Of course at the time, it was fueled by nationalism and most definitely racism. It makes you wonder if Dawson even considered the backlash towards the scientific community that would occur if they found out what he had done, especially in a world that is extremely religion driven. I also love that you mentioned H. floresiensis in this, because you’re absolutely right, no one would have believed it if it was found right after Piltdown was exposed. This response is becoming kind of Piltdown focused, apologies for that, because it really gets me fired up whenever I talk about it. But really, in comparison to the Cardiff giant, its damage was much more widespread and detrimental. Yes, there are still people today who believe in giants, and maybe those people also hold onto the Piltdown hoax as a reason why people shouldn’t believe in evolution. The Giant just didn’t have that long standing effect; it’s not something people consistently discuss (that being the belief of giants).