One of man’s greatest flaws is the desire to believe in things bigger than themselves and the scientific realm. It is only harmful to believe such things when those beliefs override fact. This claim is no exception when it comes to scams such as the Piltdown Man and Cardiff Giant.
In regards to asking what the motives were behind these two elaborate hoaxes, we can see just how different they are in intent. When we observe the story of the Piltdown Man, it is clear to see things such as money were mostly out of the question. The men who “discovered” the findings were more hellbent on putting England on the map. They found themselves in their own sort of “space race”, desperate to top their European neighbors in any notable archaeological finds. A man names Charles Dawson took this matter into his own hands and decided it was time England had their time to shine and presented to the world the Piltdown Man, an orangutan jaw poorly molded together with a human cranium. I believe the reason this fraud was so initially successful is due to the credibility of these men and lack of advanced technology.
Considering the Cardiff Giant, the inspirations behind the hoax were much different than that of the Piltdown Man. The two men behind the creation of the fake giant were Stub Newell and George Hull. Newell had different intentions when it came to the “discovery” of the giant. He made a show of things, exploiting the giant and charging a fee for those who wanted to see the mythical being. Newell even went as far as to turn his farm into a cider mill of sorts, selling food and cider to the folks who flooded in to see the creature. Hull, on the other hand, was an atheist, and firm on proving that people would believe anything that the Bible told them. Giants were a prominent “tall tale” in the Bible, the most famous story being of David and Goliath. Hull got his wish, though, because the giant made its rounds, fooling hundreds, if not thousands of people.
After learning of these two stories, I must back the claim of science’s nature being self-corrective. Within both time and testing, both the Cardiff Giant and Piltdown man were proven to be falsified. Though the hoax of the Cardiff Giant came by confession, it is without a doubt true that over time and testing, science would prove it to be a scam. Just like the Piltdown Man, and even more elaborate spoof than the giant, science would have proven to us yet again that its nature is indeed self-correcting.
Thanks for sharing such a thought-provoking post; you made me stop and look at the hoaxes in a bit of a different light. For me, when learning about The Piltdown Man and The Cardiff Giant, I immediately saw the similarities between the two. The hoaxes revolve around human origin and creation, both of which are things humans have always (and probably will always) strived to find answers for. While the base motivations weren’t the same—we saw that nationalism played a huge role in The Piltdown Man and money in The Cardiff Giant, I think the reason people, the public and yes, even some scientists, were so willing to believe the hoaxes stemmed from similar origins. As you stated in your first paragraph “one of man’s greatest flaws is the desire to believe in things bigger than themselves and the scientific realm,” and I think this is why the hoaxes were believed, even when they were obviously wrong. People thought they were real because people wanted them to be real. So that is what I focused on in my blog but your post made some very good points about the contrast between the two; how different their impacts and motivations were. I loved the comparison you drew between the creation of The Piltdown Man and the space race. Sometimes, because as much as we as scientists want to separate ourselves and remain as objective as possible, scientists are only human. A desire to answer the unknown of the universe is a mighty big motivator and can sometimes lead to tunnel vision. Which is why I think your final point was so important. Science is a self-corrective and that is never so evident than in situations like this when new methods and understandings are developed to give us new insights into the world as we know it.