Hoaxes like the Piltdown Man and the Cardiff Giant are well known and often referred to because of their infamous nature. The Cardiff Giant was a hoax where a large fossilized giant was found on a farm in New York State. Stud Newell the “founder” of the Cardiff Giant wanted to display the “artifact” and make a good profit. The amount of money generated by the giant was, by today’s standards, millions of dollars. Newell’s farm became famous for the giant and people started offering him everything from money to land to get their hands on the giant. However, the real orchestrator of the hoax was George Hull who was a distant relative of Stub Newell. Hull got into an argument with a Methodist minister and argued that the Bible is filled with tales that only the gullible would believe. Given that Hull was a devout atheist he set out to prove his argument true by commissioning a sculptor to create a fake fossilized giant. Hull’s main motivation was proving his ideology about religion and the gullibility of the public. The general public wanted to believe in the Cardiff Giant because it proved the Bible was right and giants did once walk the earth. Moreover, Giants were thought to be a race of Nephilim, so if there was proof that they once existed it would prove Christianity to be true. It was mostly about people who believed in biblical literalism and those who were against evolution. The Cardiff Giant hoax impacted scientists because biblical literalism came into play. People started to believe that everything in the Bible was real and that God made the earth and crafted humanity in His image. This thought undermines the concept of human evolution which is a key part of anthropology and archaeology. The scientific understanding of the human past was interrupted and many people still believe in biblical literalism today. 

The Piltdown Man, on the other hand, was a similar hoax where remains were found that looked like a human brain and cranium but an ape-like jaw and teeth. People wanted to believe that the Piltdown Man was real because it proved the scientific ideology that most scientists believed at the time. Piltdown Man showed that the human brain and cranium looked like anatomically modern humans but the jaw looked very ape-like so it supported the theory that human brains formed first and the rest of the morphology followed. At the time, England was one of the only major European nations that didn’t have a significant human fossil find in the early 1900s, enter Piltdown Man. The goals of the hoaxers were to “put England on the map” and make this huge discovery that proved the brain-centered theory correct. Even though the findings were argued and overall seemed fake to anyone who looked close, it did bring England fame. The public wanted to believe in the Piltdown Man because it showed that England was the center of discovery. It proved that England itself had a rich history in terms of human evolution and paleontology. Hoaxes like the Piltdown Man confuse our scientific understanding of the past. They put roadblocks in the way of scientists who are trying to discover what life was like for early humans. Our scientific understanding of the human past gets shifted in the wrong direction and leads to wrong theories or hypotheses that make life harder to understand.

The reasons why these two hoaxes were so successful were mostly because the public wanted to believe in them. The Piltdown Man proved the brain-centered perspective to be true which a lot of scientists wanted to believe, they also wanted to believe that England had something monumental to offer to the theory of evolution. The Cardiff Giant brought biblical literalism into perspective and every devout Christian wanted to believe the Bible to be true, they wanted some proof of God’s existence. Both hoaxes had people that wanted or needed to believe in them which is also why it took so long to prove that they are hoaxes. Biblical literalism already had a strong following before the Cardiff Giant and the hoax only solidified the ideology. The brain-centered theory did have a following, but England’s nationalists were also invested in the hoax because of the impact it would have on England’s standing among other nations. Piltdown Man solidified the idea that England is superior, specifically in its scientific discoveries in this situation. However, one of the big differences between the two hoaxes was the motivations of their founders. George Hull didn’t want the hoax to continue, he only wanted to prove the gullibility of the general public. Whereas all of the people involved in the Piltdown Man wanted it to be true, they forged the findings and wanted everyone to believe it indefinitely.

In terms of both hoaxes, I agree with the statement that both hoaxes show even “objective” scientists cannot be trusted to apply a skeptical eye to data when those data fulfill their expectations and desires. Both teams of scientists, no matter their motives, wanted to mislead the public. Whether it was for nationalism, greed, or to prove someone wrong, all parties involved committed scientific misconduct. Scientists who were supposed to uphold the code of objectivity and scientific ethics instead forged evidence and deceived the public for personal gain. This is probably a reason that people don’t believe in scientific discoveries because of scientific misconduct and the need for scientists to adhere to their own personal agendas.