John Schmidt's Review of

Reviewed for the Wichita Eagle

 John Walsh tells a tale of Charles Dawson, practiced perpetrator of frauds, who handily carried out what some observers refer to as the greatest scientific fraud of this century. Piltdown Man was introduced to the world in 1913 when fragments of a modern human skull and an ape jaw were described as being fossil remains of an early human ancestor in Europe. The true nature of the deception was not revealed until 1953. Walsh presents his indictment of Dawson in the form a readable detective story that can be enjoyed by a wide audience. The Piltdown fraud case is also interesting as an example of how personal and nationalistic ambitions can pervert the workings of science.

 Walsh describes his motivation for this book as being mainly to try to put an end to miss-directed speculation about the true identity of the perpetrator of the Piltdown fraud. Anyone who can be in any way connected to the Piltdown bones provides a ready target for a small army of writers eager to indict another innocent bystander. The most recent example is the 1996 installment of Brian Gardiner's on-going attempt to show that Martin Hinton (who Walsh describes as "a part-time volunteer" at the London Natural History Museum at the time of the Piltdown hoax) was the perpetrator of the fraud. Walsh's own "solution" of the mystery of who faked the Piltdown bones centers squarely on Dawson.

 The middle portion of "Unraveling Piltdown" consists of Walsh arguing against the guilt of Hinton and others who have at various times been accused in the case. Perhaps of widest interest is Chapter 8, dealing with the accusations made against Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle had the misfortune of living just a few miles from the Piltdown site and publishing "The Lost World" (a fictional account about apemen and dinosaurs) at about the same time as the Piltdown hoax was perpetrated. Walsh argues that Doyle was but one of many prominent persons who Dawson attempted to involve in the Piltdown diggings in an attempt to serve as cover for Dawson, who was himself the sole source of the fake fossil bones, according to Walsh.

 As to Dawson's means and motive, Walsh documents Dawson's long series of plagiarized publications and faked finds of English antiquities. Dawson was the discoverer of most of the Piltdown artifacts or at least present when the others were found. Dawson's motive is given as desire to be admitted to England's scientific elite, including the Royal Society.

 Regardless of whether Walsh's analysis is the final word on who was responsible for the Piltdown fraud, the story as told in this book provides a useful window on the larger implications of the case. Fossil hunters and scientists in general gain positions, promotions, and prestige based on dramatic discoveries. The requirement that scientific results be reproducible by many independent observers protects science from the construction of fraudulent results. What went wrong in the case of Piltdown? Why was the fraud so long in being detected? The discovery of fossils are a particularly troublesome type of scientific discovery. Many important fossils are "one of a kind", at least initially. They must be authenticated by independent observers and rigorous chemical tests.

 In the case of the Piltdown bones, the authenticity of the bones was not rigorously tested by chemical analysis until 40 years after their existence was made known to the scientific community. Arthur Woodward, who received a Knighthood for his role in the Piltdown discovery, had control of the bones as director of geology at the Natural History Museum in London. The discovery of the Piltdown Man, coming soon after the discovery of important human fossils in Germany and just before World War I, was a matter of great national pride in England. English scientists who initially voiced doubts about Piltdown Man, found it all too easy to give up their doubts and believe in a discovery that they wanted to be true. Nobody in England bothered to look too carefully at the bones.

Walsh describes how an impartial observer of replicas of the Piltdown bones, the American Gerrit Miller, published a scholarly analysis of their shapes and concluded that the scull fragments and jaw bone could in no way fit together, contrary to what was claimed by Dawson and Woodward. Woodward's sloppy scientific work in reconstructing Piltdown Man from the fraudulent bone fragments won him almost every possible scientific honor and award. Gerrit Miller's solid scientific analysis was ignored.

Science, as a human endeavor, all too easily bends to human weaknesses. Many Americans have learned not to trust conclusions drawn by "scientific" studies of the effects of smoking when such studies have been paid for by the tobacco industry. "Unraveling Piltdown" can be read as a reminder that we all share a common duty to question authorities and their "facts".

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