Post by auntym on Nov 7, 2016 14:16:14 GMT -6
blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/10/31/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-piltdown/#.WCDdRySF98h
Sherlock Holmes, Spirit Hunting and a Great Hoax
By David Warmflash / discovermagazine.com/authors?name=David+Warmflash
October 31, 2016
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a revered author and physician, but he was an ardent proponent of spiritualism during his lifetime. (Credit: The British Library)
Back in August, it seemed that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was cleared of playing any role in one of the greatest hoaxes in scientific history. But in true Sherlockian form, there may still be a twist in this case that appears to be closed. And it’s a fitting discussion on Halloween.
The infamous ‘Piltdown Man’ hoax culminated in 1912 after esteemed geologist Sir Arthur Smith Woodward and amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson announced they had discovered the ‘missing link’ between ape and man. It featured a human-sized skull with an ape-like jaw, and it fooled scientists for 40 years before it was debunked.
So how did Conan Doyle get involved in this, and why should he still remain on the suspect list, despite the latest evidence? Stay with me as I dig deeper into this longstanding controversy.
Spirits and Such
Conan Doyle may have invented the modern mystery novel and been a trained physician, but also was a ghost buster. He believed that departed spirits walked earth, and thought it was possible to communicate with them. This was all the rage in British culture at the dawn of the 20th century, but for Conan Doyle it was more than a hobby. He used his status as an author and physician to promote the idea, and to this day you can hear Conan Doyle pushing spiritualism in his own words, thanks to a recording provided by the British Library. britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/files/listen-to-sir-arthur-conan-doyle-on-spiritualism.mp3
Notice his claim that there could be scientific evidence for the spirits. He discussed spirits in the name of science, or so he thought, attending séances and engaging in what people called ‘spirit photography’. He circulated his ‘spirit photographs’ as evidence that he had contacted them.
Recognizing these activities as pseudoscience, England’s scientific community utterly ostracized Conan Doyle. They ridiculed the famous author, pointing out that the spirit photographs were merely double exposures. Anyone could produce a spirit photograph if they controlled for all confounding factors, such as light, and so forth. And they were right, but they went on with their critique, saying that Conan Doyle did not understand how evidence worked.
Claiming the creator of Sherlock Homes doesn’t understand evidence? That really takes chutzpah! That’s why some historians suspected Conan Doyle was a possible perpetrator of the hoax, reasoning that he did it to embarrass the scientific community, showing that they did not understand how evidence worked.
The Hoax
The hoax was rather elaborate. Between 1908 and 1912, somebody collected several human cranial bones, possibly from a Saxon graveyard, enough to show the form of two skulls. The perpetrator also obtained a fragmented orangutan mandible (jaw bone) and purposefully broke the part of the bone that articulates with the rest of the skull. The perpetrator also filed down the teeth to disguise their apelike nature, and later, just after the “discoverers” of the bones were challenged that the lack of a canine tooth made the hypothesis tough to swallow, a canine tooth appeared in the same place where the cranial bones and mandible had been dug up.
Along with the cranium and mandible specimens, the hoax perpetrator gathered a plethora of bones and teeth from different mammals from various dig sites around the world, some dating authentically to the Pleistocene and Pliocene epochs hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago. The hoaxer also created bogus flint tools and stained everything reddish-brown with various chemical mixtures before burying all of the specimens in a gravel pit in the town of Piltdown, in England’s Sussex region. The purpose of the staining was to give the specimens a uniform coloring matching the gravel of the pit and also to hide surface features that might reveal the forgery.
CONTINUE READING: blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/10/31/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-piltdown/#.WCDdRySF98h
Sherlock Holmes, Spirit Hunting and a Great Hoax
By David Warmflash / discovermagazine.com/authors?name=David+Warmflash
October 31, 2016
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a revered author and physician, but he was an ardent proponent of spiritualism during his lifetime. (Credit: The British Library)
Back in August, it seemed that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was cleared of playing any role in one of the greatest hoaxes in scientific history. But in true Sherlockian form, there may still be a twist in this case that appears to be closed. And it’s a fitting discussion on Halloween.
The infamous ‘Piltdown Man’ hoax culminated in 1912 after esteemed geologist Sir Arthur Smith Woodward and amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson announced they had discovered the ‘missing link’ between ape and man. It featured a human-sized skull with an ape-like jaw, and it fooled scientists for 40 years before it was debunked.
So how did Conan Doyle get involved in this, and why should he still remain on the suspect list, despite the latest evidence? Stay with me as I dig deeper into this longstanding controversy.
Spirits and Such
Conan Doyle may have invented the modern mystery novel and been a trained physician, but also was a ghost buster. He believed that departed spirits walked earth, and thought it was possible to communicate with them. This was all the rage in British culture at the dawn of the 20th century, but for Conan Doyle it was more than a hobby. He used his status as an author and physician to promote the idea, and to this day you can hear Conan Doyle pushing spiritualism in his own words, thanks to a recording provided by the British Library. britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/files/listen-to-sir-arthur-conan-doyle-on-spiritualism.mp3
Notice his claim that there could be scientific evidence for the spirits. He discussed spirits in the name of science, or so he thought, attending séances and engaging in what people called ‘spirit photography’. He circulated his ‘spirit photographs’ as evidence that he had contacted them.
Recognizing these activities as pseudoscience, England’s scientific community utterly ostracized Conan Doyle. They ridiculed the famous author, pointing out that the spirit photographs were merely double exposures. Anyone could produce a spirit photograph if they controlled for all confounding factors, such as light, and so forth. And they were right, but they went on with their critique, saying that Conan Doyle did not understand how evidence worked.
Claiming the creator of Sherlock Homes doesn’t understand evidence? That really takes chutzpah! That’s why some historians suspected Conan Doyle was a possible perpetrator of the hoax, reasoning that he did it to embarrass the scientific community, showing that they did not understand how evidence worked.
The Hoax
The hoax was rather elaborate. Between 1908 and 1912, somebody collected several human cranial bones, possibly from a Saxon graveyard, enough to show the form of two skulls. The perpetrator also obtained a fragmented orangutan mandible (jaw bone) and purposefully broke the part of the bone that articulates with the rest of the skull. The perpetrator also filed down the teeth to disguise their apelike nature, and later, just after the “discoverers” of the bones were challenged that the lack of a canine tooth made the hypothesis tough to swallow, a canine tooth appeared in the same place where the cranial bones and mandible had been dug up.
Along with the cranium and mandible specimens, the hoax perpetrator gathered a plethora of bones and teeth from different mammals from various dig sites around the world, some dating authentically to the Pleistocene and Pliocene epochs hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago. The hoaxer also created bogus flint tools and stained everything reddish-brown with various chemical mixtures before burying all of the specimens in a gravel pit in the town of Piltdown, in England’s Sussex region. The purpose of the staining was to give the specimens a uniform coloring matching the gravel of the pit and also to hide surface features that might reveal the forgery.
CONTINUE READING: blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/10/31/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-piltdown/#.WCDdRySF98h