According to this article: http://www.usatoday.com/life/lds005.htm
The "half bird-half dinosaur that was featured in NG recently is a composite, possibly an intentional fake. I wonder if NG is letting its scientific standards slip to stay ahead of the competition. The last time I remember something like this happening was the “cold fusion” fiasco. Or was that before the “wrong head on the brontosaurus” fiasco?
Anybody else recall similar blunders?
How about Charles Dawson’s infamous Piltdown Man? He reportedly discovered it in 1912 and it wasn’t until 1953 that a rigorous analysis proved it to be a fabrication of a human cranium and the jawbone of an ape.
In fairness to National Geographic, there is little evidence that the Society had reason to believe the reconstructed fossil was actually a composite of two different fossils overlaid in the same rock. The fossil was smuggled out of China and found at a gem show in Tucson. Independent review was not available at the time NGS published its November issue, articles to Science and Nature having never been published.
I note that the USA TODAY article states that the curator of birds at the Smithsonian advised NGS of the possibility of ‘problems’ with the fossil in November when the issue was published. However, the article also notes that the curator is an outspoken skeptic of ‘the bird-dinosaur link’ and it is possible that his opinions were dismissed as being driven by a pre-existing bias against the hypothesis presented by NGS through the fossil evidence.
I am sure we will learn more about this later. One wonders if NGS went to print precipitously, since they did find out Dec. 20 from a member of their own scientific team that the fossil was ‘not authentic’.
NGS still stands foursquare behind their claim that Robert Peary attained the North Pole close to the dawn of the 20th century.
Independent verification of his records say “no way.”
Maybe they blew it on that issue, but they still make the coolest maps.
“…send lawyers, guns, and money…”
Warren ZevonDarwin was in an excellent position to pass judgement on something buried in the ground like Piltdown man in 1912. He’s been six feet under himself since 1882.
Elmer J. Fudd,
Millionaire.
I own a mansion and a yacht.
Slightly off topic, but in the same vein, was about 30 years of agricultural policy in the Soviet Union. I wish I could remember the details; this comes from a scientific research ethics class I took about 5 years ago.
It seems that the Soviet government scientists had a theory about agricultural production that they imposed on all the farmers. The scientists soon realized they had made a big mistake, but could not admit it, lest they become reassigned to Siberia.
The farmers knew it was bullshit, but always told the Party members what they wanted to hear, for obvious reasons (things are working most wonderfully, Comrade!).
So here is a situation where fear of exposing the truth contributes greatly to the decline of agricultural production for an entire society.
Another situation I learned about was a geneticist who claimed he had discovered a mechanism for inheritance of acquired traits. His research focused on mice who had their fur color altered as adults, passing on the acquired colors to their offspring.
He was making amazing claims, that of course did not hold up under even the most casual of inspections of the offspring. In fact, he was discovered to have used ink or dye to give the offspring mice the desired color patterns.
These are examples of deliberate fraud rather than a mistake borne out of ignorance or haste. But it still reinforces the absolute need for peer-reviewed, replicated scientific research, without pressure (political or otherwise) to have results come out a certain way.
Ummm, Elmer, I think you might want to reread that name. It clearly says DAWSON.
Remember the Gentle Tasaday, the supposed Stone Age tribe from the Philippines?
I still think the Cardiff Giant is real.
The Cardiff Giant, brought to you by The Skeptic’s Dictionary.
http://skepdic.com/cardiff.html
Time to get my eyes checked. Sorry about that, Unc.
No sweat, Elmer. It could be worse, your eyes might be as bad as Mr. Magoo. That would really suck.
Piltdown Man was discovered to be a deliberate hoax, one of the perpetrators of which happened to be Sir Author Conan Doyle – the creator of Sherlock Holmes and also a BIG practical joker.
It has been known for ages that, in a particular deposit of sedimentary shale, much used for construction – over seas somewhere but I cannot recall the exact country, many fossils have been discovered. One splits the shale and there are the remains. Some bright worker discovered that the substance of the shale, when powdered, mixed with water and applied to something made a natural concrete which was indistinguishable from the shale itself. He also discovered that by making a mud of the stuff on top of a sheet of shale, he could imbed assorted bones of small animals, cover them with a thin layer of the mud and when it dried, he had an instant ‘fossil.’ A little work would uncover the dried, mud impregnated bones and they would be virtually indistinguishable from the real thing – provided no one cracked a bone open.
Apparently, no one did for ages because the market on these fakes flourished for quite some time before buyers caught on. One of the most famous is that of apparently the first bird, made actually by pressing feathers into a mud matrix around a few carefully imbedded bones of a modern bird and probably a rat.
With the current rage in people paying thousands to have a ‘gen-yew-wyne’ fossil on display in their homes or office for whatever moronic reason, – and driving the real archeologists nuts because of amateur fossil hunters ripping up fossil beds just to grab the best and sell them – it had to be only a matter of time before fakes came out.
People being people, it should be understood that as soon as something becomes collectable and valuable two things are going to happen: 1. The cost is going to rise beyond any logical or sane reason (Beanie Babies, for example. Twenty-five cents to make, but some cost about $1,000 to buy.) 2: Forgeries are going to be dumped on the market. (Look at all of the art forgeries out there – especially those of paintings done by artists with no taste at all.)
I watch antique shows and have found it amusing to discover that deliberately faked furniture was legally produced and sold as replicas to people ages ago, and somehow in the reselling, people forgot to tell others that the Chippendale Chair they were buying for $6,000 had actually been made in the early 1900s out of scrap antique and modern wood and ‘aged’ to look genuine. It’s real worth would be something like $400 as a genuine fake.
I need my eyes checked too. I read “Darwin” first, and was preparing a sarcastic reply when I decided to read down a ways. :rolleyes:
Judges 14:9 - So [Samson] scraped the honey into his hands and went on, eating as he went. When he came to his father and mother, he gave some to them and they ate it; but he did not tell them that he had scraped the honey out of the body of the lion.
Yeah, when I typed it out, I had to triple check to make certain I didn’t get Darwin in there. It’s definitely Dawson.
In the 1930’s, Mendelian genetics gradually came to be regarded as “bourgeois idealism”. The decisive moment came in 1948 genetics conference. Trofim Lysenko gave a speech which he said had been approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Lysenko believed in the views of Lamarck, namely that you could inherit acquired characteristics. (There is, of course, no valid data to confirm this or any mechanism to bring this about.)
Scientific truth had become subject to political control. Very scary.
“But where were the Spiders?”
Interesting, I too thought Unclebeer had written Charles Darwin, not Charles Dawson. It goes to show, we often see what we expect to see. Somehow, when discussing ancient man, as soon as I saw Charles and the Da… following I thought I knew what the word was and didn’t actually finish reading the word.
:o
My face is SO red! I referred to NG’s fossil in Great Debates over at the “Creation vs. Evolution” and “The Earth Is Flat…” threads back when I was “debating” with Phaedrus.
This is a blessing in disguise, though. It shows that science does, indeed, correct itself and that decent scientists do admit when they are wrong and/or have been fooled. National Geographic is publishing a correction in its March issue, according to USAToday.
Our sympathies should go to Stephen Czerkas, though. He paid $80,000 for the damn thing! Do you think he’ll get his money back? I don’t.
>< DARWIN >
__L___L