The Piltdown Hoax: A Lesson on Confirmation Bias in Science

The scientific community uses the _____ process to identify errors or deceptions in scholarly papers.

• a.confidence
• b.green light
• c.laxness
• d.peer review

Confirmation bias is an error that involves accepting all _____ evidence and rejecting any _____ evidence.

• a.contradictory; fossil
• b.contradictory; supporting
• c.supporting; contradictory
• d.supporting; evolution

Which of the following researchers spent many years of his scientific career and retirement searching for more Piltdown Man fossils as a result of the hoax?

• a.Raymond Dart
• b.Charles Darwin
• c.Arthur Conan Doyle
• d.Arthur Smith Woodward

One way the hoax perpetrator fooled researchers was to bury the Piltdown Man bones with mammal fossils and ancient flint tools.

• a.true
• b.false

Which of the following tests was available for analysis of bone in 1912, yet wasnǯt used on the Piltdown specimens at the time?

• a.Nitrogen testing
• b.Fluorine testing
• c.Carbon dating
• d.mtDNA analysis

There were no critics of the Piltdown Man discovery, which is why the hoax was believed for so long.

• a.false
• b.true

Which of the following characteristics made Eoanthropus dawsoni appealing to Britain's scientific community when the discovery was presented in 1912?

• a.The mandible was highly evolved.
• b.The brain size was roughly the same size as a chimpanzee.
• c.It was an upright walker.
• d.It was discovered in England.

The Piltdown Man hoax only had a negative impact on science.

• a.false
• b.true