Scientists write and speak with authority. But scientists arc human, and the desire for recognition or fame sometimes leads to fraud. A scientist's false "discover}'" may go undetected for decades. Such was the case with the supposed discover}' of a human skull purported to be the "missing link" in evolutionary anthropology at Piltdown in Sussex, England. At a meeting of the Geological Society of London on 18 December 1912, the famous fragments of a human skull were exhibited. In 1952 X rays of the jaw showed that it had been altered. The use of fluorine fossil dating confirmed that the fossils were only about fifty thousand years old.

Source:

W. P. Pycraft, "Mankind in the Miking." Scientific American (30 January 1915). 100-101.