Speaker: Andy McGrandle

For more information please contact Thomas Purcell at thomaspurcell@eaton.com

Booking not required.

This is the story of a man so desperate for academic recognition that he routinely faked his archaeological finds in order to supply the “crucial” artefact to the academic world.  Piltdown Man in 1912 was his most famous hoax, but recent work has brought to light 31 other fake artefacts that he presented to learned societies and museums during his lifetime and there are probably more out there.  The academic hierarchy protected and supported him even though not everyone at the time was convinced by Dawson’s finds.  Many of Dawson’s hoaxes could only be accurately exposed using modern archaeological and analysis techniques  and  the misinformation created by of some of his hoaxes survived in school text books until the early 1970’s.  Charles Dawson never lived to see his hoaxes exposed or the damage he did to the credibility of academia in his own and later decades -  he really is a warning from history.