An Anonymous Coward provides the following story:
A Guardian story from a week or two back shows that not all in the scientific community are as diligent or trustworthy in their research as would be hoped:
"It appeared to be one of archaeology's most sensational finds. The skull fragment discovered in a peat bog near Hamburg was more than 36,000 years old - and was the vital missing link between modern humans and Neanderthals. This, at least, is what Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten - a distinguished, cigar-smoking German anthropologist - told his scientific colleagues, to global acclaim, after being invited to date the extremely rare skull.
However, the professor's 30-year-old academic career has now ended in disgrace after the revelation that he systematically falsified the dates on this and numerous other "stone age" relics."
"Anthropology is going to have to completely revise its picture of modern man between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago," said Thomas Terberger, the archaeologist who discovered the hoax. "Prof Protsch's work appeared to prove that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals had co-existed, and perhaps even had children together. This now appears to be rubbish."
Damn it science.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 31 2015, @05:30PM
I can relate to "damn it science" not because events like this set scientific progress back but because events like this erode public acceptance of science...
And it's completely purposeful FUD. Why else is a 10 year old story being passed around as "news."
I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with evolution....