The most notorious fraud in the history of Science is the focus of this week’s programme. Exactly one hundred years ago, British scientists announced their discovery of fossilised skull and jaw bones of what appeared to be the earliest human – a species of humanity closer to our prehistoric ape ancestors than any found before it. In December 1912 it was a sensational find. In 1953 it was revealed as just a horrible hoax. Jonathan Amos talks to palaeontologists and archaeologists about the case of Piltdown Man and asks, could anything as scientifically scandalous happen today?
