Is Paleoanthropology a science?
Marvin Lubenov Bones of Contention Baker 1992 ISBN 0-8081-5677-2 Chapter 2 of this superb and often hilarious book is entitled An Inexact Kind of Science. Richard Leakey said of paleoanthrolgists, I think we are still doing a great deal of guessing (quoted p24). Lord Zuckerman wrote, it is legitimate to ask whether much science is yet to be found in this field at all. The story of the Piltdown Man hoax provides a pretty good answer (p25; that was in 1971). Sir Peter Medawar (Nobel Prize winner) described paleo-anthropology as a comparatively humble and unexacting kind of science (p25). In 1984 the American Museum of Natural History in New York brought together more than forty original human fossils from museums all over the world. Since American scholars had only been able to study plaster-cast copies of the originals, the dimensions for the precision-mounts were taken from the plaster-casts. But when the originals were delivered to the New York museum it was found that they did not fi
