For example, there was the infamous “Piltdown man.” This was asserted to be a vital “missing link” between man and beast. It was “discovered” by Charles Dawson at Piltdown, England, early in this century. But decades later it was exposed as a hoax, a fake. It turned out to be the skull of a modern man combined with the jawbone of an ape that had been “doctored” with chemicals to try to make it look ancient.

One of the broadcasts last year of a West German radio program dealing with science and education was entitled “Forgers in Science”; it told of more recent frauds. An interesting example was of a corpse that came to the attention of the Belgian Royal Academy of Science in 1969. The corpse was preserved in ice and appeared to be a first-rate scientific sensation. Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans, a zoologist and member of the Brussels Academy, said that it was a proof of the evolution theory. He submitted to the Academy the opinion that the apelike creature was a “missing link” between man and ape.

The creature was located in a freezer in the United States, in Minnesota. The zoologist spent days observing and appraising this supposed ancestor of man lying in icy armor. But after examinations, it was discovered that this apelike creature had been on ice, not for millions of years, but for only a few years!

What did Dr. Heuvelmans and other scientists conclude? Not that it was a fake. Instead, they concluded that in our modern era there must have been a remnant of pre-historic man living upon the earth! In a bulletin from the Belgian Academy of Natural Science, Dr. Heuvelmans tried to document his presumptuous theory with extensive illustrations. He even gave the creature the “scientific” name of homo pongoides, that is, “apelike man.”

However, the Academy was perplexed and suspicious. Further extensive and difficult investigations were made. With what conclusion? Was this the biological discovery of the century? The German radio program related: “By no means. Once again forgers had made fools of the scientists. The public was presented with a comedy which was difficult to see through, but it was very evident that it was well staged. The main characters, although unwillingly, were zoologists, anthropologists, paleontologists and other scientists.”

W. R. Lützenkirchen, who wrote the script for this radio program, said: “The ‘missing link’ between man and anthropoid ape is a swindle, a clear forgery. The primitive man . . . came out of the bag of tricks used in the film industry in Hollywood.” He noted that “trick specialists . . . brewed up the ‘missing link.’”

[Picture on page 7]

The Piltdown man, a “scientific” fraud