Assertion 5.9: Evolutionists have been taken in by fradulent or speculative transitional forms like Piltdown Man and Nebraska Man.
Analysis:
(i) Regarding Piltdown Man, W. L. Strauss reports:
It may be wondered why 40 years elapsed before the hoax was discovered. Two factors enter here: first, there was no reason at all to suspect the perpetration of a fraud, at least, not until flourine analysis indicated the relative recency of the specimens, thus making the association of a human cranium and an anthropoid-ape jaw, either anatomically or geologically, hardly credible; and, second, methods for conclusively determining whether the specimens were actual fossils or faked ones short of their wholesale destruction, were developed only in recent years. (Strauss 1954:580).
It was not credulity that caused scientists to fall victim to the hoax. It is also worth pointing out that there is no gap in the charts of human ancestry where Piltdown Man used to be. Numerous authentic fossils have firmly established Australopithecus where the single Piltdown specimen once stood.
(ii) Creationists, too, have had their share of frauds, and have foisted them upon the public with apparently deceitful intentions. A good set of examples is the Paluxy River tracks, a smattering of ostensibly human footprints among dinosaur tracks, intended to prove that man and dinosaurs were contemporaneous. All of the "human" tracks can be show to be one of three things: parts of dinosaur tracks, erosion holes, or contemporary human carvings (Scott n.d.)
The Paluxy "man-tracks" have even been denounced by some creationists, but continue to be exhibited in creationist literature.
(iii) The "construction" of Nebraska Man may be conceded as a serious mistake on the part of a single, overzealous scientist. Countless other hominid fossils, however, have stood the test of time, and supply ample evidence for human evolution. At least no evolutionist today cites Nebraska Man as evidence for evolution, unlike the creationists who continue to cite the discredited Paluxy tracks long after their real nature has been exposed.
One might also note that creationists have likewise fallen prey to wild speculation in the reconstruction of hominids from fossils - Reverend Carl Baugh and his associates, for instance, who
appeared on an area television station's evening news claiming that a Cretaceous fossil tooth found at Dinosaur Valley State Park was human and thus invalidated the standard geological column. They later recanted when microscopic examination demonstrated that the item in question was a fossil fish tooth. (Eve and Harrold 1991:129, emphasis added)
References
Eve RA and Harrold FB. 1991. The Creationist Movement in Modern America. Boston: Twayne.
Scott EC. 'Scientific Creationism,' Evolution and Race. Berkeley: National Center for Science Education. [Pamphlet]
Shapeley H (ed.). 1965. The New Treasury of Science. New York: Grolier.
Strauss WL. The great Piltdown hoax. In Shapely et al. 1965:574-581.