Faked Japanese Finds - 249 LexiLine Journal

The important point of this story is at the end.

An article which we missed some months ago in the
The Scotsman at
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=644342003
refers to the fairly recent story of a Japanese archaeologist who
faked top finds of Paleolithic artifacts to make his archaeological
reputation.

Much of Japanese paleolithic history will have to be "rewritten" to
correct errors in historical conclusions made as a result of these
fake finds.

The archaeologist was only caught by a hidden camera as he
himself "pre-buried" a "future find" out of a plastic bag in his
pocket. This has been going on for 30 years.

In fact:

"[the archaeologist] entirely fabricated his astonishing finds at
159 of the 178 sites he worked on...."

How could such a thing have happened?

Interesting as an explanation is the quote at the end of the article:

"Young archaeologists do not challenge revered senior scholars,"
said Hisao Baba, an anthropologist at the National Science
Museum. "It is extremely difficult to directly deny others' work
because it is taken as a grave personal and professional insult."

We are often very critical about the overall discipline of
mainstream archaeology, and frankly, it is often justified.