The story of a largely unknown evolution – Germ theory hoax

The Piltdown Man debacle provides us with the most infamous forgery in science. However, another equally intriguing story exists concerning a document by a Bostonian called George Sleeper, which purported to be a pre-Darwin–Wallace anticipation of evolution and an equally convincing account of the germ theory published before Louis Pasteur’s famous studies on this subject. The story involves two giants in the world of evolutionary theory, Alfred Russel Wallace and E.B. Poulton. While Wallace was convinced that the Sleeper document was genuine, Poulton’s detailed investigations showed that it was a fake and a hoax. Despite this conclusion, doubts still exist about the authenticity of the Sleeper document.