Scienceblog writer Josh Rosenau accuses John West of wrongly faulting a 2002 textbook for printing bogus embryo diagrams derived from Ernst Haeckel’s famous faked drawings. Rosenau assures readers:

You’ll note that, despite West’s claim that this is “a version of Haeckel’s drawings,” they are actually quite different in their details. These are clearly redrawn photographs of actual embryos, and as such do not bear the taint of any errors Haeckel made, intentionally or otherwise. Trying to smear biologist and filmmaker Randy Olson because West doesn’t understand the subject is hardly honest.

Rosenau either didn’t bother to look at the actual comparison images we provided, or he is Olsonizing the issue by deliberately misleading his readers. Click here to see an animation that lays Haeckel embryo drawings over the drawings in a 2002 biology textbook. (Depending on the speed of your connection it may take a few moments to load.) This animation is also clearly seen in the Hoax of Dodos Youtube video. Decide for yourself whether these drawings were taken from photographs or Haeckel. (By the way, if you want to see what photographs of the real embryos look like, click here to download an image that shows you. You can see for yourself that the textbook drawing we cited obviously wasn’t redrawn from actual photos. That’s why the textbook publisher in late 2003 finally had to agree to replace the bogus drawings after Discovery Institute repeatedly complained to the Texas State Board of Education.)