Tag: Haeckel’s embryos
Current Textbooks Misuse Embryology to Argue for Evolution
Sylvia Mader’s 2010 textbook, Biology, uses colorized versions of Haeckel’s embryo drawings with only a few small modifications. As seen in the side-by-side comparison above, the black and white drawings are Haeckel’s original drawings and the colored drawings are from Mader’s 2010 textbook. Just like Haeckel’s original drawings, Mader’s colorized drawings obscure the differences between the early stages of vertebrate development in order to give students the following misleading caption: “At these comparable developmental stages, vertebrate embryos have many features in common, which suggests they evolved from a common ancestor. (These embryos are not drawn to scale.)” (Sylvia S. Mader, Biology, p. 278 (McGraw Hill, 2010).) Click the graphic for the full picture. Haeckel’s long-discredited recapitulation theory is not necessarily Read More ›
Revisiting Those Pesky Embryo Drawings
A few years ago, former NCSE-spokesman Nick Matzke called complaints over the use of Haeckel’s embryo drawings in textbooks a “manufactured scandal.” However, a variety of leading scientific authorities — proponents of neo-Darwinian evolution — have also complained about the use of these drawings and the way that embryology is used to support evolution in biology textbooks. Are these authorities in on the big conspiracy to “manufacture” this “scandal” too? Here’s where things stand today: Despite the fact that (in 2010 at least) out-dated concepts like “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” have been almost completely removed from new textbooks and that many (though not all) new textbooks use embryo photographs instead of fudged drawings, an examination of both recent textbooks and complaints Read More ›
A Newly Discovered Textbook Example Refuting NYT and NCSE’s False Claims About Haeckel’s Bogus Embryo Drawings
Recently I documented ten examples of textbooks refuting the NCSE-scripted misinformation printed in the New York Times claiming that Ernst Haeckel’s faked embryo drawings haven’t been used in textbooks since “20 years ago.” In fact, just last week while browsing through some science textbooks at a local thrift store, I discovered another textbook that includes Ernst Haeckel’s bogus embryo drawings. In 1998, Judith Goodenough, Robert A. Wallace, and Betty McGuire published Human Biology: Personal, Environmental, and Social Concerns with Harcourt College Publishers. Some Darwinists (like Randy Olson) have claimed that if Haeckel’s drawings are used, it’s only to provide historical background on the history of evolutionary thought. Not so with this textbook: Chapter 20, “Evolution: Basic Principles and Our Heritage” Read More ›
New York Times Rehashes Darwinist Myths about Haeckel’s Embryo Drawings and Evolution
The NCSE’s rebuttal to Jonathan Wells’ Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher About Evolution, as re-published in this past Sunday’s New York Times, contains some small differences from their original response which Wells refuted in 2002. I will rebut some of the NCSE’s new false claims in a couple of posts this week. First, let’s look at the fourth question that Dr. Wells asks: “Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for their common ancestry — even though biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?” Dr. Wells is referring to the faked embryo drawings by the 19th century Read More ›
The Textbooks Don’t Lie: Haeckel’s Faked Drawings Have Been Used to Promote Evolution: Raven & Johnson (2002) (Part 2)
Links of Interest: Hoax of Dodos, a response to inaccuracies in Flock of DodosHaeckel’s Bogus Embryo Drawings (Clip on YouTube) As noted recently, we are presently highlighting some textbooks that use Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings to promote evolution. These textbooks use Haeckel’s drawings to assert that they represent factual evidence for evolution in the present-day. “Flock of Dodos” film producer Randy Olson has claimed that either (A) the fraudulent drawings haven’t been used in any modern textbooks, or alternatively, if that argument fails, then (B) when they are used, it isn’t to promote evolution, but simply to demonstrate some kind of historical perspective on the development of evolutionary thought. This post will discuss one recently-published textbook, Peter H Raven & Read More ›