Post by Pahu79 on May 23, 2013 16:40:26 GMT -5
Embryology 2
Ernst Haeckel, by deliberately falsifying his drawings (b), originated and popularized this incorrect but widespread belief [of the “biogenetic law”]. Many modern textbooks continue to spread this false idea as evidence for evolution (c).
b. In 1868, Haeckel, using distorted data, advanced this “biogenetic law.” It was quickly adopted in textbooks and encyclopedias worldwide. Thompson explains:
“A natural law can only be established as an induction from facts. Haeckel was of course unable to do this. What he did was to arrange existing forms of animal life in a series proceeding from the simple to the complex, intercalating[/i] [inserting] imaginary entities where discontinuity existed and then giving the embryonic phases names corresponding to the stages in his so-called evolutionary series. Cases in which this parallelism did not exist were dealt with by the simple expedient of saying that the embryological development had been falsified. When the ‘convergence’ of embryos was not entirely satisfactory, Haeckel altered the illustrations of them to fit his theory. The alterations were slight but significant. The ‘biogenetic law’ as a proof of evolution is valueless.” [/i] W. R. Thompson, p. 12.
“To support his case he[/i] [Haeckel] began to fake evidence. Charged with fraud by five professors and convicted by a university court at Jena, he agreed that a small percentage of his embryonic drawings were forgeries; he was merely filling in and reconstructing the missing links when the evidence was thin, and he claimed unblushingly that ‘hundreds of the best observers and biologists lie under the same charge.’” [/i]Pitman, p. 120.
M. Bowden, Ape-Men: Fact or Fallacy? 2nd edition (Bromley, England: Sovereign Publications, 1981), pp. 142–143.
Wilbert H. Rusch, Sr., “Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 6, June 1969, pp. 27–34.
“...ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, meaning that in the course of its development[/i] [ontogeny] an embryo recapitulates[/i] [repeats] the evolutionary history of its species[/i] [phylogeny]. This idea was fathered by Ernst Haeckel, a German biologist who was so convinced that he had solved the riddle of life’s unfolding that he doctored and faked his drawings of embryonic stages to prove his point.” [/i] Fix, p. 285.
“[The German scientist Wilhelm His] accused Haeckel of shocking dishonesty in repeating the same picture several times to show the similarity among vertebrates at early embryonic stages in several plates of[/i] [Haeckel’s book].” Stephen Jay Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 430.
“It looks like it’s turning out to be one of the most famous fakes in biology.” [/i]Michael K. Richardson, as quoted by Elizabeth Pennisi, “Haeckel’s Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered,” Science, Vol. 277, 5 September 1997, p. 1435.
“When we compare his[/i] [Haeckel’s] drawings of a young echidna embryo with the original, we find that he removed the limbs (see Fig. 1). This cut was selective, applying only to the young stage. It was also systematic because he did it to other species in the picture. Its intent is to make the young embryos look more alike than they do in real life.” [/i] Michael K. Richardson and Gerhard Keuck, “A Question of Intent: When Is a ‘Schematic’ Illustration a Fraud?” Nature, Vol. 410, 8 March 2001, p. 144.
c. “Another point to emerge from this study is the considerable inaccuracy of Haeckel’s famous figures. These drawings are still widely reproduced in textbooks and review articles, and continue to exert a significant influence on the development of ideas in this field.” [/i] Michael K. Richardson et al., “There Is No Highly Conserved Embryonic Stage in the Vertebrates,” Anatomy and Embryology, Vol. 196, No. 2, August 1997, p. 104.
[From “In the Beginning” by Walt Brown]