Why are Haeckel's drawings being taught in school?

Sorry Mark, but I already did that and am not going to waste my time doing it again just because you ask.Moreover, as far as the thread goes, you are wrong to claim that it really matters how they were fraudulent, just the fact they are and that has been widely acknowledged is sufficient.Furthermore, I showed as well where the ideas that the drawings were used to convey were false as well since they were used to make the claim of a phylotypic stage, but that was just a wrong assertion, despite it being made for over 130 years.This message has been edited by randman, 06-27-2005 01:41 PM

RAZD, due to Modulous's post, I skimmed your post.If you are comparing the changes in embryonic development in observed speciation and extrapolating that to compare with what we see in embryonic development where speciation has not been observed, that is a valid approach.If I misunderstood your post, then I am sorry, but your earlier stance seeming to refuse to acknowledge the fraudulent use of Haeckel's drawings began to cause my to tune you out.But regardless, you need to provide details of the specific species where we have observed speciation, and then show how that changed their embryonic development, and then show how that matches current data in a conclusive manner.I hope you will forgive my skepticism, having witnessed in my life, years of evolutionists making false claims about recapitulation via a phylotypic stage and using faked evidence to convince people this had been observed when that was not the case.The process appears to me like evolutionists just trying hard to salvage the use of embryonic evidence regardless of the facts.This message has been edited by randman, 06-27-2005 01:52 PM

randman, The closest you came to answering the question was post 174. But that was just your opinion, you were asked to demonstrate that a fraud had been committed. Your opinion isn't enough.I am quite happy to concede that fraud has been committed, but not on your merest say so.All I am asking you to do is to support your premises.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

You didn't read the links on this thread? They detailed several exposes of the fraud, some going back to the 1800s and most recently, the Richardson study in 1997.You can't be bothered to read the links, or what?

What links?

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

I believe that is called "throwing the baby out with the bath water."There is no reason to throw out accurate information because other information was forged.If I have one-hundred data points, and I discover that my lab tech made up ten of those points, I don't need to throw out the other ninety data points as well. I better be damn sure that I can support those data points as accurate, but I don't need to act as though they never existed.If Haeckel switched out one embryo image for another, or exaggerated some part of morphology on certain embryos, that does not mean that other information or even the basic concepts that Haeckel was trying to show are also wrong. It just means that they need to be given more scrutiny to ensure that they are accurate. No. It is scientists using embryonic evidence because of the evidence, not salvaging it despite it. The truth is that Haeckel contributed the framework for an important diagram to demonstrate development in relation to evolutionary relationships. He went about it the wrong way, but that does not mean we should give up on that way of viewing things. Indeed, the new, revised, microphotograph-influenced diagram adopted by the textbook you exampled remains a reworking of Haeckel's diagram - it is indeed "based on Haeckel's drawings."All that said, if a scientist was maintaining in the 1990's (or the 1890's for that matter) that Haeckel's gill slits on human embryos were wholly accurate, that scientist would either be ignorant or deceitful. randman, as someone who wishes you'd take time and understand the nuances of scientific communication, I applaud these comments - they are a step in the right direction. Keep it up.

But the concept he was trying to show were wrong, and the accepted concepts others used his drawings to show were likewise wrong. There is no phylotypic stage, and of course, Haeckel's more extreme claim was wrong too on adult forms recapitulating.I would think that if evolutionists want to be taken seriously by everyone, they should first state that just spent over 130 years telling the public that a phylotypic stage was observed when it wasn't.

Not all of those concepts are wrong. Hence, when the textbook you cite revised the diagram in 1997, it remained a reworking of the original. Hopefully you realize that this is not the only concept that Haeckel's drawings were used to illustrate.The great point-by-point description that RAZD provided of what evolutionary theory predicts of development can also be illustrated by Haeckel-based diagrams - and his description was accurate.So, Haeckel-based diagrams can be used to illustrate correct concepts. Scientific concepts are more often than not shown to be incorrect or in need of revision. That is in no way a negative attribute, it is rather its most positive attribute. It is self-correcting and open to reinterpretation, unlike other belief systems.Most importantly, the status of a scientific concept rests solely on evidence, not the history of the field of study, or the number of errors or frauds perpetrated in the name of that field of study.

I think you're wrong. They are inaccurate, and the phylotypic stage was the primary argument they were used for, for over 130 years.But I'll give you a chance. Show me where Heackel's drawings reflect accuracy that can illustrate truths, and even RAZD has offered no actual examples.I asked for comprehensive studies of someone else to back up the claim that embryonic development is more similar than anatomical similarities, and specifically asked for a comparision between species thought to be closer genetically but futher apart anatomically with other species so we can compare.I assume in the face of such assertations that comprehensive studies would have been done before any such claims are made.I am willing to look at them.Where are they?Btw, I will be gone for a few days after today so if you don't hear back, it's because I am not around a computer.

Btw, that web-page for the textbook in question lists only one example of where the drawings reflect the same idea. In typical form, they erroneously use a false claim concerning the yoke sac, claiming it only makes sense in context of the evolution because there is no need for the yoke sac now that we don't use yoke as our presumed ancestors did.That's bogus though.The yoke sac in fact performs an important function. It is how the developing embryo gets it's blood initially, and though called a yoke sac, it has nothing to do with yoke, doesn't serve the same function, and basically this is just like the false gill slits claim.True to form, they keep trying to hang onto some form of recapitulation and using false data to do so.This message has been edited by randman, 06-27-2005 04:06 PM

randman, And why does a human embryo need a yolk sac to get blood, when an umbilical & placenta that serves the rest of the pregnancy would serve equally well? Why have an extraneous organ during development?MarkThis message has been edited by mark24, 06-27-2005 05:33 PM

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

Why not? You can stitch similarities together all you want, but there is no reason to say that this stems from a true yolk sac. In fact, the umbilical cord is not sufficient early on to replace all the functions of the sac, and it makes sense that there would be an encasing around the baby.We have our intestines encased. The encasing around the baby, the bag of waters, makes perfect sense all on it's own.

The Question this thread initially asked was "Why are Haeckel's drawings being taught in school?". One possible answer was because biologists knew that the drawings were fraudulent, but used them anyway to indoctrinate our youth. That is to say, they were reproduced in text books fraudulently.The one example we have really looked at is Miller. Upon pointing out the error in the work, it was readily admitted, and modified. This to me does not look like deliberate deception, it looks closer to sloppy research, or trusting secondary sources (other text books) too much.The only act of deliberate deception that has been discussed here is that of Haeckel himself. Given the method of information interchange in the late 19th Century it is not entirely surprising that Haeckel's work managed to slip into text books, whilst the critique of his work slipped by. After all, Mendel's work would have been very useful to Darwin - but passed him by.Whilst it made it into the books, it was known that the biogenetic law was not true, but the diagrams Haeckel did were not seen as being as 'out' as is known. Gilbert notes that embryology in support of evolution fell out of favour in the 1920s. Research into it basically stopped, and so that diagram was the best the textbook makers had, so they usually just stuck it in there. It continued to make it into textbooks despite frequent comments made from scientists (Gould in the late 70s springs to mind) about the misleading nature of the diagrams. However, textbook copies textbook copies textbook. The makers of these books rarely do their own work - simply reproducing the work from other textbooks.As the 80s and 90s passed, 'evo-devo' started to rear its head again, similiraties in genes and embryos were once again the talk of many a circle and those diagrams came back in focus. Richardson et al decided that over a century of relying on inacurate, fraudelent material was far enough, and wrote a paper on exactly what the problems are with the diagrams, and reminded people that whilst the similarities might be accurate, the differences were omitted from the diagrams and these were as important as the similarities.Newer, better diagrams and even photos were done, and text book makers now had more accurate things to put into their books.That's the story I get from reading around. It all looks like a bit of a screw up to me, but I don't see any grand conspiracy, global athiest fraud, or an attempt to overstate, lie or use deceit.To answer the question, "Why are Haeckel's drawings being taught in school?" I say: Unless they are being used to put evo-devo in a historical context (or similar uses) they probably shouldn't be...more accurate diagrams and pictures exist and should be used instead. Where they are still being used, then anyone who spots this error should point it out to the appropriate people (Teacher, Principal etc). If they are still being taught now it is either the fault of the text book publisher, the teacher or the person in charge of setting the curriculum books.

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Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.

There is a more pertinent observation that one can draw from this. First off, what is the nature of "sloppy research." I would characterize it as an inherent pschological approach within evolution that is not scientific in the least.In other words, it's sort of evidence for mass brainwashing, self-delusion, within the evolutionist community.My reason for stating that is that not only did the deception remain and was believed, but anyone that ever looked into the evidence for themselves would not accept the claim of "gill slits", a phylotypic stage, all the general claims of recapitulation whether Haeckel's ideas or mainstream evolutionists from 1880-2000 were entirely bogus.The reason people accepted these false claims is that critics who maintained these claims were false were routinely demonized by evolutionists as only doing so because they refused to accept science when in reality it was the evolutionists refusing to accept the science and relying on ideological indoctrination, not the creationists.Millions upon millions of people were taught and believed this nonsense of recapitulation, and here is the kicker.In your post you referred to the 1997 Richardson study and a few comments by Gould, but calling out these drawings as fraudulent was standard fare among creationists for decades. Creationists, including scientists, wrote books and articles denouncing the use of the drawings and ideas as fraudulent, and anyone could check and see that they were, but evolutionists refused to accept that, and when some did, like Gould, he nevertheless did not exactly go on a crusade to get them out of textbooks.Imo, this is evidence of more than sloppy research of a peripheal issue. This is evidence of self-delusion, of mass brainwashing, which is effected by faked drawings, teaching the conclusion first, and bashing all critics as somehow crazy, non-objective, etc, etc,....It's a serious issue because such cult-like behaviour and phenomena are, from my observations, a central problem with evolutionism.I have said this a lot, but really it matters less whether evolution is true or not, as far as science, than how one approaches the subject. When critics show for 130 years that your camp is using faked evidence, and you believe the lie nonetheless, it is wrong to write it off to mere sloppiness. Heck, anyone presented with both sides or presented with what critics of evolution say, would have immediately been able to spot the fraud.Every high school and college student in the country should have been considering this evidence, looking at what critics say about it, from day one. If evolutionists had not insisted on using the courts to maintain their brainwashing style of education, this would have been uncovered decades ago, and in all likelihood, there are other areas that could similarly be corrected.Teaching the conclusion first is wrong for science. It colors one's perception, and it has colored the perception of the evolutionist community, that rational thought in areas like Haeckel's drawings were not possible. That's a form of brainwashing, imo.This message has been edited by randman, 06-30-2005 02:49 PM

It is exactly as I said...using the well documented diagrams that are in the text books previous to this - rather than looking for or composing new ones. Then you would need to show this, or just accept that it's a bare assertion. Until recently the name 'brontosaurus' was in common usage, in text books, in museums and so on. Despite suspicions being cast as early as 1903 about it being no different from an apatosaurus, and there was some confusion with the skulls.Unfortunately despite attempts to avoid it, text book compilers are as much subject to memetic drift as anything. I would consider Haeckel's drawings to be a meme, or an urban legend...possibly a factoid, drifting unchecked throughout the wilderness. Brainwashing implies an active hand. Memetic drift seems to work better, its just an idea that eventually made it into all the text books, and just spread like a virus. Anti-evolutionists aren't immune to this either, there are plenty of long debunked nonsense that keeps on cropping up, over and over (eg., Evolution is against the laws of thermodynamics). That looks like it needs some support. From what I can see opponents to the phylotypic stage have only come along as more detailed data is collected (there is plenty of literature regarding morphological work on the phylotypic stage, I read). A phylotypic stage is not necessarily entirely bogus, and you have yet to show it. All I have seen in one study that challenges proponents of the phylotypic stage to start making some concrete definitions...showing that at least one model might not be correct. This recent study (Mar 2005) provides some evidence for a phylotypic stage:

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The molecular results suggest, albeit weakly, that a phylotypic stage (or period) indeed exists. Its temporal location, sometimes between the first-somites stage and the formation of the posterior neuropore, was in approximate agreement with the morphologically defined phylotypic stage...

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Our results suggest that a phylotypic stage may exist, but that developmental and evolutionary factors may have conspired to camouflage its temporal identification....

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All in all, our study indicates that the hourglass model is viable and worthy of further consideration. More precisely, we regard our results as supporting von Baer’s septaquintaquinquecentennial model more strongly than the decennial hourglass. Notwithstanding, we must end this note by stating that unambiguously proving or disproving the hourglass model will require much more expression and sequence data than currently available.

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So I do think it might be rather an exageration on your part to strongly assert that there is no phylotopic stage, unless you have a more recent study that puts an end to the debate? If not, I think you might want to stop and think why you accepted this one study (Inverting the hourglass) without looking elsewhere. Was it because it agreed with your preconcieved notions? Self-delusion? Exageration and self-delusion should be familiar accusations to you.

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In your post you referred to the 1997 Richardson study and a few comments by Gould, but calling out these drawings as fraudulent was standard fare among creationists for decades. Creationists, including scientists, wrote books and articles denouncing the use of the drawings and ideas as fraudulent, and anyone could check and see that they were, but evolutionists refused to accept that, and when some did, like Gould, he nevertheless did not exactly go on a crusade to get them out of textbooks.

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That's good, its great. What exactly did the creationists say and how did they say it? What was the response? You need some support here.As Richardson says in his 1997 paper:

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The debate is hindered by the scarcity of comprehensive comparative studies of vertebrate embryos, and the great practical difficulties in obtaining embryos for study from a wide range of species. Keibel (1906) provided figures, redrawn from published
studies, of embryonic development in a wide range of vertebrates. However, with a few notable exceptions (Bellairs 1971) modern textbooks rarely consider species other than the common laboratory animals. There has been no textbook of descriptive comparative embryology in English, covering all the major vertebrate

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Embryology just wasn't an interesting subject to biologists after the initial excitement throughout the 19th century, and with the discovery of genetics, it seemed to fall out of favour. As it came back into interest, Richardson published his work, with the wonders of modern technology and a scrutiny that was more severe than 100 years previous. Criticisms of accepted theories of any kind are generally beyond high school level of education. You don't need to know the contradictions inherent in the Theory of Gravity to pass physics. If any time was spent on what critics have to say, then there would be less time to actually teach the science. I don't think so. I would have hated to have to understand and learn Newton's workings and proofs before knowing where he was going with them. From what I remember of being taught evolution it was very short...most of it was about Mendel's genetics to be frank. Here is how it was taught...hardly controversial stuff...Darwin observed some stuff, he made some conclusions, he wrote a book. Here are some further evidences of the mechanisms of evolution. Here is a perfunctory note about the controversy and debate that has been raging.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Basically though we agree. It shouldn't have stayed in the books so long, and it is bad that it did. However, I see an unfortunate situation, you see a conspiracy. If you want to show that there is a conspiracy of people desperate to get people to accept their theory, you'll need to show more compelling evidence than a problem with textbook standards.This message has been edited by Modulous, Thu, 30-June-2005 09:27 PM