Why are Haeckel's drawings being taught in school?

Hope this isn't a repost but why are Haeckel's drawings being taught in school? They have already been proven wrong in 1874 yet they are still being taught as facts all over the world. Even Haeckel himself admitted to making up the drawings.

quote:

---

This is one of the worst cases of scientific fraud. It's shocking to find that somebody one thought was a great scientist was deliberately misleading. It makes me angry ... What he [Haeckel] did was to take a human embryo and copy it, pretending that the salamander and the pig and all the others looked the same at the same stage of development. They don't ... These are fakes.'

​

(Michael Richardson, in an interview with Nigel Hawkes, The Times (London), p. 14, August 11, 1997. )

---

quote:

---

"he also fudged the scale to exaggerate similarities among species, even when there were 10-fold differences in size. Haeckel further blurred differences by neglecting to name the species in most cases, as if one representative was accurate for an entire group of animals." ... "Haeckel's confession got lost after his drawings were subsequently used in a 1901 book called Darwin and After Darwin and reproduced widely in English language biology texts.

​

(Elizabeth Pennisi, Michael Richardson, 'Haeckel's Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered', Science 277(5331):1435, September 5, 1997.)

---

quote:

---

Stephen Jay Gould: "... it has fascinated me ever since the New York City public schools taught me Haeckel's doctrine, that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, fifty years after it, had been abandoned by science."

​

(Ontogeny and phylogeny, Stephen Jay Gould, ISBN 0-674-63940-5, 1977, p1)

---

So why are they still being taught almost 130 years after they have been proven false? Why do evolutionists feel the need to lie to teach evolution? Below you can find a comparision between Haeckel's drawings and the truth.

How can you teach a drawing?Are you saying that children are being taught today using Haeckel's drawings? Are you sure of this? Could you find a school for us where this is true - this should be easy enough if they are being used all over the world? We could then email the science department and find out why? That seems like the best approach, no?BTW, are you saying that Haeckel's drawings are being used to teach the same theory as Haeckel used them to support - that of recapitulation during development?If you want to criticize education, you ought to sharpen up your facts.

Unless schoools are using amazingly old textbooks, they would not be teaching Haeckel's version of recapitulation. If they are using textbooks that old then I would suggest that they have more serious problems to worry about.There are probably some books around using the drawings as illustrations because they aren't that bad and (I suspect) because they are cheap - and possibly because they DON'T have that much to do with the text, so they haven't been seriously scrutinised.To the best of my knowledge these illustrations are on the way out.

quote:

---

So why are they still being taught almost 130 years after they have been proven false?

---

You have examples of current textbooks teaching this as good modern science, rather than-- perhaps-- as history?------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

Here are a list of textbooks that are still being used in schools today that teach Haeckel's drawings as facts:1.Alton Biggs, Chris Kapicka & Linda Lundgren, Biology: The Dynamics of Life (Westerville, OH: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 1998). ISBN 0-02-825431-72. Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reece & Lawrence G. Mitchell, Biology, Fifth Edition (Menlo Park, CA: The Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company, 1999). ISBN 0-8053-6573-73. Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, Third Edition (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 1998). ISBN 0-87893-189-9
Burton S. Guttman, Biology, (Boston: WCB/McGraw-Hill, 1999). ISBN 0-697-22366-34. George B. Johnson, Biology: Visualizing Life, Annotated Teacher's Edition (Orlando, FL: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1998). ISBN 0-03-016724-85. Sylvia Mader, Biology, Sixth Edition (Boston: WCB/McGraw-Hill, 1998). ISBN 0-697-34080- 56. Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph Levine, Biology, Fifth Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2000). ISBN 0-13-436265-9
Peter H. Raven & George B. Johnson, Biology, Fifth Edition (Boston: WCB/McGraw-Hill, 1999). ISBN 0-697-35353-27. William D. Schraer & Herbert J. Stoltze, Biology: The Study of Life , Seventh Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999). ISBN 0-13-435086-38. Cecie Starr & Ralph Taggart, Biology: The Unity and Diversity of Life, Eighth Edition (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1998). ISBN 0-534-53001-X.

With regard to your assertion that the Fifth Edition of Miller and Levine teaches Haeckel's drawings as facts here is what Kenneth Miller says :"In 1998 we rewrote page 283 of the 5th edition to better reflect the scientific evidence. Our books now contain accurate drawings of the embryos made from detailed photomicrographs"Haeckel's EmbryosThe illustrations are shown on that page (in the box with the quoted text) and they are definitely not Haeckel's drawings.Sp can you explain why you claim otherwise ?

I was unaware of this change and I am glad that such a change has been made. However take a look at what Miller and Levine said:

quote:

---

As it turns out, Haeckel's contemporaries had spotted the fraud during his lifetime, and got him to admit it. However, his drawings nonetheless became the source material for diagrams of comparative embryology in nearly every biology textbook, including ours!

---

The fact still stands that other textbooks are using this fradulent material and that Haeckel's drawings are still being taught as prove of evolution.

You neglected to explain why you explicitly listed the edition which did NOT feature Haeckel's drawings.If you or your source were wrong on that, then how can we be sure that you or they are right about the other books ? Especially those written since 1997

That is an interesting question but I found that if E. Mayr thought he could grow"" biological thought (think "teach") then in his learning which is pretty much top line as far as biology goes...if you read him closely you will find that he was never able to abandon Haeckel altogether. The word "ecology" pretty much indicates inaddition much the same about the slow pace of the change in thought in biological thinking.My grandfather often TOLD me "o recapitulates p" but being uncertain but of my own "growth" (not being big enough to be a football player) I merely turned this around and USED it in a Lenten Service I gave as Elder. I then resolved this "teaching" (to which I indicate that by Mayr's standard and not mine could not have developed out of taught teaching of biology) into the sentence with the Hacekelian imprimatur"" that o re's p BECAUSE Brownian motion IS NOT mutually (reciprocally) independent of gravity fall" and I can go beyond this to use Galelio in any evrions of ecology as to the developmental and evolutionary question posed by topobiology as to the SIMILARITY to which Figenbaum number could (possibly) account for the constantcy of dissimilarity. I do not think that Mayr would have had a use for the difference IN ANY PHYSICAL SENSE.I now have not problem, no problem with "o" and "p" words but as to recapitulation"" that is another word altogether different than "ontogeny" or "phylogeny" which ever way you may have them in vocabulary.

It is possible to "teach" illustrations as I have just recently learned from Boscovich in this THEORY OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY I only wish that the same style of writing carried over into anatomy, embryology, and taxonomy books NO MATTER THE DIAGRAM.

quote:

---

The report, "An Evaluation of Ten Recent Biology Textbooks," which will be published in September by Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, examines ten of the most popular high school and college level textbooks and issues grades based on their presentations of the theory of evolution.

​

For example, textbooks present students with drawings of similarities between fish and human embryos, and claim that these similarities are evidence that fish and humans share a common ancestor. And, photographs of light and dark colored moths on tree trunks are used to teach students how natural selection altered the proportions of the two forms when trees were darkened by pollution during the industrial revolution.

​

"But scientists have known for over a century that the embryo drawings were faked," said biologist Dr. Jonathan Wells, author of the report and a senior fellow of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. "The embryos actually look very different. And all of the peppered-moth pictures were staged .Scientists have known since the 1980s that the moths do not normally rest on tree trunks. And yet textbooks have failed to change with the times."

​

"Science is the search for truth," explained Wells. "Most biology textbooks are simply lying to students about the evidence for evolution....

---

I received my source from the above passages. The evaluation included the 2000 Biology, Fifth Edition. Even after claiming to have fixed the problem, the evalutation has concluded that the textbook is sill misleading in some areas about Haeckel's drawings.

"Art is a lie that tells us the truth." - PicassoIsn't it possible that the embryology drawings and the peppered moth photos, while being staged events themselves, could still express a truth about adaptation?I mean, do you disagree that dark trees will lead to a prevalence of dark moths?Sure the photos are fake. Most photos, in one way or another are "fake" - artifice is used to correct or improve them. Do you whine when newspapers retouch photos for clairty?The images aren't being used as confirmational evidence of evolution, but rather to illustrate mechanisms of evolution. Whether or not they actually represent real events or situations has nothing to do with their value as illustrations.That said, I don't think the embryology diagrams should be used; better photographs should be commissioned.

Of course they could but the point is about "similarity" NOT dissimilarity."For example, textbooks present students with drawings of similarities between fish and human embryos, and claim that these similarities are evidence that fish and humans share a common ancestor."The problem is that what looks like a meristic character to an icythologist may not look in the geography the same cline to an ornithologist as a herpetologist.If one is only teaching "descent" to POINT then placing the fotos side beside CAN be CONFUSING from the SUBJECTIVE POINT of view of the student which needs to be cultivated as well as any significant objective level of confidence perspective no matter who does the teaching. Adaptation is simply too broad a basis to justify the pedagogy from while it may be sufficient for any individual instructor.There IS A LOGICAL point with "common descent" that A PICTURE does not address and this has to do with succesion that descent to a point is not but the common morphometrics of the tangent-reference form (a techincal notion) does so that when the student wants to refine what had been learn a stumbling block may have been placed by the teacher unawares. This is my position of Mayr.If a curve of force DOES APPLY directly to LIFE then it is not something to say that an illustration and the event it represents can be categoricaly dissocatiated. They CAN for the pedagogic EVENT but must students know that learning and understanding are two differnt things. Best. Brad.

You are sure this list of books teaches Haeckel's drawings? What does that mean?Are they using Haeckel's own artwork and saying it accurately represents reality?Are they saying that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny?Do you have a single example of a school teaching Haeckel's drawings. If so, let's have the email address and we'll contact the science department. Come on, it can't be that difficult if what you say is true.If you cannot find an example, then it's hardly a widespread problem, if a problem at all, and probably not worth bothering about, don't you think?

Are you saying that reusing the drawings, whatever point is made when teaching them, perpetuates Haeckel's theory?When my son was shown the photographs of early embryos - just over a year ago - he was absolutely amazed at the similarities. It needed no false claims, no fudged drawings. From the photographs alone he immediately grokked the fundamental relatedness of the various animals.Personally I say dump the drawings: more photographs, please, and open more kids eyes to our shared heritage as children, with all animals, of our common ancestors.