Haeckels' Drawings Part II

How could you not know they were inaccurate? They were grossly inaccurate, both in proportion in terms of size and time of development, in shape, and pretty much all the way around.They were FRAUDS!!Hey, ya think that maybe showing and publishing where Haeckel's colleagues showed the drawings with specifics to not only be errors, but deliberate frauds, could perhaps, just maybe mind you, be evidence they were in fact, you know, ..uh...frauds.Geesh, man!What more do you want? You claim, well, they didn't explain how they were frauds?Yes, they did. They referred to the specific criticisms that were obvious way back in the 1880s.You just are grasping at straws.

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Are you suggesting that textbook authors are not evolutionists?

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The people who approve textbooks often are not, actually.See, Texas is the second largest state that purchases textbooks (second only to California), therefore textbook producers have to kowtow to the anti-science tendencies of the Texas Board of Education if they want to sell their books there.There was recently a lawsuit over an environmental science textbook written by a scientist being rejected in favor of one funded by the mining industry. linkBut to answer your question more directly, the people who write high school science textbooks are often NOT evolutionary scientists. They are often not professional, practicing scientists at all.University texts dealing with evolution are written by evolutionary scientists, which is why their quality is so much better and you will not find Haekel's drawings portrayed as accurate in them.If you can find me a high school science text written by an evolutionary scientist that inappropriately includes haekel's drawings, you might have a case.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 08-23-2005 10:35 AM

Because I've never studied embryos live, so don't know what they actually look like, relying only on pictures, photographs and diagrams. Or were you you using the impersonal? It might be clearer if you worded 'How could one not know...' so that I don't get confused between personal and inpersonal. Indeed several aspects of their fraud was known (such that Haeckel's dog embryo was rarely seen ), however that some elements were frauds does not mean that the the other elements were grossly inaccurate. That would be a good start. It would also be great if some halfway modern comparative embryology could be referenced. No. I know that Haeckel's opponents criticized Haeckel, and some elements of the fraud was uncovered at that time (duplicate engravings). That isn't in question. It would certainly be useful to see what was said then. However, more important is to see what was said once they had become concreted into textbooks. I believe we have established that nobody, creationist nor evolutionist, did any significant work comparable to Haeckel's to demonstrate, in modern times the problems associated with the work. Not until Richardson. Indeed, obvious perhaps to masters of comparitive embryologists, obvious to people who were directly opposing Haeckel's work due to rivalries...was it so obvious in the modern period when the works of Baer and co were gathering dust and comparitive embryology was not the focus of science? No. I'm trying to discover the truth. What errors in Haeckel's work were known in the 19th Century? Were these errors known in the mid to late 20th Century? Who knew? Did they tell anybody? Who? How? To get to the bottom of this we need to answer these kinds of questions.I was hunting around the old web, and I found an article by Gould in Nature magazine that actually reflects precisely what I have hypothesized since this issue raised its head:

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Haeckel's drawings, despite their noted inaccuracies, entered into the most impenetrable and permanent of all quasi-scientific literatures: standard student textbooks of biology. I do not know how the transfer occurred in this particular case, but the general (and highly troubling) principles can be easily identified. Authors of textbooks cannot be experts in all subdisciplines of their subject. They should be more careful, and they should rely more on primary literature and the testimony of expert colleagues, but shortcuts tempt us all, particularly in the midst of elaborate projects under tight deadlines.

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emphasis mineThat's exactly what I've been saying, straight from the mouth of one of the most eminent evolutionary historians.

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Therefore, textbook authors often follow two suboptimal routes that usually yield adequate results but can also engender serious trouble: they copy from previous textbooks, and they borrow from the most widely available popular sources. No one ever surpassed Haeckel in fame and availability as a Darwinian spokesman and a noted professor at the University of Jena. So textbook authors borrowed his famous drawings of embryonic development, probably quite unaware of their noted inaccuracies and outright falsifications--or (to be honest about dirty laundry too often kept hidden) perhaps well enough aware, they then rationalized with the ever tempting and ever dangerous argument "Oh well, it's close enough to reality for student consumption, and it does illustrate a general truth with permissible idealization." (I am a generous realist on most matters of human foibles. But I confess to raging fundamentalism on this issue. The smallest compromise in dumbing down by inaccuracy destroys integrity and places an author upon a slippery slope of no return.)

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Once ensconced in textbooks, misinformation becomes cocooned and effectively permanent, because, as stated above, textbooks copy from previous texts.

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Read the full article

Comparative embryology is not an important focus of evolutionary biology today so why is this so important? The fact that inaccurate drawings were included in high school textbooks long after they were shown to be inaccurate is hardly surprising. High school textbooks, science or otherwise, are not known for their scholarly accuracy. They are more along the lines of popular publications - often watered down to make them easier to comprehend and scientific or historical accuracy is sometimes lost in the process.Besides, the fact that some showboating evolutionist may have committed a scientific fraud over 100 years ago - and some profit minded texbook writers and publishers may have perpetuated it - does not make any difference as to the accuracy or inaccuracy of the TOE. The TOE stands on its merits, regardless of the failings of people who may support it. So why don't we argue current issues in evolutionary thought, such as DNA homologies among related species, rather than dwelling on the past?

You are missing the point. They showed Haeckel's drawings were fraudulent. You claim they did not know how fraudulent.So what?Is it acceptable to include just anything as "evidence"? It seems the approach of evos is to throw out unsubstantiated claims as evidence and demand that, unless they have been proven wrong, they are accepted, and moreover, to claim that even if shown to be partly fraudulent, it's still OK to use the rest of them because we don't believe anyone has showed they were wrong.Well, this illustrates the threshold of "evidence" for evos, imo, and is a major reason I do not trust any data put forth by evos.Shouldn't the drawings only be submitted after they have shown to be accurate, not because no one according to you had disproven all of them, just some!!!That's like using testimony of a biased witness who admitted to faking the evidence, but then using the parts you think no one has yet proven to be false, and passing that off as scientific evidence that the vast majority of mainstream scientistists accept.Moreover, you are wrong to think creationists did not point out other errors. You gloss over the fact that creationists pointed out that all of the drawings were based on one drawing, per cycle. In other words, every one of them except maybe one at best was totally faked, not just some of them. Since the whole presentation was fake as a whole and demonstrated and stated by creationist repeatedly for decades, you are wrong to assert the following. Wrong. The significant work was showing that the drawings were a sham as for each time period, the drawings were simply modifications of one drawing in showing the comparisons. There was also quite a lot of detail on how the drawings were wrong, in size, proportions, in the development time, etc,...

Go back and read the threads. I showed where Douglas Dewar raised these exact same points in the 40s, 50s and 60s. That creationists published they were fraudulent in 1910, and the 30s, that creationists made these claims in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.How much data do you need?Go and read the darn articles, or buy the books. I even gave you my personal testimony of how these drawings were held up as fakes in the late 80s by a college creationist botany professor in a talk he gave.back in the 1800s, specific allegations of numerous examples of now the drawings were wrong and fraudulent were given, and I provided links to show that. it was not just one engraving duplication error. The whole thing and the entire claim was fraudulent.

No, I'm saying that some of the drawings were known to be fraudulent (I don't think it has been established that all of the drawings were ousted, but I could be wrong). I claim that it was not common knowledge how inaccurate the drawings were. No. I think I've made myself clear on that. Wooops, there you go again. Let me reword that for you

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It seems the approach of high school textbook authors is to copy what looks good without always checking its substance

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That's a bit better. Remeber that discussion we had about evolutionists and how they were the superset, and the discussion was actually about a subset of evolutionists known as textbook authors? It was only a few posts ago, and I don't want to have to over it all again, thanks for your consideration. You're logic has led you astray. Let me help,

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Well, this illustrates the threshold of "evidence" for high school textbook authors, imo, and is a major reason I do not trust any data put forth by high school textbook authors

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Which would a laudable sentiment which you would have my agreement on (largely, most of the material is reliable, but sometimes it isn't). No, they shouldn't have been submitted after they had been shown to be fraudulent. But yes, as Gould said and I agreed with, high school textbook authors should be more careful and consult the primary literature or the relevant field experts. Exactly, this is part of the systematic error in high school text book publishing I have previously been referring to. I think you might finally be getting my point of view here. Scary. I think you might have exaggerated things here. From what I remember the duplicates were dog/human/turtle (IIRC they were duplicates of the fanciful human embryo) and something else. There were lots of others that weren't duplicated, just fudged. Well that's great. Why on earth did you never present this when I asked why nobody had done what Richardson did? I'm assuming you aren't merely referring to Haeckel's contempories but some work done in the mid to late twentieth century?I feel we are close to coming to an agreement.

All that you showed me was that Dewar wrote a book which discusses embryology. I don't remember actually seeing what was said unfortunately. I know that creationists made claims that these were fraudulent, so far all we have is them doing in popular press books. So they weren't written to anyone, just general books that the important audience (high school textbook authors) would probably never get hold of. Creationists write a lot of books, they make a lot of claims and assertions. Pretty much everything they say is a load of crap. Its called boy cried wolf syndrome. Creationists shot themselves in the foot with that unfortunately. All I'm looking for is creationists were responsible with this revelation. They had a valuable piece of information, it would be a shame if they just wrote it all down in general books. What I'm looking for is evidence that a creationist made a formal presentation to a major textbook publisher demonstrating why the diagrams should not be used. Actually had a paper, like Richardsons. Shown photographs of embryos and compared them with the diagrams in the textbooks. Actually showed them exactly, clearly and without hotheaded rhetoric, what the problem was.That's all. I know that if a school near me was peddling something I thought was fraudulent or indoctrinating or whatever the creos claim these diagrams might be indicitave of, you can get bet my response wouldn't be to write a really angry sounding book....it would be to actually get in touch with the people responsible, their superiors, anyone I could.If you can show me that happened, and the publisher ignore them, you will certainly have a partner in anger against that particular publisher.

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Besides, the fact that some showboating evolutionist may have committed a scientific fraud over 100 years ago - and some profit minded texbook writers and publishers may have perpetuated it - does not make any difference as to the accuracy or inaccuracy of the TOE. The TOE stands on its merits, regardless of the failings of people who may support it.

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Exactly.Evidenctly, because high school texts were inaccurate for some time (even though evolutionary scientists don't usually write high school texts), this means that all of Biology is suspect, according to randman.I suppose that when high school history texts fail to mention the extent to which the Native Americans were persecuted randman will suspect that Early American history is all a fraud.

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So why don't we argue current issues in evolutionary thought, such as DNA homologies among related species, rather than dwelling on the past?

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Because it would break the CreoCode regulation #49:"If at all possible, avoid discussing any actual modern evidence for evolution and instead obsess about a tiny, irrelevant issue."

The picture was published in "SNAKE CHARM" 1995 by Marilyn Nissenson and Susan Jonas at A Times Mirror Companyof Harry N. Abrams.It is not an error to misdraw nature with an some artistic latitude if a "deception" was not intended. I dont know if this painter actually witnessed this "red in tooth and claw" between (an anaconda?) and a caman but I HAVE SEEN a water snake in the process of consuming frog in the wild. It was quite a sight.It is interesting to notice HOW the drawing was made. It is in color and clearly shows off "black and white" at what would be the natural contention in Haeckel's thought of ontogeny recapiulates phylogeny for the reptiles. If you dont have any idea how a picture of the competition in this clade correctly naturally represented is evidence contra Haeckel then I dont have this kind of time just now to explain it. The picture itself struck me IMMEDIATELY.What IS important to notice, as to the content of this thread, is that if one puts oneself alternatively in Haeckel's or this painter's mind when composing the picture(s) it is obvious to me, and I fail to see how it would be to you etc, that Haeckel HAD to DRAW IN the stomach area (on the embryos in his pictures where HERE the color contains any such attribute since no detail about the embrogeny is indicative outside of blacks and whites (space for Haeckel). Thus if Haeckel KNEW he was misdrawing ON PURPOSE he could not not know that this space is not just an extra brush stroke etc.

today was the second day of the semester, and the first day for the tue-thurs classes. one of my classes, swear to god, has "art forms in nature" by ernst haeckel on the recommended reading list.but it's not in a biology class -- it's a drawing class.someone asked early on how you teach a drawing? well, in a drawing class.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 08-23-2005 10:09 PM

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אָרַח

Chiroptera: [quote]In jawed vertebrates with gills (jawed fish and amphibians) most of the pharyngeal pouches develop into gills, and a portion develop into jaws. This is the connection across species of vertebrates with gills.In reptiles, most of the pharyngeal pouches do not develop into gills, but a portion of them develop into jaws, just like in jawed fish. This is the connection across species of non-mammalian vertebrates.

What's your point, John?All you have done is quote Chiroptera.Did you forget the /quote and your comment?Just checking.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Clearly he's stunned by my eloquence and the sharp clarity of my logic.

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

or he was looking up the spelling of a word (to use "sic" on in his reply, another 'favorite' ploy of his), and forgot what he was doing.