A'isha
Miss Schoolteacher
Edited by Tricky:
Editing images to links.
Over in this 30-page monstrosity of a thread in the Religion and Philosophy section, one of the arguments advanced against modern evolutionary theory (and the scientists who practice it) was that the drawings of Ernst Haeckel at the end of the 19th century comparing the similarities in the embryos of various vertebrate species were especially problematic.
http://i479.photobucket.com/albums/rr157/antpogo/Haeckel-1874.jpg
The particular claim stated that Haeckel's specific drawings, not just comparative embryology in general, were really the only evidence for similarities in vertebrate embryos indicating a common descent, and when embryologist Michael Richardson first noticed a problem with Haeckel's drawings in 1995 and made a formal accusation of fraud in Haeckel's drawings in 1997, the fact that evolution was essentially based on lies was laid bare for everyone to see. Even worse, the claim continues, Haeckel and his drawings are still relied on as evidence even now, in the wake of Richardson's revelations, showing just how much evolution is built on lies.
Of course, things are, in reality, a lot more complex than that. While Richardson did indeed think that Haeckel's original drawings (Haeckel himself revised them many times during his lifetime, correcting problems identified by his contemporary critics) showed evidence of fraud, or at least severe error, Richardson doesn't in anyway think that his papers do anything to harm evolutionary theory one bit. And while there has been a reassessment of Haeckel and his drawings in recent years (Richardson himself in 2002, a much stronger one from Robert J. Richards in 2009), the science of comparative embryology has basically gone beyond simply looking at pictures to see similarities, and instead focused on genomic evidence: see this 2004 paper and this 2007 paper, for instance, neither of which mention Haeckel. The 2007 paper even cites Richardson's 1997 work.
As an adjunct to the above claims, the assertion that American high school and college biology textbooks all mentioned Haeckel, reproduced his drawings, or both, was advanced to support the claim that Haeckel's work was a foundational prop of evolutionary theory, without which evolution could not stand.
The claimant provided this article and its associated database of textbooks, from the website Textbook History, as evidence for that claim. However, neither of them say what the claimant apparently thought they said. The article itself is a fairly good rundown of where and why Haeckel's diagrams were used in early textbooks, and how once working biologists got together to form the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study at the end of the 50's to reassess just what textbooks were teaching kids about science and evolution, Haeckel and his diagrams started fading from the scene.
I happen to live in Birmingham, AL, home of the University of Alabama in Birmingham, one of the leading medical and life science schools in the country. One of our libraries has an extensive archive of biology textbooks, including quite a few of the ones mentioned in the Textbook History article. The depiction in the Textbook History article of a completely new comparative embryology diagram, not taken from Haeckel's work, and including developmental stages and animals he never showed in his famous drawings, and that piqued my interest:
http://i479.photobucket.com/albums/rr157/antpogo/BlueGrid.jpg
The following posts, reproduced from the thread linked above, represent the result of my curious forays into seeing just what textbooks actually do say about Haeckel. This first attempt was very haphazard, with the main objective of examining the 1968 edition of the BSCS Blue Book, and the other information I found was basically the result of random shelf selections.
I am planning to make a return trip, better planned this time, too. So if you have any suggestions or requests that you think might help my planning, please let me know. I've also ordered a copy of the original 1963 edition of the Blue Book, and will show everyone here what I learn from it when it arrives.
Any other discussion about Haeckel and his role in both science and in textbooks, is welcome.
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