Ernst Haeckel's embryological diagrams and biology textbooks

[A'isha]

Stephen Gould was remarkably prescient regarding randman's antics over Haeckel:

The recent flap over this more-than-twice-told tale--an almost comical manifestation of the famous dictum that those unfamiliar with history (or simply careless in reporting) must be condemned to repeat the past--began with an excellent technical paper by Richardson and six other colleagues in 1997 (Anatomy and Embryology, vol. 196), following a 1995 article by Richardson alone (Developmental Biology, vol. 172). In these articles, Richardson and his colleagues discussed the original Haeckel drawings, briefly noted the contemporary recognition of their inaccuracies, properly criticized their persistent appearance in modern textbooks, and then presented evidence (discussed below) of the differences among early vertebrate embryos that Haeckel's tactics had covered up and that later biologists had therefore forgotten. Richardson invoked this historical tale in order to make an important point, also mentioned below, about exciting modern work in the genetics of development.

From this excellent and accurate beginning, the reassertion of Haeckel's old skulduggery soon spiraled into an abyss of careless reporting and self-serving utility. Elizabeth Pennisi's news report in the September 5, 1997, issue of Science told the story well, under an accurate headline ("Haeckel's Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered") and with a textual acknowledgement that Haeckel's work was first "found to be flawed more than a century ago." But the shorter squib in Britain's New Scientist of September 6, 1997, began the downward spiral by implying that Richardson had discovered Haeckel's misdeed for the first time.

As so often happens, this ersatz version, so eminently more newsworthy than the truth, opened the floodgates to a torrent of sensationalist (and nonsensical) assertions: a primary pillar of Darwinism, and of evolution in general, had been revealed as fraudulent after more than a century of continuous and unchallenged centrality in biological theory.

Randman is doing exactly what Gould described in his last paragraph.

 

[randman]

Stephen Gould was remarkably prescient regarding randman's antics over Haeckel:



Randman is doing exactly what Gould described in his last paragraph.

No, what I am saying is far worse for you guys.

The biogenetic law was widely accepted by biologists and served as the basis for the surge of embryological research that continues unabated to this day. Moreover, the biogenetic law has become so deeply rooted in biological thought that it cannot be weeded out in spite of its having been demonstrated to be wrong by numerous subsequent scholars. Even today both subtle and overt uses of the biogenetic law are frequently encountered in the general biological literature as well as in more specialized evolutionary and systematic studies."—*W. Bock, "Book Review," Science, May 1969, pp. 684-685 [Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University].

That was in 1969. Has anything changed all that much?

 

[A'isha]

No, what I am saying is far worse for you guys.

Nope, it's not.

That was in 1969. Has anything changed all that much?

A) Yes it has. This is why Gould wrote an entire book about this in 1977.

B) Bock there is reviewing a recent translated reprint of a 1926 edition of a 1922 Russian book (Leo Berg's Nomogenesis, or Evolution Determined by Law), and is talking about it in explicitly historical terms. It's actually a dual review, comparing a book discussing selected excerpts from Haeckel's Generelle Morphologie der Organismen with Berg's book above.

And, as your quote notes, Bock notes how Haeckel's ideas, despite being discredited by biologists themselves, persist in the oddest places in even specialized works by people who should know better. Your quote cuts off the example he uses, Dr. Benjamin Spock's best-selling Baby and Child Care.

Once again, you're using a quote that shows how science was well aware of the problems with Haeckel and are using that to imply that scientists totally believed and trusted Haeckel.

(EDIT:And it's really hypocritical for you to attack evolution as a whole for having a few scientists who cling to old discredited ideas in the face of evidence to the contrary - your boy Grasse was a Lamarckist up through the 70's!)

 

[Belz...]

So Ant, why would you spend all that time just to start a thread based on a lie? It took over 130 years of sustained criticism just to get evos to finally admit the drawings were faked and even then they say they didn't know until 1997 or thereabouts.

Translation: "tl;dr".

 

[Belz...]

Creationists have been showing Haeckel's drawings were fraudulent for decades.

Yes, that's very much creationist-like: take something science has known to be false for a century, and that people in general don't know about, then debunk it, layman-style, and claim to have done it first.

 

[Belz...]

No, what I am saying is far worse for you guys.

Yes. Spreading your seemingly unlimited and willful ignorance to those who don't know better is very harmful, indeed. Evil, I'd say.

 

[Bad vibe]

I have no idea if its ok to post this link or not but I found it interesting
http://home.uchicago.edu/~rjr6/articles/Haeckel--fraud not proven.pdf

 

[A'isha]

I have no idea if its ok to post this link or not but I found it interesting
http://home.uchicago.edu/~rjr6/articles/Haeckel--fraud not proven.pdf

Yeah, that's Richards' 2009 reassessment. He's on the other end of the spectrum from the Haeckel-hating Gould (with people like Richardson in the middle).

Richards makes some very valid points in his rebuttal to Richardson, though he does have a history of going too far in trying to redeem Haeckel as a figure (not so much in this paper, but it's evident in his biography of Haeckel).

 

[randman]

Yeah, that's Richards' 2009 reassessment. He's on the other end of the spectrum from the Haeckel-hating Gould (with people like Richardson in the middle).

Richards makes some very valid points in his rebuttal to Richardson, though he does have a history of going too far in trying to redeem Haeckel as a figure (not so much in this paper, but it's evident in his biography of Haeckel).

Why wouldn't evos laud a man that faked not only this but other data to promote ideas evos still cling to today, such as the biogenetic law, recapitulation, and ontogeny recapitulated phylogeny? '

Yea, evos have "modernized" the theories and now due to the internet and Richardson's study, they have started changing out the pictures a little.

So what?

Still largely a hoax.

 

[randman]

Nope, it's not.



A) Yes it has. This is why Gould wrote an entire book about this in 1977.

B) Bock there is reviewing a recent translated reprint of a 1926 edition of a 1922 Russian book (Leo Berg's Nomogenesis, or Evolution Determined by Law), and is talking about it in explicitly historical terms. It's actually a dual review, comparing a book discussing selected excerpts from Haeckel's Generelle Morphologie der Organismen with Berg's book above.

And, as your quote notes, Bock notes how Haeckel's ideas, despite being discredited by biologists themselves, persist in the oddest places in even specialized works by people who should know better. Your quote cuts off the example he uses, Dr. Benjamin Spock's best-selling Baby and Child Care.

Once again, you're using a quote that shows how science was well aware of the problems with Haeckel and are using that to imply that scientists totally believed and trusted Haeckel.

(EDIT:And it's really hypocritical for you to attack evolution as a whole for having a few scientists who cling to old discredited ideas in the face of evidence to the contrary - your boy Grasse was a Lamarckist up through the 70's!)

I am using a quote showing science was well aware. Anyone would have been that bothered to listen to creationists and IDers and as you point out, some evos too.

So what do you make of a Biology professor at Brown, an Ivy League school, using the faked data and admitting it, pleading ignorance and saying everyone else did.

Is he not a scientist? Is he not a biologist?

I've asked this numerous times along with other questions and all you do is refuse to answer.

Answer the question.

 

[Irony]

I wonder why randman is going after such a small target.

I mean, I distinctly remember their being Ptolemaic solar system models in one of my textbooks.

Surely that means that Heliocentricists are perpetuating a centuries long campaign of fraud to push their anti-biblical Copernicanism onto our school children.

 

[randman]

more evidence ANT....why are you not showing these textbooks all using Haeckel's faked data straight-up or based on the faked data.....just look at the textbook pages in the 2 links below

http://www.discovery.org/a/3935

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/05/the_textbooks_dont_lie_haeckel_1003664.html

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

There's the creationist book titled "Haeckel His Frauds and Forgeries" in 1910[...]

Wow, it's suddenly been published 5 years earlier than it was when you mentioned it yesterday. Is it going to be prehistoric by the end of the week?

 

[A'isha]

So what do you make of a Biology professor at Brown, an Ivy League school, using the faked data and admitting it, pleading ignorance and saying everyone else did.

Is he not a scientist? Is he not a biologist?

I told you why Haeckel reappeared in textbooks. And why, when he reappeared, his fakery was rediscovered.

Heck, the professor you cited even went and did what you claimed science wasn't doing: right after Richardson's paper was published, Miller and Levine corrected the error. They even mentioned why.

Gould called this "good science", and it is. It's only people like you who think that this represented any problem with evolution. Miller and Levine didn't. Gould didn't. Even Richardson didn't!

more evidence ANT....why are you not showing these textbooks all using Haeckel's faked data straight-up or based on the faked data.....just look at the textbook pages in the 2 links below

http://www.discovery.org/a/3935

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/05/the_textbooks_dont_lie_haeckel_1003664.html

This includes the pre-corrected books. And they only show the textbooks that support their claims, rather than surveying textbooks.

Note that they don't include the book I posted in this thread, the one that uses not Haeckel's drawings, but Richardson's. And they don't include the corrected Miller and Levine book.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

I think there was even a tract being handed out, maybe a Chick tract or something, that talked about Haeckel faking the drawings. It was common knowledge.

Well, Chick is the arbiter of ultimate truth. The reason I've not accepted Jesus in to my life is because I've never heard of him. The same is true for all other atheists.

Answer the question.

...said randman.

 

[randman]

Let's see how an Ivy League professor, an evolutionist used at trial even, used Haeckel in his textbooks in the 90s to test your idea it was merely for historical purposes.

First, read what Miller & Levine's 1994 version of Biology: The Living Science stated:

Darwin and his contemporaries knew that early embryos of many animals look nearly identical and that the earliest stages of development in "lower" animals seem to be repeated in the development of "higher" animals such as ourselves (Fig. 8.15). Darwin realized that the similar developmental paths followed by animal embryos make sense if all of us evolved long ago from common ancestors through a series of lengthy evolutionary changes.

These striking embryological similarities led some of Darwin's contemporaries (though apparently not Darwin himself) to believe that the embryological development of an individual repeats its species' evolutionary history.

Why, then, should the embryos of related organisms retain similar features when adults of their species look quite different? The cells and tissues of the earliest embryological stages of any organism are like the bottom levels in a house of cards. The final form of the organism is built upon them, and even a small change in their character can result in disaster later. It would hardly be adaptive for a bird to grow a longer beak, for example, if it lost its tongue in the process.

The earliest stages of the embryos life, therefore, are essentially "locked in," whereas cells and tissues that are produced later can change more freely without harming the organism. As species with common ancestors evolve over time, divergent sets of successful evolutionary changes accumulate as development proceeds, but early embryos stick more closely to their original appearance.

(Joseph S. LeVine & Kenneth R. Miller, Biology: Discovering Life, pg. 162 (2nd Ed., D.C. Heath, 1994), emphasis added)

The caption on Haeckel's drawings further implies recapitulation theory, reading:

"During the earliest stages of development, all these embryos have gill pouches and a tail--remnants of structures needed by our aquatic ancestors." (pg. 162)

Clearly Miller was promoting Haeckel's famous idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, because he argues that "the embryological development of an individual repeats its species' evolutionary history," and that animals evolve by simply tacking on new stages of development to old ones, which are locked in.

Before Darwinists object by claiming that Miller is merely discussing the history of evolutionary thought, I point out two important facts:

(1) The quoted text comes from a section titled "DATA SUPPORTING THE FACT OF EVOLUTIONARY CHANGE" (emphasis in original) and a sub-section titled "Similarities in Anatomy and Development." (pg. 162)

(2) There is no indication whatsoever, anywhere in the text that any of these ideas are wrong or that they are no longer believed. The reader is left with the clear impression that this is how vertebrate development works.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/03/ken_millers_evolving_position003367.html

 

[Wowbagger]

I think some of us are not seeing the bigger picture, here. Forget Haeckel, specifically. In fact, forget any drawings or sketches of these things.

LOOK at the actual photos of actual embryos!

Why do they all start out so remarkably similar?

For example, why do they all have such similar tail structures? Human and fish included?

Instead of harping on one guy's drawings it is far more instructive to look at the evidence (the modern evidence), and see what we can learn about life, from that!

 

[A'isha]

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/03/ken_millers_evolving_position003367.html

Again, you don't understand what is being talked about there. It's not Haeckel's ideas.

Read this book, randman. Gould (a longtime, vicious critic of all things Haeckel) will tell you everything you need to know to avoid confusion and stop being gulled by the bait-and-switch misleading use of terms at creationist websites like the above.

 

[randman]

Here's a scan of the original page Miller used in his 1994 textbook. It's clearly not just for historical purposes.

Why, then, should the embryos of related organisms retain similar features when adults of their species look quite different? The cells and tissues of the earliest embryological stages of any organism are like the bottom levels in a house of cards. The final form of the organism is built upon them, and even a small change in their character can result in disaster later. It would hardly be adaptive for a bird to grow a longer beak, for example, if it lost its tongue in the process.

The earliest stages of the embryos life, therefore, are essentially "locked in," whereas cells and tissues that are produced later can change more freely without harming the organism. As species with common ancestors evolve over time, divergent sets of successful evolutionary changes accumulate as development proceeds, but early embryos stick more closely to their original appearance.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/Miller_DiscoveringLife.jpg

That is exactly what Haeckel claimed in reality. Btw, he's also wrong to say Darwin did not accept Haeckel as Darwin clearly does in his later editions of the Origin of the Species. Darwin actually promoted adult form recapitulation.

 

[randman]

Finally, keep in mind that during the Dover trial, Miller testified that at its peak usage, students in "more than 200 colleges and universities around the country" read this text. (Day 1 am testimony, pg. 41)
Rewriting History
As noted, Miller later rewrote and corrected his textbook. But now he has also tried to rewrite history by implying that biologists have not promoted these ideas for decades. As his website states:

Haeckel noticed that vertebrate embryos pass through a series of similar stages in early development, and argued that there was a good reason for this. As an organism evolves, he reasoned, it does so by tacking on new stages to its process of embryonic development. Therefore, as an organism passes through embryonic development it actually re-traces every stage of its evolutionary ancestry. This idea became known as "Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny," which literally means "Development is a replay of Ancestry." ... As you read this, you may wonder why evolution should be limited to changes tacked on at the end of the process of development. So did evolutionary biologists, and Haeckel's idea was quickly discarded."
(Ken Miller, Haeckel and his Embryos, emphasis added)

But if Haeckel's ideas were "quickly discarded" by "evolutionary biologists," then how is it that Miller was promoting them? Indeed, by saying that "the embryological development of an individual repeats its species' evolutionary history" because "[t]he cells and tissues of the earliest embryological stages of any organism are like the bottom levels in a house of cards. The final form of the organism is built upon them, and even a small change in their character can result in disaster later," Miller directly promoted the idea that evolution proceeds "by tacking on new stages to its process of embryonic development"--the precise model of development that he claims was "quickly discarded" by biologists.
Ken Miller should be commended for rewriting his textbooks. But he should be exposed for trying to rewrite history by implying that Haeckel's false ideas have not been promoted by biologists in the present day. Perhaps some biologists did abandon Haeckel long ago, but Miller's own textbooks provide a counterexample which refutes his blatantly false history.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/03/ken_millers_evolving_position003367.html