I've checked a few of these C/Idiot and Cretard pages and I've noticed they never show the whole page so one can check to see if the drawings were being used in a historical context or not. Given how much Cretard liars quote mine, I wouldn't be surprised if their slimy slander applies to these textbooks. Futuyma's is known to discuss them in a historical context.
Other's appear to have used modified versions, probably because unlike contemporary photographs, the drawings are public domain and not entirely inaccurate during the later stages of fetal development - especially in the anmiotes.
This is the heart of their (and randman's) misrepresentation of the meaning of "Haeckel's drawings" in reference to the embryological comparison diagrams in textbooks.
For instance, take another look at the giant list of textbooks randman posted back in
post 932, and you'll see how the use of Haeckel's actual drawings in textbooks isn't even close to what he's claiming it is. It's even more obvious when you look at
the original chart in its proper formatting, so randman really has no excuse for missing it.
Each textbook is given a notation of "N" if it doesn't have a comparison diagram, a "NH" if it uses a diagram (but one not derived in any way from Haeckel's work), or a "Y" if it uses Haeckel's original drawing, a redrawn version of Haeckel's original, or a redrawn version of one of those redrawings.
In the overall list of 91 textbooks, there are only 27 textbooks with a "Y", showing that they use an illustration that's either Haeckel's original drawing or derived from his drawing in some way (with two more noted as having at least one specific embryo taken from Haeckel, but with the rest of the embryos not deriving from his work). In other words, only
32% of textbooks published from 1907 to 1969 have comparative diagrams that reproduce or are derived from Haeckel's work.
Randman makes particular mention of the
original article's statement that the majority of textbooks in the 40's and 50's had comparative diagrams that reproduce or are derived from Haeckel's work. And that's true: of the 28 textbooks published from 1940 to 1960, 17 of them (61%) are noted as having comparative diagrams that reproduce or are derived from Haeckel's work.
An astute person would wonder why that particular date is the cutoff for the calculation of that majority percentage. Randman certainly didn't, because he'd have noted that of the 11 textbooks published from 1960 to 1969, only
three have comparative diagrams that reproduce or are derived from Haeckel's work (or 27%). All of the others either have no comparative diagram, or use original illustrations that aren't Haeckel's or derived from Haeckel's work (with the vast majority using completely original diagrams that don't reference anything Haeckel produced).
And even those three texts that do use a derived diagram aren't actually different textbooks. They're all successive editions of the
same book, Moon's
Modern Biology. And there were actually four editions of that book published between 1960 and 1969; the last edition of the book that decade, published in 1969, finally drops those Haeckel-derived drawings as well.
From that point forward (as the later study I mentioned shows), original, non-Haeckel comparative diagrams dominated, with Haeckel himself largely ignored in the pages of these texts (and essentially ignored
completely by
actual scientists) until the resurgence of comparative embryology in the 1990's brought Haeckel's seminal work on the subject back into focus.
But by misleadly describing
any use of a comparative embryological diagram, however original, as being derived from Haeckel, Creationists grossly exaggerate the importance of and reliance on Haeckel in biology textbooks. And then, in a grotesque fallacy, they then try to use that falsehood to imply that Haeckel himself, in his drawings and theories, is the basis for actual scientific work as well.
(EDIT:And the article linked above actually attributes the spread of the Haeckel and Haeckel-derived illustrations to the same copyright issues you suggest)
As I noted earlier though. C/Idiots and Cretards have no interest in actually discussing the evidences of common ancestry from embryology and Evo-Devo. They'd rather flog that horse shaped dark spot on the ground.
Which is why they (and randman) prefer rant on and on about the textbook diagram thing, and persistently refuse to address the actual peer-reviewed papers on phylogenetics.
All they
have are red herrings.
