Modern books that still use Haeckel’s embryo drawings

Aggie · #21 7th September 2009, 06:25 PM

Well, these things are definitely worth knowing. I was originally intending to recommend Prothero’s book in my own, but now that you’ve pointed out these mistakes, I’m having second thoughts about it.

What’s your opinion on Jerry Coyne’s book Why Evolution is True? It’s not as detailed as Prothero’s book, but if it contains fewer inaccuracies, that’s probably more important.

Aggie · #22 7th September 2009, 07:52 PM

By the way, does anyone have a copy of the 1972 version of Jack Chick’s tract “Big Daddy”? I’m pretty sure it points out the problem with Haeckel’s embryo drawings, and the fact that textbooks are being misleading by continuing to include them.

The only version of the tract I can find online is the newest one from 2002. But I know the point about Haeckel’s drawings is in the 1992 version also, because I looked at that version of it when I was in high school. If the 1972 version talks about this also, Jack Chick was pointing out this problem more than 25 years before Douglas Futuyma or Ernst Mayr became aware of it, if Mayr was ever aware of it before he died.

Baggins · #23 7th September 2009, 08:03 PM

Are those the original fraudulent drawings or later corrected ones though? I thought Haeckel was convicted of fraud at the time and amended drawings were put out - with his exaggerations removed and with the background changed - of which these would all be copies. That is what I have been lead to believe but I have no written proof of that beyond the original fraudulent drawings were on a black background and these obviously aren't.

It would seem bizarre that drawings that were known to be fraudulent well over 100 years ago would be kept in circulation rather than the later amended drawings.

But I agree that there is no need to use any drawings these days as the the same, although weaker, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny argument could be made with photographs of embryos and then everyone could forget about Haeckel's "artistic flair " because his argument does not stand or fall on his original drawings anyway.

Ontology does recapitulate in a very weak way and not in the way that Haeckel originally suggested, but things like gill slits in human embryos do exist

Thistlethorn · #24 7th September 2009, 08:43 PM

Originally Posted by Baggins

Are those the original fraudulent drawings or later corrected ones though? I thought Haeckel was convicted of fraud at the time

We just concluded a rather lengthy discussion about this and I think the consensus was that no evidence could be provided that supported Haeckel ever being put on trial for fraud. It's a creationist myth.

Originally Posted by Baggins

and amended drawings were put out - with his exaggerations removed and with the background changed - of which these would all be copies. That is what I have been lead to believe but I have no written proof of that beyond the original fraudulent drawings were on a black background and these obviously aren't.

It would seem bizarre that drawings that were known to be fraudulent well over 100 years ago would be kept in circulation rather than the later amended drawings.

But I agree that there is no need to use any drawings these days as the the same, although weaker, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny argument could be made with photographs of embryos and then everyone could forget about Haeckel's "artistic flair " because his argument does not stand or fall on his original drawings anyway.

Ontology does recapitulate in a very weak way and not in the way that Haeckel originally suggested, but things like gill slits in human embryos do exist

The rest I agree with in full. It's very strange indeed that Haeckel's original drawings, complete with errors, should remain in circulation. I'm not familiar with him having published corrected versions, but I wouldn't dismiss the possibility.

Aggie · #25 7th September 2009, 08:47 PM

Originally Posted by Baggins

Are those the original fraudulent drawings or later corrected ones though? I thought Haeckel was convicted of fraud at the time and amended drawings were put out - with his exaggerations removed and with the background changed - of which these would all be copies. That is what I have been lead to believe but I have no written proof of that beyond the original fraudulent drawings were on a black background and these obviously aren't.

It would seem bizarre that drawings that were known to be fraudulent well over 100 years ago would be kept in circulation rather than the later amended drawings.

Here are the original drawings, with a black background and German captions.

And here’s the newer version again, made by George Romanes. Romanes made these drawings in 1892, after the inaccuracy of Haeckel’s original version had been known for around 20 years.

This is the one that’s published in modern biology books. As you can see, the only thing Romanes changed about it was the color of the background and the language of the captions.

Split Rock · #26 7th September 2009, 09:16 PM

Originally Posted by Naraoia

The one that literally made me scream was that he confused prokaryotic and eukaryotic flagella (p156, I believe). Let's see a few others (I have like thirty pages of notes, and I'm nowhere near finished with the booka ):

- An entire chapter about the origin of life that doesn't tackle the origin of nucleotides and doesn't even mention the RNA world hypothesis.

- The overconfidence with which he says that the phylogeny of major animal groups is no longer disputed (p136). Admittedly I've only just touched the surface of animal phylogenetics in my reading, but my impression is that the state of the field... um, doesn't warrant such confidence. Not at the phylum level, anyway. And the moment you say things like that to creationists, you can bet someone's going to find out that the solid consensus you're implying doesn't exist.

- Things like this:(Well... just... *cringe*.)

- Another bit about DNA that looks thoroughly confused (p98):(Who can spot the most mistakes?)

IOW, he seems to muddle molecular biology a lot.

- There's also a thing about the annelid --> mollusc "transition" (pp192-193). Basically, he's saying that annelid-like ancestors to "aplacophores" to monoplacophorans to other molluscs is a neat transitional series. Now, that idea bleeds... For example, "aplacophores" are not that segmented (IIRC, the only segmented thing about them is the nervous system, which shows some seriation in most bilaterians.), and they are certainly not more segmented than Neopilina. I guess we could say that if I had to pick a few convincing transitions for a book, this one wouldn't be among them.

Then there are countless minor issues like calling chitin a protein (p193), most of what he writes about Archaea (calling it Archaebacteria and a kingdom of bacteria, saying that they are the most primitive living things or that they mostly live in extreme environments), calling "worms" a phylum (p123), Pitx1 a Hox gene (p116), pterosaurs pterodactyls (*cringe*)...

Now I look like I'm bashing the book. To be fair, I don't actually think it's a bad book, but there are clearly areas Prothero is not comfortable with, and there are things that, IMO, are... cosmetically modified to make a point stronger.

(I have a distinct feeling that I'm too anal for my own good )

He's a paleontologist, so I am not surprised he muddled up some of the writing on molecular biology and genetics. Hell, I have trouble finding all of my the mistakes in a 5 page research paper... there always seems to be one or two that no one notices before its published. I cannot imagine trying to find all the mistakes in a 381 page book! So yeah... maybe you are being a bit anal

USincognito · #27 8th September 2009, 05:05 AM

I'm really disappointed at this revelation Aggie. Dealing with Creationist nonsense is hard enough without textbook editors giving them fodder for it.

Ironically I've been asking Creationists to provide scans concerning this claim for years now and - hold your breath everyone - it was an evolution advocate who finally ponies up the evidence.

Baggins · #28 8th September 2009, 05:37 AM

It would be interesting to post this evidence on a a site like Pharyngula where we could get some more input from interested parties, anyone a member there?

It appears to me that there are obvious differences between the original - Haeckel - print and the later Romanes one. Remember most of Haeckel's work was accepted he just invented what he thought should be there in a few embryos. An example of this is the circular area near the head of F1 which nearly disappears later, it is just a case of whether that is down to alterations to remove fraud or is just poor reproduction. In detail the two prints are substantially different whilst remaining the same on the large scale. That is what you would expect if some minor embellishments had been removed. I would expect bigger changes in the interpretation that went with the print rather than the print themselves and this is what we see.

The whole print shouldn't look that different, there should be a few minor alterations.

I would like to make two other points Haeckel was tried for fraud in an academic rather than criminal court at Jena University and in the case of Mayr he uses the embryo drawings as an illustration to reject Haeckel's thesis.

Baggins · #29 8th September 2009, 06:25 AM

There have been discussions on this point in Pharyngula:

Textbooks and Haeckel again : Pharyngula

But none addressing this exact point, I suppose it is because the reproduction on plates based on Haeckel's work is getting rarer.

Edited :

This deals with the specificquestion

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2..._the_bride.php

I posted a fairly exhaustive survey by Patrick Frank of the use of that diagram since 1923, which showed that it was rare, and that the concept of recapitulation was uniformly criticized

Aggie · #30 8th September 2009, 07:33 AM

Originally Posted by Baggins

It appears to me that there are obvious differences between the original - Haeckel - print and the later Romanes one. Remember most of Haeckel's work was accepted he just invented what he thought should be there in a few embryos. An example of this is the circular area near the head of F1 which nearly disappears later, it is just a case of whether that is down to alterations to remove fraud or is just poor reproduction.

I think it’s mostly just a poor reproduction. The scan of the Romanes’ drawing at Wikipedia isn’t all that great to begin with, but it’s the one I posted because it was the easiest to find. This one is a bit better:

It’s still not exactly the same as Haeckel’s original, but you need to realize is that none of Romanes’ alterations to the original image do much to get rid of the inaccuracies. This is an series of photographs from the Kenneth Miller article that Naraoia linked to, which show what embryos of these animals at comparable stages in development actually look like:

Here’s another image of the same thing, from the Pharyngula post that you linked to:

If the purpose of Romanes’ alterations to Haeckel’s image was to remove its inaccuracies, he would have changed a lot more than he did.

Originally Posted by Baggins

in the case of Mayr he uses the embryo drawings as an illustration to reject Haeckel's thesis.

He does? I included the image’s caption from Mayr’s book in my scan of it. As you can see from the image of it in post #17, Mayr presents this image as an accurate comparison between the stages in embryonic development of these animals.

I posted a fairly exhaustive survey by Patrick Frank of the use of that diagram since 1923, which showed that it was rare, and that the concept of recapitulation was uniformly criticized

I’m not sure where P. Z. Myers is getting his information, but it doesn’t appear to be right. Look at what Kenneth Miller says on this topic:

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!

My own observations suggest that Kenneth Miller’s interpretation of this is more accurate than P. Z. Myers’. Three of the five general books about evolution that I own use these images, present them as an accurate comparison of the animals’ embryos, and two of the three written by a pair of modern biology’s most highly-regarded evolutionary biologists. If you don’t believe me about this, look at the images I posted in post #17, where I scanned the images and their captions.