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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.
Sorry, Baggins. He really wasn't. Read the False Proofs thread.
I think if you read the second Myers link he nails it. People still used the Romanes print because it was free and redoing the work would have been a hugely expensive effort for anything except a text specifically on this issue and, ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny having been rejected, using the Haeckel/Romanes plates didn't really matter any more as they were being used to illustrate something different that they did show.
I agree that it isn't ideal, but neither is it widespread or fraudulent in what it is attempting to show because Haeckels's original prints, and more importantly the Romanes alterations, showed what was being written about truthfully - gill arches etc.
I agree that it isn't ideal, but neither is it a major problem, and it appears to be a problem that is slowly being removed from texts as better embryonic photographs become available a price book publishers are willing to pay.
__________________ A scientist, it's official
" The result, therefore, of this physical enquiry is that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end" James Hutton, from his 1788 paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on the principles of geology
But its not a revelation. Creationists have been saying all along that there are lies in the textbooks. How many more?
Where's the lie, the pictures have been altered to remove embellishments and are being used to illustrate either the wrongness of Haeckel's original thesis, or something different?
Sorry you will have to do better than that, you obviously don't have a clue what you are talking about and you hope by interjecting the word lie that you can poison the intellectual well.
Sorry, but some of us here know what we are talking about.
__________________ A scientist, it's official
" The result, therefore, of this physical enquiry is that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end" James Hutton, from his 1788 paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on the principles of geology
Sorry, Baggins. He really wasn't. Read the False Proofs thread.
Really? I
Wikipedia and other sites say he was tried by an academic court in Jena.
I'd love to hear the real story, have you a link to something more substantial than them, you are obviously a bit more clued up than me on this as is Aggie, I am still working on half remembered scientific scuttlebutt from years ago and wikipedia.
Sorry I have re-read your post I will go to the false proofs threads
__________________ A scientist, it's official
" The result, therefore, of this physical enquiry is that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end" James Hutton, from his 1788 paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on the principles of geology
I
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:
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.
Perhaps it comes down to what books Miller and Myers' informant ( It wasn't Myers himself ) looked at.
I'd have to see both, there is a link on Myers' site to the info.
It could, if you have a lot of texts with this image in, be an American problem, the only text I can find this image in of mine is Mayr's book.
It is obviously still in circulation because the original errors are no longer important to the argument being made and it is CHEAP!!!
__________________ A scientist, it's official
" The result, therefore, of this physical enquiry is that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end" James Hutton, from his 1788 paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on the principles of geology
I think if you read the second Myers link he nails it. People still used the Romanes print because it was free and redoing the work would have been a hugely expensive effort for anything except a text specifically on this issue and, ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny having been rejected, using the Haeckel/Romanes plates didn't really matter any more as they were being used to illustrate something different that they did show.
I agree that it isn't ideal, but neither is it widespread or fraudulent in what it is attempting to show because Haeckels's original prints, and more importantly the Romanes alterations, showed what was being written about truthfully - gill arches etc.
I agree that it isn't ideal, but neither is it a major problem, and it appears to be a problem that is slowly being removed from texts as better embryonic photographs become available a price book publishers are willing to pay.
Look, the problem here is pretty simple. Futuyma, Mayr, and Prothero all claimed that these drawings (accurately) show embryos from various animals at comparable stages of development. They don’t. What the drawings actually show is a highly idealized depiction of what Ernst Haeckel thought this process should look like, in which several of the embryos at the first stage of development were made from the exact same woodcut, and which was subsequently copied by George Romanes while correcting none of Haeckel’s original inaccuracies. By claiming that these drawings show something that they don’t, Futuyma, Mayr, and Prothero have been misleading readers.
Using this image would be acceptable if its caption stated something like, “This is an idealized depiction of the similarities between embryos, in which the traits they have in common are emphasized.” But the image captions don’t say anything of the sort. You can see what their captions are from the scans I posted in post #17.
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Well, duh. Haeckel's scientific contemporaries took him to task for it. It's not even news that creationists can claim to have discovered. Once again, the anti-biologists are late to the party...
Likely the main reason the error was perpetuated is because Haeckel's drawings were public domain, and thus cheaper to use 'as is' than to fix by commissioning new drawings. Its being fixed in no small part because of the persistent whinging of anti-biologists. Man, but you folk can carp on about the same old stuff ad nauseam, can't you?
Creationists have been saying all along
Let me fix that for you; "The only thing creationists do, is say..."
that there are lies in the textbooks. How many more?
However many more there are, it won't be a creationist that finds them... that'd be too much like work for your average armchair anti-biologist. If they're going to lift a finger, it'll be to point their lawyers in the direction of their next target attempt at legislating creationism into legitimacy. Just because Haeckel did something wrong, doesn't make creationism right.
Last edited by atomweaver; 8th September 2009 at 05:19 PM.
But its not a revelation. Creationists have been saying all along that there are lies in the textbooks. How many more?
Creationists have been saying all along that evolution is a lie. Where is the evidence for that??
Originally Posted by Aggie
Look, the problem here is pretty simple. Futuyma, Mayr, and Prothero all claimed that these drawings (accurately) show embryos from various animals at comparable stages of development. They don’t. What the drawings actually show is a highly idealized depiction of what Ernst Haeckel thought this process should look like, in which several of the embryos at the first stage of development were made from the exact same woodcut, and which was subsequently copied by George Romanes while correcting none of Haeckel’s original inaccuracies. By claiming that these drawings show something that they don’t, Futuyma, Mayr, and Prothero have been misleading readers.
Using this image would be acceptable if its caption stated something like, “This is an idealized depiction of the similarities between embryos, in which the traits they have in common are emphasized.” But the image captions don’t say anything of the sort. You can see what their captions are from the scans I posted in post #17.
I agree. This figure should not ever be put into another text book, unless it is in the context of discussing the history of evolutionary thinking.
__________________ “The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense." -Bishop John Shelby Spong
"It is not the obligation of the State to reconcile various faiths with reality. Do it yourself." -Atomweaver
"We have designed our civilization based on science and technology and at the same time arranged things so that almost no one understands anything at all about science and technology. This is a clear prescription for disaster."
- Carl Sagan (Demon Haunted World)
Look, the problem here is pretty simple. Futuyma, Mayr, and Prothero all claimed that these drawings (accurately) show embryos from various animals at comparable stages of development. They don’t.
I'm not so sure about that.
Could you point exactly where the errors in these embryo pictures are?
Haeckel exaggerated a small number of features in a small number of pictures to support an argument that no one now accepts.
If you can't tell me what these errors are and how they invalidate the information they are supposed to be illustrating today I'd say there is no problem beyond the minor one of giving a little frisson of excitement to a few creationists.
The pictures are accurate enough to show what the authors are trying illustrate today.
It would be better if they used different pictures but ding original work on that scale to illustrate a text book is prohibitively expensive, until better pictures and photos come along at an acceptable price they are probably the best many people have got commercial access to.
What the drawings actually show is a highly idealized depiction of what Ernst Haeckel thought this process should look like, in which several of the embryos at the first stage of development were made from the exact same woodcut, and which was subsequently copied by George Romanes while correcting none of Haeckel’s original inaccuracies. By claiming that these drawings show something that they don’t, Futuyma, Mayr, and Prothero have been misleading readers.
I reject that, unless you can tell me exactly how major Haeckel's enhancements were, where they were and why they invalidate the use of the pictures for a different reason I will suggest that people like Ernst Mayr actually knew what they were doing in using them.
Using this image would be acceptable if its caption stated something like, “This is an idealized depiction of the similarities between embryos, in which the traits they have in common are emphasized.” But the image captions don’t say anything of the sort. You can see what their captions are from the scans I posted in post #17.
Any hand drawn picture is going to be an idealized representation of the artists impressions of what he is seeing which is why photos would be better. But as far as I can see from reading my Mayr the pictures are adequate for illustrating the text.
Mayr's point in using the picture is that at earlier stages of embryonic development the embryos are more similar and all start with the same number of gill arches. That is true and the picture illustrates its truth adequately . Those are the only points he is making .
Can you give me a good reason why he shouldn't use that print to make those points? Haeckel didn't embellish those points they are real.
I think you are making far too much of this, the picture is adequate for making the general point about embryonic similarity, any small embellishments that Haeckel made don't detract from that point and the picture is obviously cheap and in the public domain.
I imagine the recent creationist whoohaa over this will mean that this is expunged from text books now, but it won't affect the truthfulness of the point being made.
__________________ A scientist, it's official
" The result, therefore, of this physical enquiry is that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end" James Hutton, from his 1788 paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on the principles of geology
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