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Haeckel's Embryos

Faked photos of embryonic stages used to support evolution for over a hundred years.

In 1866, biologist Ernst Haeckel made a series of drawings of the embryonic stages of vertebrates.  He then used these drawings to support his idea that evolution happens by tacking on new stages to a specie's embryonic development.

Click image for larger view

Unfortunately, he faked some of the drawings to make them seem more alike than they really were.  In any field of endeavor there will be unscrupulous and fraudulent practitioners.  That's just a fact of life.  What makes this such a black mark for science is that these were found to be inaccurate during his lifetime, yet the drawings continued to be used in biology textbooks.

Anti-evolutionists use this fraud to show that biologists can't always be trusted.  If this fraud had only been around for a few years and then was uncovered and corrected, then someone could reject this criticism.  But since it persisted for over a hundred years, this is a fair criticism of biologists.  Biologists respond that evolution is neither based on, nor dependent on, these drawings, but that's not really the issue.  The issue is that these were inaccurate and misleading and their use should have been discontinued many years ago.

The irony is that Haeckel's ideas of evolution were quickly shown to be false and discarded, yet his faked images continued to be used.

Modern images show that embryonic stages show a number of similarities, but they are not as similar as drawn by Haeckel.

More Info

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2049

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1892haekel.html

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/embryos/Haeckel.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/haeckel.html

http://www.evowiki.org/index.php/Haeckel's_embryos