Irenaeus, Siteadmin, Check users, oversight, Administrators
351,411
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 6:
Line 6: + + + + + +
no edit summary
[[Jonathan Wells]] in his book [[Icons of Evolution]] made the claim that many current biology textbooks use distorted pictures of vertebrate embryos to convince students that vertebrates share a common ancestor. [http://www.nmsr.org/jonwells.htm (Wells)] However, this statement has been heavily criticized by many scientists who have reviewed his book as being misleading in some cases and false in others. [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/haeckel.html] [http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/Coyne-IconsReview.htm]
[[Jonathan Wells]] in his book [[Icons of Evolution]] made the claim that many current biology textbooks use distorted pictures of vertebrate embryos to convince students that vertebrates share a common ancestor. [http://www.nmsr.org/jonwells.htm (Wells)] However, this statement has been heavily criticized by many scientists who have reviewed his book as being misleading in some cases and false in others. [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/haeckel.html] [http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/Coyne-IconsReview.htm]
[[category: biology]]
[[category: biology]]
However, Noted evolutionist [[Stephen Gould]] wrote the following regarding Ernst Haeckel's work in a March 2000 issue of ''Natural History'':
<blockquote style="background: #F9F9F9; border: 1px solid #AAAAAA; padding: .3em;">
"Haeckel’s forceful, eminently comprehensible, if not always accurate, books appeared in all major languages and surely exerted more influence than the works of any other scientist, including Darwin…in convincing people throughout the world about the validity of evolution... Haeckel had exaggerated the similarities [between embryos of different species] by idealizations and omissions. He also, in some cases — in a procedure that can only be called fraudulent — simply copied the same figure over and over again.…Haeckel’s drawings never fooled expert embryologists, who recognized his fudgings right from the start. Haeckel’s drawings, despite their noted inaccuracies, entered into the most impenetrable and permanent of all quasi-scientific literatures: standard student textbooks of biology... Once ensconced in textbooks, misinformation becomes cocooned and effectively permanent, because…textbooks copy from previous texts.... [W]e do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks!"<ref>http://www.creationism.org/caesar/haeckel.htm</ref>
</blockquote>