Talk:Haeckel's embryos

From EvoWiki

In response to "Haeckel's work is no more than a historical footnote". -albeit a woefully inaccurate and embarrassing footnote. Quote Raven and Johnson, pg 450; "Some of the strongest anatomical evidence comes from comparisons of how organisms develop." The text book then goes on to explain how 'evolutionary history is seen to unfold' by showing illustrations derived from Haekel's work. This concerns me; if Haekel's work was proven fraudulent just months after publication by L. Rutimeyer (prof zooligy, University Basel) and later by renown embryologist Dr Micheal Richardson -to name but a few, how can these pictures continue to be reproduced in text books, to be studied by students who know no better. - non-truths intentionally being taught to people who know no better by people who do know better...smells like indoctrination. "Haeckel had in fact substituted dog embryos for human embryos in his work and diagrams" quote page 'Haekel's Embryos'. Not only that, but Haekel altered his drawings to look similar to each other, and even pressed the same diagram and labelled it that of different species. The terms Haekel gave to anatomical features as the 'gill slits' and 'tail' are naive assumptions. It is important to note that the 'tail' is misleading, as a) the drawings were exaggerated by work and reproductions of Haekel, and b)it is the spine that is present in all vertabrates, not a flexible extension with muscles that your dog has tapering from his nether regions. (have you counted the vertibrae in the spine of human embryo?) ps, the spine has to end somewhere. Also The term gill slits is misleading, it is now known that those structures have nothing remotely to do with respiration; what you see is, in fact, the early development of the thymus gland, parathyroid glands and inner ear canals. The term 'gill slits' has now been replaced by the scientifically sounder term 'Pharangeal Clefts'.

So why do textbooks keep printing these misleading fraudulent pictures? I have a few ideas... -- 146.232.65.7

Heh, I've got a few ideas why too. I am a high school student (don't hold that against me), and I know they teach that stuff in text books. They were at the time trying to show how there is evidence for "change across time" in many different fields of science. Most of them were not very convincing arguments. (Pangea, (what the heck does that have to do with biological change) carbon dating (don't make me laugh), and the forehead size of various "human acestor skulls")

One trick they used is they never actually discussed it in the whole class itself. They split us up and had us each choose a field, then share our 'findings' with people with different jobs. They probably couldn't have discussed it because the 'people who choose to listen to religion' as my teacher calls us, would probably have made a comment in class about it. It was a shame too, I was looking foward to saying that in class. --67.186.72.168

I'm sorry that you have bad textbooks. Maybe you could read real books about evolution, such as those of Richard Dawkins, and understand it? If you don't want to do that, please don't have too strong opinions on the subject - after all, you don't understand it because you had bad textbooks. --tk (t) 10:19, 27 Oct 2005 (BST)