Thursday, February 08, 2007
Flock of Dodos and Haeckel's Embryos
Randy Olson made a movie called Flock of Dodos where he pokes fun at the IDiots. Unfortunately, Olson made a mistake when he said that the old faked images of Haeckel's embryos were not in modern textbooks.
The Discovery Institute pounced on this error and made a clever video that discredits Olson. The DI video may have some errors of its own; for example, I'm not sure if the embryo picture in the Raven & Johnson biology textbook is actually based on a Haeckel drwaing as they say. Also, the picture of the Haeckel woodcut in the Alberts texbook isn't as significant as they imply.
In spite of the possible mistakes in the video (below) the DI has been quite clever. The IDiots have cast doubt on all the claims in Flock of Dodos because of one little slip-up.
I have neither of the textbooks they referred to in the vid. Do you know if the Haeckel drawings and references are citing Haeckel in a historical fashion, or are they using the drawings to illustrate different embryonic stages?
ReplyDeleteI have not seen the movie, but according to PZ Myers (several recent posts on Pharyngula), Olson was indeed saying (correctly) that the diagram is not used in textbooks except as a historical example of a now-exploded doctrine. The IDiots have consistently claimed that textbooks use Haeckel's diagrams as evidence for evolution, which is not only a lie but a childishly asinine one.
ReplyDeleteIt is not hard to verify the use of Haeckel's embryos in modern textbooks. With Google's help, I found the following site: http://www.discovery.org/a/3935, which lists numerous modern textbooks that use these illustrations or variations thereof as if they were valid evidence for evolution. I found the overall tone of "Flock of Dodos" to be far from objective and downright rude and disrespectful of anyone who doesn't believe that Darwinian evolution is gospel truth. There are competent scientists who are NOT "IDiots" who question the validity of Darwinian evolution. Are we so afraid of differing opinions that we must oppose any view that suggests evolution might not have all the answers? What's so wrong with letting students know about the criticisms of evolution and challenge them to think for themselves rather than spoon-feeding them stuff like Haeckel's embryos that have been known for a century to be fraudulent?
ReplyDeleteenholk, see my comment here for the real story about Haeckel's drawings.
ReplyDeleteYou have been deceived by the creationists.