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To: Agamemnon
Don't forget to mention the the original "comparative embryology" frauds published by Ernst Haekel, which were expose as such back in the late 19th century.

You are invited to explain how you think you have determined that Haeckel's hand-drawn drawings were actual "frauds" as opposed to careless errors due to various sorts of 19th-century shortcomings (technological, funding, standards, etc.)

Around the same time as Haeckel, respected astronomers Schiaparelli (in Italy) and Percival Lowell (in the US) both made sketches of Mars based on their telescope observations and in good faith drew maps of the "canals" that they had seen. Unfortunately, they were tricks of the eye resulting from trying to glean too much detail from fuzzy images of a distant planet, and never actually existed on Mars itself. The maps of Mars's "canals" were wrong, but they weren't frauds or hoaxes.

Schiaparelli's map:

Despite this embarrassing (and famous) error, Lowell achieved real accomplishments by building the historic Lowell observatory, and accurately predicting the existence of the planet Pluto via mathematical analysis of variations in Uranus's orbit, twenty years before Pluto's eventual discovery.

What evidence do you have for your claim that Haeckel's oversimplifications of embyonic anatomy were actual frauds instead of honest mistakes like Schiaparelli's and Lowell's?

In any case, while embryonic development has more subtleties than Haeckel appreciated in the 19th century, contrary to many creationist claims, his points were not all wrong either. While embyronic development across vertebrate families varies more than Haeckel claimed, his insights about the their striking similarities and parallel structures are still valid today.

112 posted on 12/04/2003 1:07:48 AM PST by Ichneumon
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To: Ichneumon; Leonine; cyborg
Stay on topic. Stay on Earth. We weren't talking about Mars here. This is a comparative biology discussion. While your pictures are nice and certainly out of this world, they are also outside of this discussion and hence, are irrelevant.

I know it must be uncomfortable for evolutionists to face their frauds. Face them you must, however. Intellectual honesty demands it.

As anyone who has acheived any rudimentary accomplishment in the field of biological study knows -- whether they be evolutionists or creationists -- Haekel purposefully and fraudulently used the same woodcut to represent cross-species embryos in his work, Natural History of Creation (Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte)(1868). This was no innocent mistake on his part. Haekel's fraud was outted by Rutimeyer, a contemporary professor of zoology at University of Basel.

Haekel was called on his fraud then and there, his factual misreprsentation was exposed, and Haekel shortly afterword as much as admitted to the purposefulness of his mis-representation. Most evolutionists today do not defend Haekel's obvious fraud, and recognize it for what it was. You needn't feel compelled to run Martian interference on your own for him, and you can still be a practicing evolutionist, if you like. Haekel has simply done you a scientific dis-service.

The Haekel fraud exposure, if it is nothing else, is really quite instructive. Sadly, wedded as they are more to a premise than they are to examining scientific evidence -- particularly readily observable evidence that debunks their premise, or the abyssmal lack of evidence to support their premise (the facts be damned; premise uber alles!), the honest debate of scientific observations still continues to be for many evolutionists, a very difficult thing.

225 posted on 12/04/2003 10:35:09 AM PST by Agamemnon
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