Page 135 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences

The NAS's Misconceptions About Embryology

time, but as the creationists like to point out to us, the idea has long
since been rejected. 5
Ernst Mayr also admitted the truth of this in the words, "The

theory is now known to be invalid ..." 6
The theory of recapitulation was not rejected by scientists because
it began to conflict with new discoveries; rather, it was known right
from the start that the theory conflicted with the evidence. The historian
of science Nicholas Rasmussen has this to say on this subject:

All the important evidence called upon in the rejection of the bio-
genetic law was there from the first days of the law's acceptance. 7

H Ha e c k e l l ' ' s F a k e d D r r a w i i n g s
a
aeckel's Faked Drawings
c
H Haeckel's Faked Drawings
e
k
w
a
D
s
g
n
d
F
s
e
e
k
a
The most important aspect of the matter is that the "biogenetic
law" was actually based on a scientific fraud. In order to prove his
theory, Haeckel drew distorted pictures of the embryos of different
living things. These embryos were depicted as being very similar,
whereas in truth they were very different.
There were various aspects to the fraudulent nature of Haeckel's
drawings:
1. Haeckel selected only those embryos that he regarded as fit-
ting his theory. Despite there being seven classes of vertebrate (jaw-
less fish, cartilaginous fish, bony fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and
mammals), he removed the first two classes and only included draw-
ings of the last five. Moreover, half of the embryos he selected be-
longed to mammals, and all belonged to the same subclass
(placentals); he did not include any examples from the other two sub-
classes of mammals (monotremes and marsupials). As a result,
Haeckel selected the specimens for his drawings in a biased manner
and did not behave scientifically.

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