Thank you for this article. My daughter’s Year 11 (New South Wales High School) biology text book, written in 2006, still has Haeckels drawings in it. Fraudulent for over 100 years, and still taught as fact.

I have taught Jr. High Science for over 35 years. Every textbook from every major publisher I have ever seen has had Haeckel’s embryos pictured and the text usually claims this as a proof for evolution. The other proofs given are also ones that have been disproved long ago; such as Miller’s experiment, and the beaks of finches

Not only are these convenient mistruths in textbooks but students are examined on them.

2009 Year 10 Term 4 Science exam at one independent Sydney girls’ high school showed Haeckel’s drawings and asked students to explain how they supported the theory of evolution. (3 marks) I am interested in the Science HOD’s response to my query about this matter.

My old boss, a very intelligent and highly educated man, once very smugly told me that ‘Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’, thinking he had bamboozled me with big words and won an argument. I responded that Ernst Haeckel’s drawings which had previously been accepted as fact, had many years ago been proven to be entirely fraudulent, and that despite this fact, his drawings are still being published in high school textbooks today and taught as representing the truth! Is it possible there is a less than pure motive for teaching untruths to support evolution? This article shows how the fraud was even greater than first understood–an interesting read!

The photographs show very similar development. I don't think it makes your point

These photos do establish the fraud presented as science. Another fraud is the Piltdown man. There is a book you might be interested in: What Darwin Didn’t Know by Geoffrey Simmons M.D., ISBN 0-7369-1313-0 (pbk), Harvest House Publishers in Eugene Oregon 97402 www.harvesthousepublishers.com

I think you failed to recognize the fact that Haeckel’s Recapitulation Theory had been soundly disproved and rejected by biologists only a few years since the theory (and pictures) was published. One regrettable case academic dishonesty should not be used as propaganda to in an effort to bring down the entire Theory of Evolution.

To quote from my Biology professor in 1986 as he showed the drawings on an overhead projector, "See. here's the best proof of Evolution right here." I left class that day doubting my faith, but compromised, and concluded, based on that fraudulent information, that God used evolution. I can't tell you how angry I became years later when I learned this "proof of Evolution" was a fake, and that I had compromised my faith because of it.

To Edward K. Australia:

The argument that one fact shouldn't be used to bring down the whole theory of evolution is a typical response of evolutionist-thinking people. It is also completely a straw man. Creationists, and especially this web site - which has many thousands of pages - expound on facts ranging from geology through paleontology to genetics which, when put together make the whole concept of evolution ridiculous!

To Edward K. Australia:

You said Haeckel’s Recapitulation Theory had been soundly disproved and rejected by biologists just a few years after it was published... And yet the "science" textbooks written by evolutionist STILL use these pictures to "prove" evolution. Doesn't it bother you that they are willing to continuing using pictures known to be a fraud?

I think more than a century of fraud is enough time for the word "heckle" to evolve.