Biology exam fraud
Fraudulent embryo drawings (like Ernst Haeckel’s) wrongly claimed as evidence for evolution
Published: 6 November 2012 (GMT+10)
A government education institution recently provided a textbook example of how evolutionary dogma blinds the eyes of educators, crushes the ability of students to think critically and hinders the progress of true science.
The biology paper in the Higher School Certificate exam on 19 October 2012, a major public matriculation exam in New South Wales, Australia, contained a question featuring Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings.1
Ernst Haeckel’s peers, well over 100 years ago, knew his embryo drawings were fraudulent, and this has been widely publicised, even by notable evolutionists such as Stephen Jay Gould.2 Yet they are still widely used in education, as the NSW exam question reveals, although some professional evolutionists claim that they are not.
Note that the drawings on the exam paper are simply labelled “fish”, “amphibian”, “bird” and “human”. This seems to be deliberately vague. Apart from the human, there is no indication of which species the drawings were supposed to represent. In reality there are substantial differences within a class. Nor is there any indication of the stage of development. In this way the students are left with the impression that embryos are far more similar than they really are, and the authors seem to be more protected against criticism for inaccurate drawing.
It would appear that whoever wrote or reviewed this question was unable (or unwilling) to see the problematic philosophical assumptions behind the question, quite apart from the problem of perpetuating and ignoring their fraudulent nature:
- It assumes that the embryos in fact do provide evidence for evolution—blatant question-begging.
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It makes unspoken assumptions about the nature of evidence. Presumably the students are being examined on how well they have learnt the knowledge they have been taught. However they are apparently not expected to be able to think critically about matters, such as:
- how closely the data matches a prediction of the theory
- whether there are alternative explanations that provide a better explanation of the data
- whether any hypothetical but plausible data could falsify a theory
- whether a theory is experimentally testable, and when this criteria is appropriate
- human bias—for instance (hypothetically assuming that they are genuine, which they are not), if no-one had ever compared different embryos at the same stage of development before, would they have expected this level of similarity based on the evolutionary model, or was the data merely co-opted to bolster the theory after the (alleged) similarity was noticed?
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It seems to assume, without ever spelling it out, that an embryo goes through its evolutionary stages of development during its growth (Haeckel’s classic phrase: “Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny”—the so-called “law of biogenesis”4). It assumes too that there is some survival advantage in embryos of different species looking more similar to each other than their adult counterparts. This really does not make sense according to the evolutionary model—characteristics that enhance survival are supposed to be favoured, while those that don’t are supposed to be gradually eliminated. So by this thinking, a human embryo that could bypass the costly fish stage of development should be favoured by natural selection.
Bottom Row: Richardson’s photographs of how the embryos really look at the same stage. (From left: Salmo salar, Cryptobranchus allegheniensis, Emys orbicularis, Gallus gallus, Oryctolagus cuniculus, Homo sapiens.)
Students who have not been taught these types of skills may well be able to pass exam papers, but they will have a lot of difficulty later in life in making sound, trustworthy decisions about the information they are presented with.
As evolutionist Suzan Mazur has said:
Thus, the public is unaware that its dollars are being squandered on funding of mediocre, middlebrow science or that its children are being intellectually starved as a result of outdated texts and unenlightened teachers.3
Students are also losing interest in science, both as a school subject and as a career option.
It seems that while Haeckel’s drawings have long been discredited,5,6,7 much of the evolutionary establishment is still unwilling to let them go.8,9,10 Perhaps this is because they were so successful in convincing people of evolution in the first place (e.g. the late Dr Albert Mills, until ‘the scales fell off’), and there is nothing factual available that is as graphic and simple to grasp. There also seems to be an ingrained belief in his discredited law of biogenesis that somehow the study of the stages of an embryo can reveal secrets of our past evolutionary history.
One can only hope that the author(s) of this question are publicly taken to task (ideally by secular academics) on this. Future students need to be encouraged to question things, and that should include the assumptions behind evolutionary dogma. Hopefully too, future exam papers will be better written and test students on skills and understanding. And hopefully no students will be penalised for marking the ‘wrong’ option in this question, because every answer given in the question is wrong. Embryos do not provide evidence for evolution.
Related Articles
Further Reading
References
- Our thanks go to a teacher from New South Wales for bringing this to our attention. Return to text.
- Gould, S.J., Abscheulich! (Atrocious!), Natural History 109(2), March 2000. Return to text.
- Mazur, S., The Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the Evolution Industry, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA, p. ix, 2010. Return to text.
- Haeckel pretensiously named his so-called ‘law’ that “Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny” the “law of biogenesis” or “biogenetic law”. This is not to be confused with the more commonly understood meaning of “law of biogenesis”; that life only arises from pre-existing life, not from nonliving material. Return to text.
- He eventually grudgingly admitted as much – see Ernst Haeckel: Evangelist for evolution and apostle of deceit. Return to text.
- Richardson M, and Keuck G., Haeckel’s ABC of evolution
and development, Biol. Rev. 77:495–528, 2003.
(The authors write: Haeckel’s much criticized embryo drawings are important as phylogenetic hypotheses, teaching aids, and evidence for evolution. While some criticisms of the drawings are legitimate, other are more tendentious. p 495) Return to text. - Richardson M, Hanken J, Gooneratne M, Pieau C, Paynaud A, Selwood L, and Wright G., There is no highly conserved embryonic state in the vertebrates: implications for current theories of evolution and development. Anat Embryol 196:91–106, 1997. Return to text.
- See, for instance http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/haeckel.html: “The ‘law of recapitulation’ has been discredited since the beginning of the twentieth century. Experimental morphologists and biologists have shown that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between phylogeny and ontogeny. Although a strong form of recapitulation is not correct, phylogeny and ontogeny are intertwined, and many biologists are beginning to both explore and understand the basis for this connection.” Note the awkward internal contradictions. Return to text.
- http://home.uchicago.edu/~rjr6/articles/Haeckel--fraud%20not%20proven.pdf Return to text.
- Luskin, C., What do Modern Textbooks Really Say about Haeckel’s Embryos? Discovery Institute, March 27, 2007, http://www.discovery.org/a/3935 Return to text.
Reader’s comments
Note, by the way, that even if the embryos were that similar, it would not discredit creation any more than anatomical similarities in adults do. But it is frankly dishonest to keep using discredited, non-existent similarities to hammer home the intended evolutionary ‘take home message’ that the theory is true. This needs to be brought home to the educators concerned, frankly.
Instead, since I knew if I did I'd just marked wrong and marked down I fed back to them what they wanted to hear - "evolutionists claim... ". Can you get good marks in science wherever evolution is concerned without being an obedient little parrot?
So while admitting that Haeckel's theory has been discredited, they simply duck the most glaring issue that real photos of embryos don't actually show much similarity between different species in the first place (only fraudulent drawings show such similarity). By doing so, they leave one with the impression that they believe it is quite OK to use fraudulent drawings to try to prove a theory.
They also make the same philosophical faux pas regarding the nature of evidence—they just apply it to the similarities between Hox genes instead of embryological phenotypes.
Hox genes control basic body plan, so will naturally be expressed in the embryonic stage of life. They don’t provide support for evolutionary theory any more than any other observed homology does—in fact, evolutionists were quite surprised to discover such similar genes in such diverse species throughout the animal kingdom. See Hox (homeobox) Genes—Evolution’s Saviour? or Climbing Mt Improbable “evo devo” style for more information about these genes.
"This diagram shows four poorly drawn caricatures of different vertebrate embryos with their yolk removed at a similar stage of development.
How do the embryos provide evidence for evolution?"
Would that be better?
Apart from the fraud itself, the real problems highlighted in the article are problems such as
Simply apologizing for the poor quality of the drawings does nothing to answer these problems. Removing the yolk sacs does not help in any case—see the references to E. van Niekerk’s paper above (Countering revisionism—part 1: Ernst Haeckel, fraud is proven, J. Creation 25(3):89–95, 2011).
I was surprised, and disappointed, to note that the textbook included an illustration of Haeckel's drawings of embryos. Having read something on the subject several years ago I did my research and was able to present to my students the facts surrounding the fraudulent production of these images.
Impressively, my students responded by asking why they were being taught falsities instead of the truth. In addition, one of the highest level students informed me that she was finding this term's work difficult as it was forcing her to question that which she thought she knew. If I can encourage even one student to think more critically on these matters I will be greatly pleased.
Not that I don’t understand it, but the great fraud of evolution is that everything is claimed as evidence of evolution. Consider choice (A). That any biological creature has different shaped eyes is always claimed as evidence of evolution, as it is a biological adaptation, enhancing fitness. Dawkins would be well at home claiming eye shape as an evolutionary adaptation Consider (B) Now if I said “Different adults do not evolve from embryos” my lecturers would immediately label me a creationist !!! Consider (C) This is about convergent evolution. Similar looking structures are the mainstay of evolutionary theory since Darwin’s time, despite being patently false as nature is proliferated with similar structures that evolutionist don’t even claim have common ancestry (squid and human eye). Consider (D) Divergent evolution is a derivation of different characteristics between different species from a common ancestor. That the embryos show differences against a similar ancestral structure (allegedly) makes this answer also right. I suspect they are looking for (D). BUT, divergence derives from common characteristics (from the ancestral species), and different characteristics (from the derived species). It doesn’t *result in* common characteristics. (D) is a very confused answer.
But they are all correct, because any difference in organisms is claimed as evidence, and any sameness is also claimed as evidence. Evolution embraces all possibilities, which it why it is not science, as it cannot be falsified.
Good on you for surviving an honours degree in Evolutionary Biology.
If a body correctly accuses another body of doing something wrong, some people might then accuse the accusing body.
For example, imagine you caught a wrong-doer trying to break into your house but when the police came he said to the police, "he insults people, we all hate him".
In this instance, the evolutionary body is responsible for wrong-doing, not CMI.
[Email address removed as per feedback rules—Ed.]
"The Haeckel drawing adapted for the recent 2012 HSC Biology paper (see attached) has been exposed as a fraud in the scientific literature since 1997. Can the HSC examiners selectors please select Biology examiners who are up-to-date about this fact? Haeckel was not a scientist but a eugenic zealot. Putting these drawings into the HSC exams reflects badly on the examiner’s competence and 'recapitulates' a rather sordid period in the recent history of science, where the ideal of science was muddied by the racial supremacy biases of a few white Europeans. I am concerned because there are worse pictures produced by Haeckel, that could appear. Note the ugly Australien in the other attached fraudulent picture by Haeckel. Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, 1870."
Regards
Robert B
Pharmacist
I think it is quite telling that a certain theory has to be supported by know frauds and forgeries.
I just wanted to let you know that in Germany there is a new -or not so new- series of lectures called "Viva la evolución" at a German college/university and take a guess what has been used as their logo:
[Link removed as per feedback rules—Ed.]
(Especially telling that "Creationists" are specifically mentioned who should not be allowed to drag the people back to the middle ages)
For the benefit of readers, I have removed the link but reproduced the banner itself, with the fraudulent drawings in place.
Please see Homology and Embryology Questions and Answers, and the related articles below, for more information. [See also E. van Niekerk’s feedback response Haeckel the hero? and her thoroughly documented paper Countering revisionism—part 1: Ernst Haeckel, fraud is proven, J. Creation 25(3):89–95, 2011.—Ed.]
Such a theory is not necessary to describe biodiversity, as Linnaeus did just that prior to the theory of evolution. Such a theory cannot describe the biodiversity and is patently without basis, genetically, observationally and experimentally. Your observation that these drawings are fraudulent is a small window into a vast world of just so stories, fraud, deceit and hopeful hypothesis that collectively form Darwin’s theory. Haeckel’s drawings are powerful; they fuel the minds of children with the best observational evidence of evolution –a fraud.
And this isn’t a misunderstanding by the HSC, these drawings are tendered as prima facia evidence for evolution in my latest edition university Zoology text book “Integrated Principles of Zoology” ( Cleveland P, et al.), and in my text “Biology Concepts and Connections” (Campbell, et. al.) and in my Vertebrates text “Comparative Anatomy..” (Kardong) and in my Invertebrates text, class notes etc. Why is such a fraud still in all my major texts at University? Indeed the brainwashing and dogma, as you put it, wilfully belongs to the evolutionist. The creationist frame is vastly superior in describing the biodiversity.
While I agree that these are fraudulent sketches and should never have been included in the HSC examination under any circumstances, I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that you didn't check to see if the DOE simply made a mistake?
[See Robert B.’s complaint and the response received from the department below—Ed.]
Which of the following apply?
a) "Don't let the facts spoil a good story?",
b) "Repeat a lie often enough and people believe it",
c) "Mix truth and speculation and everybody gets confused",
d) "All of the above".