Haeckel’s Fake Drawings
Many evolution books have drawings purportedly showing that fish, salamander, turtle, chicken and rabbit embryos look very similar to human embryos. They are based on the 1874 embryo drawings by Ernst Haeckel, Darwin’s advocate in Germany, whose evolutionary ideas were instrumental in the later rise of Nazism. These "similarities" are often used as proof that evolution is true.
However, in 1997, a detailed study by Mike Richardson showed that actual photographs of the various embryos looked very different from Haeckel’s drawings. His conclusion?
"Haeckel’s drawings of 1874 are substantially fabricated. In support of this view, I note that his oldest "fish" image is made up of bits and pieces from different animals—some of them mythical. It is not unreasonable to characterize this as ‘faking.’ …Sadly, it is the discredited 1874 drawings that are used in so many British and American biology textbooks today." (M.K. Richardson, "Haeckel’s Embryos, Continued," letter to Science, 281 (5381):12889, August 28, 1998).
For
decades, people based their belief in evolution on these FAKE drawings!
Here is a picture of the faked drawings compared
to Richardson’s photograph of the same embryos. (Refuting Evolution,
Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane, Australia: Answers in Genesis, 1999, p.86).
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