HAECKEL'S FRAUDULENT CHARTS
Repeatedly, over the past 150 years, evolutionists have sought to use fraud, ignorance, sensationalism, ridicule, and hoaxes to convince the public that evolutionary theory is true. Lacking any scientific evidence for their conjectures, they recognize this is the only avenue open to them. *Earnst Haekel's fraudulent charts are just part of a line of frauds. The truth is that evolutionary theory is a myth. God created everything; the evidence clearly points to it. Nothing else can explain the mountain of evidence. This is science vs. evolution—a Creation-Evolution Encyclopedia, brought to you by Creation Science Facts.
CONTENTS: Haeckel's Fraudulent Charts
*Haeckel's Theory - The man who was willing to lie in order to defend evolution
The Woodcut Charts - His fraudulent artistry
Uncovering the Fraud - Men who exposed the fraud
But Evolutionists Keep Publishing Them - Desperate men do so because they have no other evidence to offer
Comments by Scientists - They are disgusted with the situation
This material is excerpted from the book, RECAPITULATION. An asterisk ( * ) by a name indicates that person is not known to be a creationist. Of over 4,000 quotations in the books this Encyclopedia is based on, only 164 statements are by creationists. You will have a better understanding of the following statements by scientists if you will also read the web page, Recapitulation.
*HAECKEL'S THEORY
*Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) had an overmastering obsession to convince people that evolution was true. Like certain men after his time, he was willing to go to any length in providing supposed substantion for the theory. Here is additional information on "Haeckel' hoax."
"Haeckel's theory, known as the "Law of Recapitulation" and the "Biogenetic Law," was first suggested by Meckel (1781-1883). Karl von Baer (1792-1876) saw the error in Meckel's idea and wrote against it.
But it was *Ernst Haeckel (1834) that elevated it to the supposed status of a "law" and proclaimed the theory as widely as he could. He wrote a number of books advocating evolution, and in all of them recapitulation was a dominant theme and a primary evidence.
Both *Darwin and *Huxley were thrilled that someone had, at last, come forward with some actual evidence for evolution:
"He [Haeckel] became convinced he had discovered the most basic law of evolution: `Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,' or the development of an embryo (ontogeny) is a speeded-up replay of the evolution of the species (phylogeny). It was an enormously influential idea, utilized by both Darwin and Huxley, who were impressed with Haeckel's detailed illustrations comparing embryonic development in various animals and man. In their earlier stages, according to Haeckel's drawings, pigeons, dogs, and humans looked identical."—*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 205.
THE WOODCUT CHARTS
Haeckel developed his charts and used them, not only in lecture halls, but in books as well. They first appeared in his Natural History of Creation (Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte) in 1868. In this book, Haeckel stated that the ova and embryos of different animals—and also man—are, at certain periods in their development, perfectly identical. In proof of this assertion, he placed on page 242 three woodcuts that were indeed identical! One was purported to be the ova of man, the second a monkey, and the third a dog, each enlarged 100 times. The three woodcuts were totally identical. What a striking evidence this was to anyone who saw it!
Yet it was a fake. Haeckel prepared a woodcut, and then had the printer print it, one above the other, three times in a column!
The captions label them the embryos of a dog, a chicken, and a tortoise. All three are identical. In the accompanying text, on page 249, Haeckel explains that close examination of the actual embryos revealed the same total likeness that the woodcuts did. Once again, Haeckel was writing fiction. As for the woodcuts, the same device was used: One woodcut had been prepared, and then printed three times in a row, side by side, with dog, chicken, and tortoise labels underneath.
In this book, Haeckel mentioned the sources from whence he prepared his woodcuts. This greatly added to the credibility of the woodcuts. But, of course, any scientist could check his sources. Rutimeyer and His did just that.
UNCOVERING THE FRAUD
In 1868, L. Rutimeyer wrote an article, entitled "Referate," which appeared on pages 301-302 of the Archiv fur Anthropologie (Archives of Anthropology). In that article, Rutimeyer, professor of zoology and comparative anatomy, at the University of Basel, reviewed two of Haeckel's books, Natural History of Creation (Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte), and his Uber die Enstehung and den Stammbaum des Menschengeschlechts, both of which had been newly published the same year that Rutimeyer's review was published: 1868.
"Haeckel claims these works to be both easy for the scientific layman to follow, and scientific and scholarly. No one will quarrel with the first evaluation of the author, but the second quality is not one that he seriously can claim. These are works, clothed in medieval formalistic garb. There is considerable manufacturing of scientific evidence perpetrated. Yet the author has been very careful not to let the reader become aware of this state of affairs."—*L. Rutimeyer, "Referate," in Archiv fur Anthropologie (1868).
Rutimeyer then continues on and discusses the fraudulent woodcuts. For example, the dog embryo and human embryo, shown on page 240 of Haeckel's book, are completely identical. Haeckel maintained that he faithfully copied the dog embryo from Bischoff (4th week). Rutimeyer then reprinted the original drawing made by Bischoff of the dog embryo at 4 weeks, and the original of human embryo at 4 weeks made by Haeckel. The originals were very much different!
Then Rutimeyer notes that, elsewhere in Haeckel's book, that same woodcut is used to portray a dog, a chicken, and a tortoise!
Rutimeyer was a well-known German scientist living at that time. He regularly had articles in each yearly volume of Archiv fur Anthropologie, yet his book review was never translated into English nor published in Britain or America!
Wilhelm His, Sr., was another highly respected contemporary German scientist. The first major scientific book on embryology was prepared by His, Sr., and published in 1880. His not only perfected the serial sections technique, so important in embryological studies, but he also pioneered the wax plate method of accurate scale reconstructions from such sections. He was the first to identify the bundle of His in the heart.
Wilhelm His, Sr., wrote a series of letters to Carl Ludwig; these were later published in Leipzig under the title, Unsere Koperform und das Physiologische Problem Ihrer Entstehung. The fourteenth letter in the series dealt with Haeckel's fraudulent activities. As the basis for His' analysis, he used the 5th edition of Haeckel's Natural History of Creation.
Mr. His explained, in detail, the extent of the fake woodcuts and the false claims in the accompanying text. He also noted that, in another book by Haeckel, the Anthropogenie, two figures of human embryos in the blastula stage were shown with the allantois clearly visible, yet the allantois never appears in the blastula stage of growth.
He also discussed the 24 figures in the two-page spread on pages 256-257 of Haeckel's book. He angrily declared them to be gross distortions of reality, and not true to life, and said that Haeckel did it in order to show similarity of form, even though such similarity did not actually exist.
He also pointed out that Haeckel was a professor at the University of Jena, which was noted for having excellent optical facilities. Thus, according to His, there was no excuse for these fraudulent productions. His concluded by denouncing Haeckel as a fraud, and henceforth as eliminated from the ranks of scientific research as a worker.
"When critics brought charges of extensive retouching and outrageous `fudging' in his famous embryo illustrations, Haeckel replied he was only trying to make them more accurate than the faulty specimens on which they were based."—*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 206.
Another scientist, who at about the same time also protested against Haeckel's fakeries, was Albert Fleischmann (Die Descenddztheoried, 1901, pp. 101-152).
BUT EVOLUTIONISTS KEEP PUBLISHING THEM
But it was all to no avail. Evolutionists gleefully reprinted Haeckel's charts over and over again.
Even after 1960, they were still being printed in reputable science textbooks! Here are several of them: *Edward O. Dodson, Evolution (1960), pp. 46-47; *William Bloom and *Carl Krekeler, General Biology (1962), p. 442; *Tracy Storer and *Robert Usinger, General Zoology (1965), p. 244; *Tracy Storer, *Robert Usinger, and *James Nybakken, Elements of Zoology (1968), p. 216; *Claude Ville, *Warren Walker, Jr., and *Frederick Smith, General Zoology (1968), p. 677; *Richard Leakey, Illustrated Origin (1971).
COMMENTS BY SCIENTISTS
Disgusted with Haeckel's "cheating tricks," *Rager said this:
"Haeckel was not prudish in the selection of tools for his fight. In order to prove the validity of the law of biogenesis, he published several figures, the original and legends of which were faked up.
"This fake is now shown in a few examples. For this purpose he used the same printing stock three times and invented a different legend for each copy.
"There are a number of other figures, the originals of which were changed by Haeckel in order to demonstrate that human ontogeny successively passes through stages of development which repeat phylogeny.
"This is not the first time that Haeckel's fake has been revealed. The well-known zoologist, Ludwig Rutimeyer (1868), protested against it.
"The law of biogenesis has to use cheating tricks in order to fit data to the theory."—G. Rager, "Human Embryology and the Law of Biogenesis," in Rivista di Biologia (Biology Forum 79 (1986), pp. 451-452.
*Singer considered *Haeckel's work to be a mass of contradictions, acceptable only to the scientifically uneducated.
"His [Haeckel's] faults are not hard to see. For a generation and more he purveyed, to the semieducated public, a system of the crudest philosophy—if a mass of contradictions can be called by that name. He founded something that wore the habiliments of a religion, of which he was at once the high priest and the congregation."—*C. Singer, A History of Biology (1931), p. 487.
He said he was merely filling in some missing details.
"To support his case he [Haeckel] began to fake evidence. Charged with fraud by five professors and convicted by a university court at Jena, he agreed that a small percentage of his embryonic drawings were forgeries; he was merely filling in and reconstructing the missing links when the evidence was thin, and he claimed unblushingly that hundreds of the best observers and biologists lie under the same charge."—*Michael Pitman, Adam and Evolution (1984), p. 120.
He was a doctorer of science.
". . ontogeny recaptitulates phylogeny, meaning that in the course of its development [ontogeny] an embryo recapitulates [repeats] the evolutionary history of its species. This idea was fathered by Ernst Haeckel, a German biologist who was so convinced that he had solved the riddle of life's unfolding that he doctored and faked his drawings of embryonic stages to prove his point."—*William R. Fix, The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution (1984), p. 285.
We see in *Haeckel an example of shocking dishonesty.
"[The German scientist, Wilhelm His] accused Haeckel of shocking dishonesty in repeating the same picture several times to show the similarity among vertebrates at early embryonic stages in several plates of [Haeckel's book]."—*Stephen Jay Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (1977), p. 430.
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THE LAWS OF NATURE VS. EVOLUTION - The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics totally annihilate evolutionary theory.