EMBRYOLOGY

The presence of similar structures (called embryonic homology) in bird, fish and human embryos (and indeed in many other vertebrates) are supposed to be evidence for a common ancestor, proving evolution. This idea of embryonic recapitulation was first developed by Haeckel, an ardent supporter of Darwin, in the 1860’s. He produced fraudulent drawings showing the imaginary similarities between vertebrate embryos. Haeckel was found out by his university where he was on staff, and charged for fraud. In his defence he made a modest confession, in which he blamed the draughtsman for blundering—without acknowledging that he himself was the draughtsman, and claimed that scientists often fudge data.

Various embryologists have abandoned this idea but there is still enough support to appear in many text books as evidence for evolution.

Michael Richardson in 1977 felt there was something wrong with Haeckel’s drawings, “because they didn’t square with his [Richardson’s] understanding of the rates at which fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals develop their distinctive features”. He could find no record of anyone having actually compared embryos of one species with those of another.

Richardson therefore assembled an international team to do just that. They collected embryos of 39 different creatures, including marsupials from Australia, tree-frogs from Puerto Rico, snakes from France, and an alligator embryo from England. They found that the embryos of different species are so different that the embryo drawings made by Haeckel (human, rabbit, salamander, fish, chicken, etc.) could not possibly have been done from real specimens.

Said Richardson: “This is one of the worst cases of scientific fraud. It’s shocking to find that somebody one thought was a great scientist was deliberately misleading. It makes me angry … What he [Haeckel] did was to take a human embryo and copy it, pretending that the salamander and the pig and all the others looked the same at the same stage of development. They don’t … These are fakes.”

Text book drawings still indicate gill fins on the human embryo. This in spite of the fact that these folds of skin end up as parts of the ear. Such is the deception needed to sustain a bankrupt theory.