Talk:Ernst Haeckel

Possible Copyrighted Material
Why is this page identical to http://www.yourencyclopedia.net/Ernst_Haeckel.html ?


 * Since Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU FDL, anyone may duplicate its contents. Many websites have copied Wikipedia material wholesale, often annoyingly stealing link precedence (since Wikipedia tends to be slower and less stable, because it is still being edited). Anyway, that page is one such - you can read the GNU FDL disclaimer (as required by the license) at the bottom, as well as an attribution to Wikipedia. Graft 16:10, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

DoH! It didn't occur to me that maybe they had "borrowed" from here. Thanks. DavidR 16:17, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Indexing Problem
When I entered "Haeckel" in the Search box, WP could not find this entry. I had to locate it by searching for "ecology" and using the Haeckel link there. I have seen variant spellings of his name and wonder if the "correct" one, i.e., the one in use by WP, is not listed in the index dictionary (or whatever one calls it). -- WLH

Seeking source
On top of picking several wrong concepts to champion, he was actually caught using doctored data in some of his papers. Most notably his drawings of embryos were known, even by contemporaries, to deliberately misrepresent the similarities between embryos of different species.


 * The above paragraph is seeking a source, so that it might be reworded and restored to the article. Sam Spade 20:56, 1 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Have a look at talk.origins: (His theory was invalid, some of his drawings were faked, and he willfully over-interpreted the data to prop up a false thesis. Furthermore, he was influential, both in the sciences and the popular press; his theory still gets echoed in the latter today) and antievolution.org (Though Haeckel defended the relative accuracy of his figures he nevertheless modified them in later editions of his book to make them more technically accurate, a fact even noted by Haeckel's modern critic Michael Richardson. (Richardson 1998, p.1289) While it might be true that in hindsight both Haeckel and His's figures were not always entirely accurate, none of the minor errors they may contain once corrected change the status of the evidence they illustrate for evolution.).  Guettarda 21:09, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
 * He didn’t accidentally make mistakes that he corrected, he admitted them when detected. He was no embryologist. And the organism he detected in Villefranche-sur-Mer that was completely without organs not only doesn’t exist, it could not exist. And sayim
 * ng “um” as though you were correcting a child is a stupid affectation. 203.17.235.23 (talk) 01:29, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I think if we can provide an objective source (not associated with supporting/not supporting the creationist movement, that provides clear evidence that his figues and data were doctored, we can remove POV. As of date, I can not find an academic source that does this. I have only found these statements echoed in pro-creationist propaganda. Goferwiki 14:31, 2 May 2005 (UTC)


 * That's why I quoted anti-creationist sites. Haeckel is a big issue for creationists; whatever the anti-creationists concede is likely to be uncontorvertial (and so a good starting point).  They also include references.  Guettarda 14:50, 2 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for finding those, User:Guettarda. What more do we need? Should we rewrite the paragraph so it says that the earliest drawings were inaccurate, but were later fixed? Would that be NPOV? -Willmcw 08:30, May 4, 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes. If someone has a source accusing him of wrongdoing citing it would be fine, but expressing certainty of intentional fraud in the narrative strikes me as unfair. Being that he was a reputable scientist, and considering the standards of the times, intentional fraud strikes me as unlikely anyhow. Can't the man just make mistakes, or be a crappy scetch artist, etc...? Sam Spade  20:04, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Would it not make sense to locate the diagrams of embryonic development drawn by Haeckel and simply compare them with photographs of the real thing? Such a direct graphic comparison I think would be an invaluable resource for this entry. I think, if this comparison does not show willful fraud, at the very least it would highlight any innacuracies present, leaving interpretations of willful fraud up to the reader, or whatever source you eventually find on his intent. I would imagine the drawings themselves would not be difficult to locate, they are reproduced in many highschool biology textbooks, and I'm guessing are by now in the public domain. The difficult part I think may be in locating the photos of actual embryos of those various species suitable for comparison. Though a photo of a human embryo alone may be sufficient, simply to show that it does not have gills, as Haeckel's diagram of a human embryo seems to show. It seems to me this would strike right at the heart of the issue, allowing the reader to be less dependant on second hand accounts of such comparisons.

such a comparison is done on this site: http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/evo5.html

From what I know, it does not seem undisputed that Haeckel was aware that he was purposefully fudging the appearance of his drawings. Take a look at this website http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/embryos/Haeckel.html. It is a site written by Dr. Kenneth Miller who is a strong pro-evolutionist and has written several biology text books. On this site he makes the follwing statement: "This (my note - that idea that Haeckel faked his drawings) idea has been pushed back into the news recently by the news that Haeckel's drawings of embryonic similarities were not correct. British embryologist Michael Richardson and his colleages published an important paper in the August 1997 issue of Anatomy & Embryology showing that Haeckel had fudged his drawings to make the early stages of embryos appear more alike than they actually are! As it turns out, Haeckel's contemporaries had spotted the fraud during his lifetime, and got him to admit it. However, his drawings nonetheless became the source material for diagrams of comparative embryology in nearly every biology textbook, including ours!" So more than 100 years later the evolutionary texts continue to use drawings that are knwon to be false but seem to be slowly changing over to the accurate representations. It seems academically disingenuous to refuse to accept what has been known for a hundred years. Does the fact that Haeckel faked the drawings change the fact that embryos do appear similar as they develop? No. But does the fact that they do appear to have similar appearances prove that evolution is true? No. This is not an issue of whether or not what Haeckel did supports the creationist viewpoint or not. Just because creationists use the fact that Haeckel was extremely inaccurate in his drawings does not change the fact that he was inaccurate. There seems to be adequate evidence from credible academic sources who are not creationists (and again the source of the information does not matter a hill of beans as long as the information is accurate) that Haeckel did what he did on purpose to try to advance the evolutionary thought of his time.

I have made a few edits which warrant removing NPOV so I am going to do that. I think the article is good how it is. Goferwiki 09:52, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I added the POV tag back June 6, 2006. The closing paragraphs of both major sections of this article reeks of creationist POV, character assignation and language. They don't give a lot of context for the fact that Haeckel was not a Nazi, Nazi's were not around until the very end of his life and I doubt he signed on with them. Haeckel was not a eugenicist, especially of the "exterminate" school. The Berkley article http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/haeckel.html gives much better understanding and context while still dealing with the perhaps negative aspects of Haeckel. Not only that the Berkley article gives biographical information completely missing from the article like the fact Hinkle was an MD before being a zoologist -An Anon reader.


 * I added a couple of items today to at least make reference to the discredited drawings, as noted for example by Michael Richardson. DFH 13:33, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
 * 28-October-2006 (5 months later): Today, I edited the Ernst Haeckel article to state he attained the M.D. before being a zoologist, and also added: the year of his marriage, children's birth years, and years of travels, as recorded in the German WP wiki: Ernst Haeckel (deutsch).

Removing Reference Section
I am removing this section because 1) the article the person posted is in German, 2) the person put their own opinion on it.Goferwiki 09:42, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Here is what was in the article "*Ernst Haeckel did forge. Many of his pictures of organisms simply are inventions to prove his theory... Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, (Source: German weekly DIE ZEIT 22/2003 Wir Deutschen sind nicht moralisch höher stehend [])" Unacceptable Goferwiki 09:43, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Asia hypothesis
The text currently states:
 * "Haeckel claimed the origin of humanity was to be found in Asia: he believed that Hindustan (Indian subcontinent) was the actual location where the first humans had evolved. Haeckel argued that humans were closely related to the primates of Southeast Asia and rejected Darwin's hypothesis of Africa."

Haeckel actually wrote this, in his Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (1868):

(English translation:
 * "Rather, most signs point to southern Asia. But also perhaps Eastern Africa has been the place where primeval man first emerged from humanlike apes; also perhaps a continent that has now sunk beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean, which stretched from the south of what is now Asia, on one side east to the Sunda Islands and on the other side west to Madagascar and Africa.")

To me, this reads more like Haeckel was hedging his bet, rather than that he rejected Darwin's hypothesis of Africa. --Lambiam 11:28, 17 December 2023 (UTC)