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Why is this page identical to http://www.yourencyclopedia.net/Ernst_Haeckel.html ?
DoH! It didn't occur to me that maybe they had "borrowed" from here. Thanks. DavidR 16:17, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
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
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.
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)
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 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)
The text currently states:
Haeckel actually wrote this, in his Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (1868):
(English translation:
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)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Ernst Haeckel article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1Auto-archiving period: 90 days |
Ernst Haeckel was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the " On this day..." column on August 9, 2019. |
This
level-4 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Why is this page identical to http://www.yourencyclopedia.net/Ernst_Haeckel.html ?
DoH! It didn't occur to me that maybe they had "borrowed" from here. Thanks. DavidR 16:17, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
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
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.
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)
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 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)
The text currently states:
Haeckel actually wrote this, in his Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (1868):
(English translation:
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)