Biology Text Illustrations More Fiction Than Fact
By JAMES GLANZ
 

              April 8, 2001

              Biology Text Illustrations More Fiction Than Fact

              By JAMES GLANZ

The anti-evolution movement called intelligent design has helped its cause
by publicizing some embarrassing mistakes in leading biology textbooks.

Biologists attribute them to inattention, but design proponents say the
errors show that Darwinists are more than willing to accept shoddy
evidence if it supports evolution.

In particular, design proponents cite the 19th-century drawings of the
German biologist Ernst Haeckel, who asserted that the early embryonic
stages of many animals, including humans, were virtually identical and
diverged only later. He said that the resemblance proved that all animals
had a common ancestor.

The drawings were reproduced in textbook after textbook for more than a
century.

Several years ago, though, biologists discovered that many of the drawings
were fraudulent and that the true resemblances were not nearly so
striking. Nevertheless, some textbooks still contain them.

One of the texts that includes the faulty drawings is the third edition of
"Molecular Biology of the Cell," the bedrock text of the field. Its
authors include Dr. Bruce Alberts, a biochemist who is president of the
National Academy of Sciences, and Dr. James D. Watson, the geneticist who
shared a Nobel Prize for unraveling the structure of DNA.

In an interview, Dr. Alberts said he believed Haeckel's drawings were
"overinterpreted," or highly idealized, rather than outright fakes. But he
said they would be removed from the fourth edition of the textbook, to
appear at the end of this year.

Biologists say the findings do not shake their confidence in the theory of
evolution.

Oryginal: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/science/08EVOL.html

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