Casey Luskin lies about teaching of evolution

AtomicHorror Says:

Nov 4, 2009 - Yes it is good evidence for evolution, as I mentioned in the info text. We just don't use Haeckel's work anymore. PZ Myers over on the Pharyngula blog has written some excellent entries on embryology and evolution.

Quickened4e Says:

Nov 4, 2009 - We have been created and given a free will to make the right or wrong choice. God has great expectations of us which require our trust in Him, that is to trust in his word.

Quickened4e Says:

Nov 4, 2009 - Everyone want their individuality, self awareness, inteIligence. To be, or at least appear to be, a mature, responsible, moral and sophisticated adult, but when the subject about God comes up, all of a sudden people become ignorant and without blame start to ask questions like, "if there is a God why all the war, starvation and sickness in the world?" To dismiss Gods existence.

AtomicHorror Says:

Nov 8, 2009 - Not sure what the relevance of either of your two posts is to the video. That rather naive question was certainly not asked here an questions of free will and morality don't enter into the matter.

Mortison77577 Says:

Nov 14, 2009 - "Haeckel's embryos are not presented as factual in any biology textbooks I've read." Haeckels embryos are still in textbooks, so Casey Luskin is correct on this and PZ Myers is wrong.

AtomicHorror Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - Which textbooks are these and when were they published? Also, neither I nor PZ claimed that these drawings were no longer in any books, but rather that they're no longer "presented as factual" if they are included. That's a pretty important distinction.

Mortison77577 Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - The ones that have them are Ravens and Johnson 1999 and 2002, Futuyma 1998, Star and Taggart 1998, Shraer and Stoltze 1999, Padilla 2001, and Miller and Levine 1998. In these, they are presented as factual. Both Kenneth Miller and Stephen J. Gould admitted that this is a problem. I think they reason why people felt very confident that Casey Luskin was lying was because they always assume that in any issue relating to evolution, creationists are always wrong and mainstream biologists are right.

AtomicHorror Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - So even the most recent case pre-dates Luskin's claims by over 7 years. Nobody is saying that Haeckel's embryos were never presented as fact in the past, or that school textbooks are always up to date with current thinking. But Luskin is suggesting that the books being used right now, the 2007, 2008, 2009 editions, are still pushing that inaccuracy. Your evidence suggests that he is wrong about that.

Mortison77577 Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - Someone is likely still using the 2002 editions. Is he claiming that editions after the year 2002 still have them or just that some texts in use "now" still have them? If he's saying that some 2003 through 2009 editions have them, then he hasn't backed that up with anything solid. It would be interesting to see if publicity surrounding this issue got them removed or if they were slowly being removed on their own because the editors were catching the mistake.

AtomicHorror Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - I'm sure that someone, somewhere is using the odd older edition book- but that's not really what he's implying is it? The vast majority of schools and universities will use editions released in the last two years. Unless books in wide circulation, printed recently now have such errors, highlighting this as a problem is very misleading. It would indeed be interesting if this highlighting induced changes, but since we caught the problem and fixed it years ago without Luskin's help, it's unlikely.

Mortison77577 Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - He says that some of the books are still in use, but there's no way of knowing without doing some research. But still, it's kind of funny when people are talking about the film Flock of Dodos and saying "oh, those dirty rotten liars, why do they lie so much, why did they make up this thing about Haeck's embryos" when it was really true.

Mortison77577 Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - Another thing is that people who were opposing the Discovery Institute on this are trying to spin it by saying "oh, well, actually the embryos aren't that bad given the way they are in those books now, it's just that they could be a little better." Apparently PZ Myers was saying something like that. They should just admit that they got owned on this one pretty bad.

AtomicHorror Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - It was true 7 years ago, though it would have been a misleading overstatement even then. It's a lie now, or at best a very significant exaggeration. So I really don't think we're going out on a limb when we call Luskin out on this. For myself, I can say that I went through an education in biology from 1993 through second level and a degree right up to a PhD in 2009 without ever once encountering Haeckel's embryos at all, let alone presented as evidence for anything.

Mortison77577 Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - Other people were denying that they ever were in textbooks past the year 1914 or so for anything other than historical information and apparently PZ Myers was actually telling lies on his blog about this maybe because he just wanted to participate in a political fight and he didn't care about the truth. And then people at the NCSE were putting a spin on it and yet they claim to care about good science education. If you never saw them I guess you got lucky. What area of biology did you study?

AtomicHorror Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - "Apparently"? Might want to get yourself some certainties there. He talked about the treatment of embryology in textbooks- which is still very much scientifically valid. So you'll see similar illustrations to Haeckel's in many textbooks, but minus the inaccuracies. That's just fine. Never did he condone the use of Haeckel's drawings aside from their historical value. We got owned did we? Sorry man, but this was a massive own-goal for the DI. Not that the average Fox viewer will be aware of it.

AtomicHorror Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - Never once saw him claim that the drawings were not used factually in the past. If you're going to put words in his mouth, maybe you can put links in your post.

Mortison77577 Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - If Casey Luskin is saying that they're in textbooks that are in classrooms right now, I wouldn't call that a "lie", because they probably are, but it's not the best thing to say unless he can back it up as in "yeah, I saw one in a high school that I was at the other day, I contacted a bunch of high schools and they confirmed that they're using that edition" blah, blah, blah.

Mortison77577 Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - Why are you refering to the the people who disagreed with the DI as "we"? Do you work for the NCSE or something? You are youtube member, I didn't think you had some affiliation with some organization that was involved in this.

AtomicHorror Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - That's the sort of clarification that any decent interviewer would have sought. Or they could perhaps have involved a scientist or even a science teacher in the discussion. That some inaccuracies may persist in a few textbooks here and there is certainly not what Luskin was trying to make the audience believe. He was trying to imply that there's a systematic problem which needs fixing right now.

Mortison77577 Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - The reason why I said "apparently" is because on his blog PZ has got 4 to 6 posts about this where he seems to be taking material from the hoax of dodos website and misrepresenting it. I'm not completely sure if that's where he got it and I'm not sure if the hoax of dodos website was completely updated if and when PZ Myers put that stuff on his blog or if he got it from there. It looks like he did though.

AtomicHorror Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - "We" is the scientific community. The 10 million or so experts working in scientific research who hold that the DI is peddling pseudoscience. I am not affiliated with the NCSE.

Mortison77577 Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - Sound isn't working on my computer so I'm not sure what he's saying, but it looks like the Luskin is being dishonest about the tree of life thing, because this stuff just makes the tree more complex, it doesn't cast doubt. Although for what it's worth, some stuff may be a genuine source of difficulty as in "is it because of common ancestry, convergent evolution, horizonal gene transfer, hybridization, which is it?" and then the arthropod/vertebrate homologies may be problematic.

Mortison77577 Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - On Feb. 17, 2007 PZ Myers mentions in his blog that the hoax of dodos website was up, and then links to his post on Feb. 10, 2007 post called "Wells false accusation against Randy Olson" in which he says that "you don't find Haeckel's diagram in textbooks except as historical background". If the same material that is posted on the hoax of dodos site now was up then, and if PZ read all of it, then it seems that he told a lie on his blog. I suspect, that actually PZ just didn't read it.

Mortison77577 Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - The reason why I suspect that PZ Myers just didn't read what was on the hoax of dodos site was because it would be too easy for anyone to check the hoax of dodos site and see that what he (PZ) was saying was not correct. Another possibility is that the information on hoax of dodos in February of 2007 was not the same stuff that is on there now.

Mortison77577 Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - Josh Rosneau of the NCSE also was not accurate on his blog. He says that redrawn embryos that were based on Haeckels drawings remove the distortions that Haeckel created. But that's not true, they're still not accurate as can be seen from looking at them.