I think those are important points and I’m glad you brought them out. I think “trust in the system” is a function of trusting various scientists themselves. It’s very rare that the lay public can validate claims made by scientists. Even other scientists find this difficult to do. So, it is very much a matter of trust.
I don’t think you should underestimate the effect that fraud can have in that kind of environment. When trust is destroyed by claims that are not supported by the evidence, exaggeration about the certainty of various conclusions (proven to be far more uncertain by the presence of contradictory claims) or outright fraud – then it’s not surprising that certain sectors of the public will take a very critical view towards the evolutionary enterprise itself.
It’s even
less surprising, though, when you figure in the cultural and theological biases against the discoveries of science in biology. The “I am not a biological machine” conceit runs deep in the psyche of many people, the idea that we are animals who share a common ancenstry with not just the chimpanzee, but the rat, the cabbage, and the lowliest bacteria, is repulsive to many, particular people conditioned by religion (often from birth) to view humans as “cosmiquely special” or ontologically perfectly distinct from the rest of biological life.
That makes it a problem to be a fair judge when a hoax like, say, Haeckel’s diagrams is exposed. Opportunistic parties like J. Wells or the Discovery Institute will capitalize on poeple’s conceits, which they share and treasure, and use such an incident to delegitimize the entire edifice of biology; by pandering to the internal biases of their audience, they can make such an incident look much more damaging and destabilizing than it is.
Richard Dawkins circa 2008 was still using fraudulent “evidence” for evolution that no self-respecting embryologist would defend, and that most biology textbooks dropped years ago …Creationist/ID source or not, what many (like myself) find is that science is not self-policing. Critics of evolutionary theory bring these facts to light. Occasionally, evolutionists will denounce such things – but only after they’ve been exposed. Too often, its a matter of circling-the-wagons and denying that anything could be amiss.
In the case above – nobody noticed that Dawkins was using drawings which were exposed as frauds years ago.
That is an example, but I think it’s an example that works right against your point, here, and toward mine.
Here’s a few questions to consider:
1. Are the images shown of embryos at the 7:30 mark in the video Haeckel’s diagrams in the first place?
No.
If you look at the titles on the diagram, they’re in English. Is that “Haeckelian” to you. Also, forget that, look at the images – particularly the fish, which is the most dramatic example. They are accurate renderings, NOT Haeckel’s fakes. Embryos really
do resemble each other in development in fundamental ways, just not to the extent that Haeckel claimed with his fakes. This is the point being made in the video – embryos do have compelling similarities that drive evolutionary hypotheses.
**2. Does Dawkins reference Haeckel visually or in the narrative, or Haeckel’s ideas about recapitulation?
**
No.
**3. Were Haeckel’s drawings and recapitulation ideas available before or at the time of Darwin’s publishing of ***
Origins?
*No. Haeckel’s drawings did not come out until after 1870, more than a decade
after Darwin published his book. Haeckel didn’t propose the idea until 1866.
So what you have here is an embarrassingly reckless and stupid mistake on the part of John West of the Discovery Institute (and it’s enough of a pattern with him now that “mistake” is a very charitable label to apply); he “knee-jerks” on the image, jumping toward the attractive idea that Dawkins is invoking Haeckel and “recapitulation” here. But it’s not Haeckel’s diagrams. The pictures are accurate, if you are familiar with developmental biology here.
Unlike the science world, where there
is a critical peer review process, a way for proponents of claims like this to be accountable and corrigible for those claims, the Discovery Institute is a just not accountable to anyone. It recognizes no peers, it doesn’t even accept comments on its articles. So they blow it, but no one notices or cares, and the
story gets picked up by all the other facets in the echo chamber.
It is your “Creationist source or not” that is not self-policing. You’ve been mislead, but not by Dawkins or the scientific community here, but by the creationists at Disco. They have no accountability, and they play right into your theological prejudices, and this is the result. They’ve exploited your unjustifed trust in
them to deceive you on the trustworthiness of others who
do science.
-TS
