Famous Evolution Hoaxes and
Exaggerations
By David Dewitt, Ph.D., Oct. 1999
Associate Director of Creation Studies at
In 1922, scientists discovered a fossil tooth. Reported to be one
million years old, it was heralded as the “missing link” in human evolution and
called “Nebraska Man” since it was found in the state of
Piltdown Man
This famous hoax fooled scientists for nearly 50 years. A portion of a
human skull and the jaw of an orangutan were pieced together to form a “missing
link.” Scientists studied casts or models of this specimen and numerous reports
were published on it.
Later, it was found to be an absolute fraud. On the original specimen, which was rarely seen, one could easily see where the
teeth had been filed down to look more human-like!
Haekel's Embryos
Ernst Haekel was a German developmental
biologist who studied embryos. He proposed an evolutionary theory called
“ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” According to this view, as a fertilized egg
develops to form an embryo, it repeats evolutionary history.
As evidence, Haekel examined and drew pictures of
embryos of a fish, frog, chicken, pig and human. In the pictures, there was remarkable similarity among the different animals.
However, these pictures were later shown to be deceptively altered!
Further, it was also shown that his recapitulation theory was untrue.
Nonetheless, it is still occasionally used as evidence for evolution, and Haekel’s fraudulent drawings are still placed in biology
textbooks today.
One book commonly used in graduate schools, Molecular Biology of the Cell
by Bruce Alberts (president of the National Academy
of Sciences), still includes Haekel’s embryos in the
chapter “The Evolution of the Cell.”
Peppered Moth
The peppered Moth is a classic example used to show evolution in action.
In
This change was originally attributed to better camouflage-ability since there
was a decrease in light-colored lichens on tree trunks, due to pollution. As
pollution decreased, the colors reversed. Supposedly, those moths with better
camouflage would escape predation by birds and leave more offspring.
Recently, it has become known that pictures of these moths in textbooks have
been staged because the moths do not rest on tree trunks as they are often
portrayed!
In addition, the change in coloration was observed in other areas without a
similar change in lichen. Presently, scientists do not know what caused the
difference in coloration but they know that it is not by the Darwinian
model which had been previously proposed.
Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist, described his reaction to finding out
this information about the moths in a book review in Nature. “My own
reaction resembles the dismay attending my discovery, at the age of six, that
it was my father and not Santa who brought the presents on Christmas Eve.”
These and other examples were taught to generations of students as “facts” of
evolution.