"The very thorough paper Richardson, MK et al., (1997). Anat. Embryol., 196:91-106...."
This paper has been so thoroughly misrepresented by people opposed to evolution or to the biogenetic law that its use by such people is often reflexive, even though they may not fully understand its purpose. You give two quotations from the paper, then conclude based on those quotations that "it seems to me the word 'fraud' could be correctly applied to Haeckel."
Fraud is a deliberate act to deceive. Richardson _et al._ make no such claim. At best they say that Haeckel's drawings are considerably inaccurate, but they never state nor imply that Haeckel was deliberately inaccurate with the intention of deceiving his colleagues.
Nor can it be said that the purpose of their paper was written solely to critique, as has been implied by several in this group. Here is an unedited copy of the paper's abstract; from it it is quite obvious that the authors are critiquing the concept of a conserved "body plan" in the ontological development of chordates:
"Embryos of different species of vertebrate share a common organization and often look similar. Adult differences among species become more apparent through divergence at later stages. Some authors have suggested that members of most or all vertebrate clades pass through a virtually identical, conserved stage. This idea was promoted by Haeckel, and has recently been revived in the context of claims regarding the universality of developmental mechanisms. Thus embryonic resemblance at the tailbud stage has been linked with a conserved pattern of developmental gene expression - the zootype. Haeckel's drawings of the external morphology of various vertebrates remain the most comprehensive comparative data purporting to show a conserved stage. However, their accuracy has been questioned and only a narrow range of species was illustrated. In view of the current widespread interest in evolutionary developmental biology, and especially in the conservation of basis for modern ontogenetic theo
ry. It should also be pointed out that there are many developmental biologists who disagree that there is no conserved body plan; I will present the opinions of two in my upcoming essay.]
However, so many anti-evolutionists and anti-Haeckel people have tried to claim that Richardson _et al._ did claim that Haeckel was a fraud that the authors wrote a letter to _Science_ debunking that claim. I will reproduce that letter unedited in my upcoming essay, but while they repeat their criticism that Haeckel was inaccurate, they do not label him a fraud. They also make the claim that despite the inaccuracy of his drawings, Haeckel's conclusions, _based on those very same drawings_, regarding the evolutionary relationship between ontogeny and phylogeny are correct. In other words, they say that Haeckel's biogenetic law -- ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny -- is true.
Since it is logically impossible for someone to tell the truth while deliberately trying to deceive people, I think this is adequate evidence that Haeckel was no fraud. This is also adequate evidence that, despite the claims of some on this group, the biogenetic law is still viable and that it does serve as the basis for modern developmental biology. I hope to present more evidence in my upcoming essay.
Kevin L. O'Brien