"I don't see how anyone can study Haeckel and not think he was a genius and
a class act. Evolution was a powerful new concept and he got carried away
and saw details that he thought must be there but weren't. Big deal."
I share your sentiments. However, the legitimate criticism of Haeckel is
that he oversimplified his drawings, leaving out details that would have
shown that his embryos were more different than he believed them to be.
("More different" is extremely subjective however; many modern developmental
biologists still believe that Haeckel's claim of a conserved chordate body
plan is right on.) So it wasn't that he saw things others did not see, but
that he left out details that he thought were irrelevant.
However, Richardson _et al._ agree with you, as I demonstrated in an earlier
post and will demonstrate again in my upcoming post. They claim that if
Haeckel hadn't left out those extra details, that his case for
recapitulation would have been stronger.
Kevin L. O'Brien