Embryo drawing

Embryo drawings were used in the 20th century as evidence for the theory of common descent in discussions of biological evolution.

Most introductory biology textbooks featured drawings that supposedly show similarities in the early embryos of animals with backbones, and these similarities were claimed to be evidence that humans and fish evolved from a common ancestor. But embryologists have long known that the embryos are not most similar in their earliest stages. In 1997, a British embryologist called the drawings one of the most famous fakes in biology.

In 2000, Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould called the continued use of these "fraudulent" embryo drawings the academic equivalent of murder. "We do, I think, have the right, he wrote, to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks."

See: theory of evolution, intelligent design