Evolution frauds
There are some well established evolution 'proofs' that were not the product of good science but were deliberate frauds or were the result of very bad science.
The first is the efforts of professor Ernst Haeckel who in 1874 produced drawings intended to show the similarity of the development of embryos showing the similarities between human and animal development.
The similarities convinced many students that human embryos develop in a way that shows humans evolved as did animals.
Unfortunately these drawings were 'made up' in the name of science to 'prove' evolution. I presume that the professor was unable to find any actual scientifically accurate material which would have proven the point that he wanted to make!
Another fraud intended to show natural selection at work was the work of Dr. Ketterwell in 1955. He presented a scenario that England was pollution free up to 1850. The famous peppered moth had two variations, one was a light colour and the other was a dark colour.
He proposed that industrial pollution caused the trees to become darker and that consequently the light coloured moths decreased in number and the dark coloured moths increased in number. The idea was that the birds could see the light coloured motsh more easily and many more were eaten.
From the 1950s the environment became cleaner, the trees became cleaner and the birds could see the dark coloured moths more easily and targetted them instead. So the number of light coloured moths increased and the dark coloured moths decreased.
All very logical but very wrong! Even if the story had been true it is not evolution at work! It would simply have been a variey of the peppered moth which had increased in numbers at the expense of another variety of peppered moths. This is not evolution, in fact this is the opposite! If this 'scientific' study had been accurate then all was happening was that the DNA for the light coloured moths would have been lost to the peppered moth population! This is a backward step, it is not evoluton in action!
Another factor here is that the peppered moth does not rest on tree trunks. Professor Kettlewell's experiment was demonstrated by nailing dead moths onto a tree trunk! In my book this was simply bad science where everything was assumed or manipulated to achieve the required result!
Darwin's finches were also misunderstood to be examples of evolution when they were simply birds where those most adapted to a changing environment were the ones who were more successful in breeding.
Those birds with stronger beaks did have an advantage in a changing environment. They were more successful breeding because of this advantage. But they still only produced finches, and these finches would have mostly had the stronger beaks, as did their parents. They would have increased in numbers and the birds with the smaller, softer beaks would have struggled to feed and therefore breed. But when the dry period ended so did the advantage that the finches with harder beaks had, and the numbers of soft and hard beaked birds went back to the time before the dry period.
In dry weather those birds with tougher, maybe larger beaks would do better than other finches.
They could subsequently easily produce healthier and more numerous offspring, thus becoming a
dominant characteristic.
It is also feasible that, over a few generations, that the birds with the smaller, softer beaks could die out completely and that the genes that produce smaller beaks would be lost from the gene pool altogether.
It would seem obvious therefore that any mutation or characteristic that served no purpose, or was even a handicap of some sort, would be rapidly removed from the gene pool.
A functioning eye needs an optic nerve to take the signals to the brain and the control systems
in the brain to interpret the signals to allow conscience desicions to be made.
Even a minimalist version of these features could not possibly be created by chance.
The idea that random chance could produce three distinctly separate mechanisms all designed
to work together, all at the same time, is beyond any rational belief.
But the key concept for the evolutionist to grasp is that natural selection, an idea that they are very keen on!, cannot produce an irreducible mechanism. Natural selection says that any adaptation that has not got a purpose will be removed from the gene pool. So how could a functioning eye be formed over a long period of time when there is no function until the whole system is in place?
The final nail in the coffin for the concept of natural selection came with the recent discoveries of DNA and how the cells work. The discovery of the most complex and fascinating mechanisms that operate within the cell which simply could not happen by chance and which could only be the result of a designer.
That is why Darwin recognised that his theories could be assigned to the dustbin if any irriducible mechanisms were found to exist!
The Nebraska Man, discoverd in 1922, was accepted as a early form of mankind. But all that was discovered was a tooth! From this tooth scientists assumed everything that they expected (and wanted) to find. They knew the end result they wanted and seemed happy to accept anything that fitted their theories.
They even went so far as to produce picures of what this early man looked like and what the environment was like at the time. All from a tooth! Talk about having a predetermined opinion!
Nebraska Man, Illustrated London News, woodcut based on sketch by Amédée Forestier, 1922.
Unfortunately the tooth turned out to be a pig's tooth. It demonstrates that scientists who have pre-expectations of what they are looking for will generally find exactly what they are looking for and they don't question what they find!