And the nonsense is not often corrected:
In the summer of 2018, PBS Eons published Episode 46 of Season 1, “When Fish First Breathed Air.” Since then the video has amassed a staggering 805,000 views. When I first watched it last year, I was unpleasantly surprised, even shocked. At timecode 5:50-6:05 they claim as the central thesis of their video that lungs evolved from the fish swim bladder. This is such a stupid error that I thought it would certainly be corrected soon and the comments section would likely explode with critical remarks by educated viewers. Boy, was I wrong! A year passed and nothing happened. No correction and not a single comment on this issue. Same at their Facebook posting of this embarrassing video. So it falls to Darwin critics to point out the error.
Here is what modern evolutionary biology actually says about lung origins. The swim bladder and lungs are indeed considered to be similar, both having derived from an outpocketing of the gut (Perry et al. 2001, Longo et al. 2013). However, contrary to the erroneous beliefs of Charles Darwin, lungs are no longer considered to have evolved from the swim bladder. Actually, because of the different ontogenetic origins of lungs as a paired ventral and the swim bladder as an unpaired dorsal outpocketing of the gut, even their homology is questionable (Daniels et al. 2004). Paired lungs are present not only in land vertebrates and lobe-finned fish like lungfish, but also in primitive ray-finned fish like the reedfish and bishirs (Polypteriformes) (Icardo et al. 2017). Therefore they are generally considered to belong to the common ground-plan of bony fish in general. Another group of lobe-finned fish, the coelacanths, has a vestigial lung and a so-called “fatty organ” that may correspond to the other half of a paired lung (Lambertz 2017), but coelacanths possess no swim bladder. The more primitive sharks and rays lack lungs as well as swim bladders. Swim bladders are restricted to ray-finned fish (Actinopterygii), and are thus considered as a uniquely derived character within this group, apart from the most basal and relictual order Polypteriformes mentioned above (Hughes et al. 2018). The claim in the PBS video (timecode 6:02-6:06) that ancestors of early tetrapods like Tiktaalik and Ichthyostega probably had a swim bladder is complete rubbish.
Günter Bechly, “PBS Eons Teaches Nonsense about Evolution” at Evolution News and Science Today
The media can’t really help teaching nonsense about evolution and they will definitely resist correction, putting it down to some dark creationist plot. That is because so much of it supports their worldview. Which may well reflect on their worldview.
The good news is that there are many alternatives within easy reach today, more in line with the facts. People who are still listening to stuff that was mandated by the Darwin-in-the-schools lobby for grade school usually don’t know, it’s true, or else don’t care or have made a choice.
Another argument, it seems, for independent schools.
See also: Nice to see Gunter Bechly’s name a paper again. It’s not even just heroes we want to see vindicated but ordinary joes and jills who can go about their business while saying, “I see plenty wrong with the dominant theory today.” Physicists are allowed that but biologists aren’t. That’s because Darwinism functions very much as a religion for Darwinians.
Gunter Bechly: Ediacaran Fossil Paper Is “Junk Science”
Paleontologist Gunter Bechly Live Tonight On What The Fossil Record Really Tells Us About Common Ancestry
Gunter Bechly: Decline of science? Imaged in a single paragraph
Gunter Bechly: Living fossils under massive attack
Gunter Bechly: New Human Find In The Philippines = New Headache For Darwinism
Fossil dragonfly named in Mike Behe’s honor has implications for ID
Logic vs. the multiverse: Gunter Bechly offers some insights
What’s Gunter Bechly doing these days?
Paleontologist Gunter Bechly erased from Wikipedia
Fossil Discontinuities: A Refutation Of Darwinism And Confirmation Of Intelligent Design
Fossil dragonfly named in Mike Behe’s honor has implications for ID
and
Why a four-eyed fossil lizard is a problem for Darwinism (Bechly’s view)
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