UncommonDescent and ResearchID.org Report: New York Times Falsely Claimed ID Theorists Failed to Respond to Call for Research Proposals
A 2005 New York Times article asserted that ID proponents failed to respond to a call for research proposals from the John Templeton Foundation, a group that funds research dealing with origins. The New York Times reported that Templeton’s Charles Harper claimed that he had requested research proposals from ID-proponents, proposals which "never came in.” A new report now calls the veracity of the New York Times’s story into “grave doubt.” According to both ResearchID.org and UncommonDescent, Harper now claims that the New York Times completely invented this story.
As ResearchID.org reports:
In response to an inquiry about whether the JTF put out a call to ID scholars for grant requests, Harper specifically stated that, “No such request [for proposals] was made. There never was a call-for-proposals to the ID community. All I said [to the reporter] is that, like anybody else, ID people could apply and proposals submitted would be reviewed on their merits. No blackballing.” The New York Times article also describes the JTF as being formerly pro-ID but becoming disillusioned with ID. But Harper responded to the article’s claim saying, “This is completely false. It is a creation of media narrative manufacture.”The report also documents that, while Templeton is not exactly ID-friendly, it has funded research from ID-proponents in the past, including some of the work that led to William Dembski’s book No Free Lunch. Read the full article here.
[Emphasis in original; Media Misreports Intelligent Design Research and the John Templeton Foundation, by Joseph C. Campana, February 27, 2007]