Measuring the Pervasiveness of the "Myth of No Peer-Reviewed Research"
Casey wrote earlier today on the backpedalling that ID critics will have to do as the peer-reviewed scientific support for intelligent design -- elaborated in our new updated listing -- continues to mount. Or rather, they'll have to backpedal if they want to be somewhat honest with themselves and other people. That's a big if. I bet they'll just stonewall.
For years, Darwinists have been quoting Judge John E. Jones's 2005 Kitzmiller decision as holy writ proving that ID "is not supported by any peer-reviewed research, data or publications," a determination that Jones of course cribbed verbatim from the ACLU's "Finding of Fact" document.
I thought it would be useful to give a sense of just how pervasive the Myth of No Peer-Reviewed Research has become since then.
Chris Mooney cites Jones in the The Republican War on Science, disqualifying ID as science "because its advocates do not (with rare exceptions) participate in the scientific process by publishing in peer-reviewed journals." Ditto Kenneth Miller in Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul who writes, "In addition to failing to produce papers in peer-reviewed journals, ID also features no scientific research or testing."
In a 2008 article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "Science, evolution, and creationism," Francisco Ayala opens in his very first paragraph with the by now standard credulous quote from Judge Jones, lifted from the ACLU: "ID is not supported by any peer-reviewed research, data, or publications."
In Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Daniel Dennett recounts how Discovery Institute "creationists" "don't even bother" trying to get their research published in peer-reviewed journals because "They know better. They know that all they have going for them is propaganda." In Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts Faith and Threatens America, Columbia University's Randall Balmer laments that "The advocates for intelligent design...refuse to be diverted by their failure to publish in scientific journals recognized by the profession."
On its website under the heading "Science & Policy," the American Association for the Advancement of Science gives it as a gospel fact that "One of the criticisms that the so-called 'intelligent design movement' (ID) has had to face is that papers supporting an ID position have not appeared in peer reviewed scientific journals."
In a 2009 article marking Darwin's 200th birthday, deputy director Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education helped readers of U.S. News understand that "Intelligent Design is Not Science, and Should Not Join Evolution in the Classroom." With the usual sleazy conflation of ID with creationism, he issued the challenge: "Scan the scientific research literature: There are no signs that anyone is using creationism, whether as creation science or its newfangled form of intelligent design, to explain the natural world."
The Darwinist blog Panda's Thumb explained in 2007, "The Sad state of Intelligent Design: Or why it shuns 'peer review.'" Huh! Who knew? ID actually shuns peer-review!
The high-toned Boston PBS station WGBH expounds in an article in the library section of its website, "Frequently Asked Questions About Evolution": "No research supporting the claims of intelligent design has ever been published in any recognized, professional, peer-reviewed scientific journal," a "fact" cited verbatim in turn -- at least with credit this time to PBS.org -- by the Anti-Defamation League in its document under the Civil Rights heading, "Religion in the Science Class? Why Creationism and Intelligent Design Don't Belong."
And so on and on and on.
Over the weekend, I mentioned that a reader from South Africa had tried without success to amend Wikipedia's own erroneous statement to this same effect: "The intelligent design movement has not published a properly peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal." But the editors immediately erased his attempts and wrote over them with the same old falsehood.
Well, why should they do otherwise? After all, they've got the backing of everyone from Judge Jones and the ACLU to professional scholars and elite scientists, Darwin lobbyists, the Public Broadcasting Service, and the Anti-Defamation League saying the very same thing.
Why let a little thing like the truth get in the way of such a beguiling lie?
Mr. Klinghoffer,
Can you tell us who decided which articles to include in the list, and what criteria they used? Also, who wrote the synopses, and are they amenable to correction?
J,
Your complaint about the paucity of publication over a period of about 30 years seems a bit contrived and disingenuous considering you failed to mention that all but 10 of the listed articles have been published since 2000.
"our wise enlightened Fathers" also believed that Black slaves were only part equivalent to White people. They might have been excellent statesmen, but that does not mean that they were great scientists as well.
Wow. I just read the list of "Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design (Annotated)"
Let's say every one of the 50 or so ID publications is legit. That's still an embarrassing volume of research for about a 30-yr period. It becomes even more embarrassing when you consider the amount of publications from the list which were reviewed by an all-ID editorial team. Answers in Genesis puts out a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Why not include those publications on your list as well?
Wow Crass, that certainly was an enlightening soliloquy. An a great "Exhibit A".
Quick question: our wise enlightened Fathers that you speak of, they wrote and ratified that we "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" in the Declaration of Independence. Were these wise Founding Fathers deluded in their use of the word "Creator"?
Jeffrey that's a good thought, but what actually happens is they report you to the Wikipedia masters and they ban your account/ip address because you engage in an "updating page war." Your best bet is to engage in the discussion thread. All you need to do is take one of the articles on the list... I would suggest something from Behe or something (something not in BIO-Complexity as they will just say it doesn't count) and make the following argument:
1. Article was published in journal XYZ.
2. Therefore, ID has a peer-reviewed publication.
I tried talking to them in the discussion thread and I even got them to say at one point that they would change the sentence to be more temporal... meaning, "In 2005 there were no peer-reviewed papers." Which of course is better than nothing, but not accurate.
It has been shown time and again very clearly that ID creationists do not respect the scientific method nor its reliance on rigorous scrutiny of any findings put forth in the scientific community. You are merely a propaganda machine aimed at people who are, at least in some ways, fundamentalist Christians. No research is happening, because you have nothing to research. You can’t research irreducible complexity, and even if you did, you wouldn’t publish the findings, because they wouldn’t agree with your skewed and flawed worldview. Fundamentalists don't know anything about science and think that "equal time" and "teach the controversy" sound reasonable. Your apparently very naive founder, Phillip E. Johnson, thinks by the power vested in him by the Word, that he can create a wedge to overturn decades of honest, authentic scientific research. How dare he in the name of some silly, ill-informed crusade do such a thing! Nowhere – besides in Dover, PA – was the laughable idiocy of your pseudo-science so evident as when your pseudo-scientist in residence, William Dembski, debated the brilliant and erudite Christopher Hitchens.
Tell the fundamentally ignorant and fundamentalist Christian money bags, who are funding your farcical little endeavor to cease and desist before you wreck this country by subverting the education of our young people. Without scientific research and the substantial harvests it reaps, the US would turn into something like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan or a similarly backwards nation. The West has been through all of that in the Middle Ages. We in the US were saved by the Enlightenment and the freedoms it disseminated through our Constitution and Bill of Rights, so wisely laid down by our free-thinking, rational, non-fundamentalist Founding Fathers. Do not attempt to rewrite history. Science and liberty go hand-in-hand much like ignorance and fundamentalist religion do, because, unlike fundamentalist faith, both science and liberty depend upon honesty, integrity and the right every man has to have his voice heard. Our shores should be wiped of your scourge once and for all through proper education, open discourse and wholesome, fair, unbigoted values untainted by prejudice brought on by religious doctrine.
I’ve read the transcripts. Judge Jones gave you a fairer hearing than you deserve, because as is evidenced by your action and your words, ID creationists have shown themselves to be duplicitous, scheming, two-faced saboteurs of innocent minds, frothing apologists for bizarre, preposterous dogma, and disingenuous promulgators of fraudulent pseudo-science. You are too arrogant, too dishonest and too self-centered to be scientists. You lack the humility.
Mr. Klinghoffer--this is a very nice collection of quotes from evolutionists saying ID has no peer-review. I don't understand why they cannot just admit that ID has peer-reviewed papers. Why do you think they have to deny this?
Here's a crazy idea regarding the Wikipedia censorship: why not get a long list of people to offer maybe 3 minutes out of every other day to update the ID page with accurate information?
I've never edited Wikipedia myself, but if we could make a good 'template' page of some sort, and just copy/paste it at our scheduled 'time-slot,' we could potentially cement accurate info about ID on its wiki page.
Just a crazy idea :)
Of course, what would probably happen is that zealous anti-ID advocates would generate a list of their own, making the page's factual accuracy swap drastically every few seconds.