Swift‐boating Darwin: alternative or complementary science

American scientists breathed a collective sigh of relief last December after Judge John Jones ruled against teaching intelligent design (ID) in the classrooms of science. “The overwhelming evidence is that Intelligent Design is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism and not a scientific theory,” Jones declared in his 139-page decision, issued in Dover, PA. “It is an extension of the Fundamentalists’ view that one must either accept the literal interpretation of Genesis or else believe in the godless system of evolution . . . The evidence presented in this case demonstrates that [intelligent design] is not supported by any peer-reviewed research, data or publications.” (1, 2) But Dover isn’t over. Proponents of ID stubbornly refused to give up their campaign: “A thousand opinions by a court that a particular scientific theory is invalid will not make that scientific theory invalid,” claimed Richard Thompson, of the Thomas More Law Center, a group long devoted to Swift-boating Charles Darwin. The center had previously boasted that when ID had been inserted into the Dover science curriculum “biology students in this small town received perhaps the most balanced science education regarding Darwin's theory of evolution than any other public school student in the nation.” (3) Robert Crowther, director of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank (so to speak) complained to The New York Times, that Judge Jones’s decision “asserts the factually false claim that ID proponents haven’t published peer-reviewed papers. A number of peerreviewed papers and books are listed on the Discovery Institute website at www.discovery.org/csc/.” (4, 5) William Demski, a mathematician and fellow of the Discovery Institute, insisted that “I think the big lesson is, let's go to work and really develop this theory and not try to win this in the court of public opinion . . . the burden is on us to produce.” (1) Demski , you’ve got a heck of a job to do. The website of the Discovery Institute reveals that the “peer-reviewed evidence” for ID consists of four articles. Each presents a theoretical argument that fails the test of experimental validation. Each has appeared in a publication devoted to pure speculation, including the occasional Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington; the thrice-yearly Italian/Indian review Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum; the yearly Dynamical Genetics; or the every-other-yearly Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Design and Nature (5). One concludes that active investigators of ID do not stoop to rapid publication. Nor does prestige dictate their choice of venue. High Wire Press (6), where 70 of the highest-cited journals have been archived since 1948, lists Darwin’s “natural selection” in 271 titles—almost all experimental—whereas “intelligent design” appears in the title of but a single article, a review published in the Journal of Theological Studies (7). Alas, ID loses out to another system of alternative science: “Mesmer” or “Mesmerism” appears in 20 titles devoid of experimental promise.