If you’ve been around any of the major intelligent design blogs over the past year, you’ll probably be familiar with BIO-Complexity already. For those unfamiliar, it’s an online, open-access, pro-intelligent design journal that claims to incorporate peer review – an essential part of the modern scientific process – into its operations. However, peer review doesn’t mean much when all your peers are highly sympathetic to your hypotheses and conclusions, and the intelligent design community has always been partial to letting sympathetic scientists endorse their “research” without a hint of thorough critique.
Apparently wary of this trend and the lack of scientific credibility brought along with it, the founders of BIO-Complexity (BC) have tried to advertise the journal as an open space for pro-ID papers to be published, as opposed to being just another insular ID echo chamber. This is reflected in BC‘s Editorial Policies page, under the heading “Purpose”:
BIO-Complexity is a peer-reviewed scientific journal with a unique goal. It aims to be the leading forum for testing the scientific merit of the claim that intelligent design (ID) is a credible explanation for life. Because questions having to do with the role and origin of information in living systems are at the heart of the scientific controversy over ID, these topics—viewed from all angles and perspectives—are central to the journal’s scope.
To achieve its aim, BIO-Complexity is founded on the principle of critical exchange that makes science work. Specifically, the journal enlists editors and reviewers with scientific expertise in relevant fields who hold a wide range of views on the merit of ID, but who agree on the importance of science for resolving controversies of this kind. Our editors use expert peer review, guided by their own judgement, to decide whether submitted work merits consideration and critique. BIO-Complexity aims not merely to publish work that meets this standard, but also to provide expert critical commentary on it. [Emphasis added]
This seems to imply that BC‘s editors and reviewers have mixed opinions about ID’s validity, right? Perhaps some of them aren’t ID proponents, supporters or sympathisers? If that’s the case, perhaps it’s a fair and balanced journal after all! This above sentiment was recently mirrored by an ID proponent I know, so I decided to check it out for myself. Does BIO-Complexity‘s editorial board contain critics of ID, or at the very least, people who are not affiliated with the intelligent design movement?
I created a list of all the editorial board members, complete with their status in the ID movement and links to evidence that supports this status. These statuses come in six flavours:
- Proponent: This person is actively involved in the ID movement. Includes explicit creationists.
- Supporter: This person has shown support for ID, but is not as actively involved in the movement as others.
- Sympathetic: This person hasn’t explicitly supported ID, but shows signs that they do.
- Neutral: This person is exactly neutral about ID – they neither support it nor are critical.
- Critic: This person is critical of ID.
- Unknown: Not enough information is known about this person to make a decision on their ideas about ID.
When a person’s viewpoint was ambiguous based on available data, I awarded multiple statuses, with their true viewpoint lying somewhere on a spectrum between the two.
———
Matt Leisola: Proponent – Based on this.
Douglas Axe: Proponent – Based on this.
Ann Gauger: Proponent – Based on this.
David Abel: Supporter/Sympathetic – Based on this.
William Basener: Proponent – Based on this and this.
Walter Bradley: Proponent – Based on this and this.
Stuart Burgess: Proponent – Based on this and this.
Russell Carlson: Proponent – Based on this.
William Dembski: Proponent – Based on this.
Marcos Eberlin: Proponent – Based on this.
Charles Garner: Supporter - Based on this and this.
Loren Haarsma: Sympathetic – Based on this and this.
Peter Imming: Proponent – Based on this and this.
James Keener: Sympathetic – Based on this.
David Keller: Supporter – Based on this and this.
Branko Kozulic: Unknown – “Based” on this.
Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig: Supporter – Based on this.
Jed Macosko: Supporter/Proponent – Based on this.
Robert Marks: Proponent – Based on this and this.
Scott Minnich: Proponent – Based on this.
Norman Nevin: Supporter/Proponent – Based on this.
Edward Peltzer: Proponent – Based on this and this.
Colin Reeves: Proponent – Based on this and this.
Siegfried Scherer: Sympathetic – Based on this and this.
Ralph Seelke: Proponent – Based on this and this.
David Snoke: Proponent – Based on this and this.
Richard Sternberg: Sympathetic/Supporter – Based on this and this.
Scott Turner: Supporter – Based on this and this.
Jiří Vácha: Sympathetic/Supporter – Based on this.
John Walton: Supporter/Proponent – Based on this and this.
Jonathan Wells: Proponent – Based on this and this.
———
As you can see, all of the editorial board members (except one) are either sympathetic to or supporters or proponents of intelligent design. The odd one out is Branko Kozulic, about whose ID viewpoint I could find very little. I doubt he’s a hardcore ID critic, however.
So, make up your own mind: do you think BIO-Complexity is a journal with an editorial board that has “a wide range of views on the merit of ID”, or is it simply another place for ID proponents to submit “research” to uncritical peer review and pass it off as legitimate science?
The comparison you're trying to make isn't valid. I could get into significant detail here, but I don't have the time. Put briefly, ID is usually "based" on negative arguments against evolutionary theory when you get into the "research" ID proponents produce to support it – good examples of this are the papers currently available on BIO-Complexity: how many of them provide positive evidence for ID, and how many criticise evolutionary theory? Because of this, a person who is ID sympathetic is much more likely to wave through a paper if it criticises evolution because they already have that bias – they're an ID supporter because they don't think evolutionary theory is correct (in whole or in part). Controversial issues need review from people who DON'T think that idea is correct – they remain unconvinced by the evidence. "Pro-Darwin" people are the perfect reviewers for an ID paper (one that criticises evolution or not), because they will LOOK for flaws, not assume everything is in order just because they already agree with the conclusion. It's the way science is done.
You wouldn't think a journal about the efficacy of homeopathy that had only homeopaths on its editorial board would be a very balanced journal, now would you?
"Controversial issues need review from people who DON'T think that idea is correct – they remain unconvinced by the evidence"
This is an excellent point. It's a good general research methodology as well — if you are performing an experiment, first assume your results are incorrect or invalid and try to objectively prove yourself wrong. If you fail, it's a good sign that your results are valid. (or at the very least that they deserve further investigation)
Of the three articles that Bio-complexity managed to publish since it was launched, two of the first authors are on the editorial board (plus the last author of the second article; the first doesn't have a second author). Two of the four authors of the third paper are also on the editorial board. This isn't a journal, it's a circle jerk.
ETA: Siegfried Scherer is a German creationist. He's not a proponent of ID, you could even say that he's critical of ID – because he's a proponent of "special creation" (there's no point to promoting stealth creationism in Germany; fortunately, there's no chance that creationism or ID will be taught in public schools anytime soon, so you can as well be honest about your position).
Great research … BIO-complexity's peer reviewers are certainly stacked in favor of ID (the idea of Jonathan Wells objectively reviewing anything strains credulity). I agree that Scherer is more properly a full blown creationist. I might toss in also Leisola, Burgess, Reeves and Walton, since their connections are completely YEC (Answers in Genesis, for instance, never notes scientists who are not completely on board with the ideology). I think Turner may qualify as neutral though, or at best mildly sympathetic, since his published work shows no signs of abandoning evolutionary perspectives (the fact that arch evolutionist but neo-Darwinian critic Lynn Margulis endorsed Turner's 2006 book puts him in that camp that often gets unfairly coopted by creationists)
Sweet! So the fact that your review lacks any objectivity is not a problem amiright?? Any neo-Darwinist can't be objective about ID so you have a stalemate aye? The religion of neo-Darwinism can not be questioned and is in deed a circle jerk if it will not allow ID or any ideology that is not atheistic. If the neo-Darwinist had nothing to fear then you would not have the issue you present. But if science shakes the foundation for atheism then it must be bias and be rejected at all cost right??
Nice strawman – the issue raised was not whether the IDists can be 'objective' (I'm not sure what it is supposed to mean – the closest thing that I can find in the sciences is seriously considering evidence against arguments, and carefully thinking through others' arguments) about Darwinian theories and their evidence, but whether the reviewers of bio-complexity actually do hold a wide variety of views on the merits of ID. So perhaps you could show the variety of views that that editorial board holds on exactly that issue. I look forward to your list, for presumably it differs from the above.
So why am I sceptical of ID? I see no methodology of falsification. Evolution has multiple falsification methodologies, i.e. one can show that a given species didn't evolve from another species, yet the set of non-disproved (and otherwise substantial) evolutionary relationships is decidedly non-empty. We can falsify fossil evolutionary relationships using radio-dating and occasionally genetics, so what are the comparable methods of falsification for ID? We can disprove, using precisely such methods as listed that sharks evolved from whales or ichthyosaurs.
And what science is this that shakes the foundation for (of?) atheism?
Then archeology, forensics, and SETI are not a science for you? They have a methodology for falsification but a good skeptic would ask how falsification is valid if it can't it self be falsified. Yet you seem to overly regard falsification so here is a method that falsifies the search for specified complexity… It is called neo-Darwinism. Are there limits to what evolution can do? Can it account for all emergence from eukaryote to the symbiosis of a host of biological entities that had to co-develop? Neo-Darwinism is worshiped as a science that has shown god/s unnecessary. But the quasi religion of naturalism is not only against God but is against science as bottom up emergence means that our faculties are in no way reliable beyond the four F's of Feeding, Fighting, Flight, and Reproduction. So as products of the primordial slime you have no higher cognitive ability then needed in the 4F's. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-scienc… There is no strawman to our meat-puppet status if naturalism / materialism is true. We have competing worldviews do we not? I was once an atheist who did become skeptical of pure skepticism and the poverty of verificationism. –I look forward to your list, for presumably it differs from the above. — The strawman in this article is that there must be a requirement to have counter sympathies. Do science journals populate the peer review staff with with those who have Luddite sympathies? Anti-scientists or anti-evolutionists? In fact ID recognizes evolution and sees the explanations that are emergent complexities yet also recognizes that there are limitations to this. We are not meat-puppet chordates like the naturalists would have us believe. ID is a poor argument for God though as any intelligent organic gardener will do. This intelligence if powerful enough need not be the least efficient in design either. So what is there to fear from this scientific endeavor that most definitely uses the scientific method. Peer review today seems to be more about censorship then science lest the wrong flavor of science be given credibility and an egalitarian place at the free and open market place of ideas.
Falsifying the basis of falsification? Logical coherence generally helps, so absent that, it is probably false. How about falsifying logic? Presumably logic is an artefact of our minds… mathematical considerations also apply – although I've seen some gruesome mathematical frauds emanating from ID quarters, especially with regards to probability (e.g. what is the probability that all amino acids will be right-handed? If it is in contemporary earth organisms, one, as no cell has the ability to generate anything else.) I have at this point no hypothesis – there is no guarantee that falsification based discovery can discover complete knowledge – but I don't see any substantial alternative – what you seem to want is something that gives all knowledge, or at least finishes the search for knowledge (by blaming 'god' for any phenomenon not well understood). I don't pretend to myself that I can even possibly have complete knowledge – such a search strikes me as quixotic, and liable to induce self-delusion – I can only try to understand some of the phenomena around me.
As for your four Fs, that ignores things like unintentional consequences, and aid that such unintentional consequences might have for the four Fs. All of them are resource intensive – our intelligence (presumably initially arising by accident) at some point aided the four Fs, as we wouldn't need to evolve new genetic pathways to achieving a given purpose/using a given energy source, but could instead develop mental understanding and achieve the same much faster. There are also rather interesting investigations into how things like sharing develop, from an evolutionary perspective (a rather religious fellow gave me these references):
http://www.ped.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/pub…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPXUodzQTMw
As for verificationism, I hold to the opposite – call it falsificationism if you wish.
As to ID, I'll speak for myself, and ask (again) what methodologies it's adherents have developed to falsify portions of it – evolutionary biology has plenty of such mechanisms – the sharks example above is illustrative (see – I can also repeat talking points…).
As for peer review, the stuff that gets 'censored' (i.e. rejected by peers for publication in prestigious journals, yet publishable in other venues) is generally poorly conceived and/or fraud – the few exceptions (conservatism in the scientific establishment) are mostly underdeveloped, and the authors tend to win out as they gather incontrovertible evidence.
You never fail to amaze. Your commenting on logic is worth the price of admission. I have rarely seen someone post totally inaccurate information on such a consistent basis. Most people at least interpret some stuff correctly, albeit on accident. Do you ever even accept that your position may possibly be incorrect? Hint…that is the first step in an intellectual debate, otherwise we get the standard regurgitations ad nauseam, as evident.
Sure – like anyone else I can be wrong, and when shown to be wrong, I admit it. Heck, when will posted the HGT stuff, I took it very seriously. If you are of the belief that I'm wrong, post information, and argue your case. I've argued today, to you, as to why ID falsification is nothing of the sort – you are free to believe whatever you wish, but I'll argue what I understand. On standard regurgitation… you really want to go there, what with you repeating standard ID nonsense? A simple logical test demolishes the falsification standard you posited earlier.
Now I take it that you want to argue (seeing as it is the most readily falsifiable and substantial point above) that somehow nature would have amino acids being randomly left and right-handed, irrespective of the producing organism (otherwise why wouldn't common chirality be suggestive evidence of evolution?), so I eagerly await the evidence for this – I hope that my status as non-biologist does not make me too far beneath your contempt to seriously consider the request.
jackanapes…good luck man, logical and solid scientific arguments are mostly a waste here:) After all, why should naturalists be accountable for the sheer and utter failure of their views so long as they can tell themselves they have it all figured out and there's no scientific debate. And the beat goes on…
Silly…And even sad…
It would be interesting to make the same “game” with this list (just an example)..
http://www.pnas.org/site/misc/masthead.shtml
Do you think that all those guys “..hold a wide variety of views on the merits of..” evolution?
And they have economic support from the mainstream “orthodox” side of science..
“Inquisition” would be the proper word..
LOL