S2Focus

So has anyone seen any of the DI papers that
the mainstream scientific journals have refused
to publish? (For some strange reason, the DI
has not yet made copies of all those rejected
papers available on its web-site.)

theyeti

The DI is not "frozen out" of publicly funded research grants. To the best of my knowledge they've never applied for one, so this is a disingenuous claim, intended only to exercise their persecution complex. Given that they have proposed no kind of research program at all, it's hard to imagine exactly what they would do with a grant even if they got one. If they do have such a program, they could easily start work on it with the millions thrown at them by Ahmanson and numerous other supporters. But for some reason, they've chosen to spend it all on propaganda.

The complaint about peer-reviewed literature coming from pro-science groups isn't that IDists aren't getting their non-existent research published, it's that they want to get ID taught in public schools when there is zero evidence that it's taken seriously by the scientific community. In other words, only science should be taught in science class. If they can demonstrate that most scientists take ID seriously, that it's a significant minority opinion, and that there is interesting research being done to answer questions that ID brings up, then maybe they'll have a case for getting a paragraph or two inserted into a text book, or a teacher spending a few minutes during one class going over it. That's at least as much as most minority theories get during their salad days, and ID has nowhere near the empirical support that, for example, endosymbiosis had when it was first proposed. But a recent poll of Ohio scientists showed that almost none of them take ID seriously, and that none of them use it in their research. For some reason, the DI never cites that poll, they only cite the ones in which the public seems to agree that the "evidence against evolution" should be taught in schools, which is a loaded question. It seems like eveyone's opinion counts except that of praciticing scientists.

The DI's retort that they don't need to publish in peer-reviewed journals is stupid. They don't publish in peer-reviewed journals because they have absolutely nothing to publish other than polemics. Claiming that Darwin didn't do it either is both irrelevant and dishonest, because scientists back then did publish in journals, but the modern peer-review system was not yet in place. They have no excuse not to do it now. All they have left is to attack the peer-review system itself as being inadequate, convieniently ignoring it's incredible sucess over the last half century. While far from perfect, peer-review is certainly a better filter for quality science than is some given book publisher. And for them to compare themselves to the likes of Darwin is truly sickening.

Sometimes you don't get grants and you don't get published because you're full of shit. Maybe they should consider that possiblity.

theyeti