The Mendacious World of Religious Scholarship -- "Peer Review" and the Discovery Institute

Last night I spent some quality time at the website of the Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture.  The Discovery Institute is the Prime Mover behind the conservative Christian campaign to bring Intelligent Design (formerly known as Creationism) into American public schools.  It is a non-profit public policy think tank with a budget of over $4,000,000.  What caught my eye was the list of “Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design” under the category “Scientific Research and Scholarship.”  I was surprised to find this heading, for one of the criticisms often leveled against supporters of Intelligent Design is that they never publish anything in peer-reviewed journals (such journals are crucial to modern scientific discourse).  For a moment I thought that maybe critics had been treating the proponents of Intelligent Design unfairly.  But only for a moment, for a little research of my own quickly set me straight.


The point of this list of "Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications" is to respond to “critics of intelligent design [who] often claim that design advocates don’t publish their work in appropriate scientific literature.”  But the first clue that the Discovery Institute is more interested in obfuscation than clarity appears when it makes the following point:

Some of the most important and groundbreaking work in the history of science was first published not in scientific journals but in scientific books – including Copernicus' De Revolutionibus, Newton's Principia, and Darwin's Origin of Species (the latter of which was published in a prominent British trade press and was not peer-reviewed in the modern sense of the term).

Considering when these venerable tomes were published, this inane remark is no more meaningful than pointing out, too, that none of these works was written on a word processor.  More important, the Institute ignores the extent to which these critical works were indeed of central importance in the scientific discourse of their times -- unlike those written by proponents of  Intelligent Design.  But perhaps, I thought, the Institute simply has a remarkably skewed sense of history.

But then I checked into the list of publications.  The list is organized in two sections, with six articles of “higher interest to readers” at the top.  The fact that these six articles are listed again in the second section is not an accident -- in the spirit of "longer is better," it appears like a pathetic attempt to pad a meager resume.  I looked into the top six articles and here's what I found (please note that the creative deviations from standard bibligraphical notation are the product of the Institute's own intelligent design):

1)  Meyer, S. C. DNA and the origin of life: Information, specification and explanation, in Darwinism, Design, & Public Education (Michigan State University Press, 2003). Pp. 223-285.[sic]

This article is not a peer-reviewed scientific article in any meaningful sense of term, whether we're talking about "modern" peer review or what might have passed as such when Copernicus wrote in the 16th century.  A more detailed discussion of this issue can be found here, but I will outline the problems with the text in brief.  The article is a review of literature, not a presentation of original scientific research.  It is written by a philosopher of science, not a scientist.  It appeared in a book edited by two proponents of Intelligent Design, neither of whom are scientists, and one of whom is the author of the article, who cannot possibly be expected to subject his own work to adequate peer review.  The book itself is not a collection of scientific papers per se, but rather an inquiry as to whether the “controversies over biological origins” should be taught in public schools. Not surprisingly, given that 19 of the 27 essays are written by supporters of Intelligent Design (including the editors), the answer is "yes."

 2) William A. Dembski and  Robert J. Marks II, "Conservation of Information in Search: Measuring the Cost of Success," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics A, Systems & Humans, Vol. 39 (5):1051-1061 (September, 2009).

One author (Dembski) is a mathematician, philosopher, and theologian; the other (Marks) is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering; neither are biologists.  While the paper concerns a subject about which I am not qualified to comment (namely computer models that draw their inspiration from evolution), I can tell you this.  The abstract included in the Discovery Institute’s introduction to the article says that the paper is supposed to be a critique of “Darwinian Evolution” and implies that some “intelligent programmer” would be necessary to make the evolutionary process work.  But the paper itself is about computing – as in mathematical computer models of search algorithms. It is not about evolution.  It is not about biology.  It is not about Intelligent Design.  The closest it gets to mentioning Intelligent Design is a reference to "active information."  None of the following words make an appearance: “Darwin,” “Darwinism,” “Intelligent,” “Intelligence,” “Designer,” or ‘biology.”  References to evolution only appear as “evolutionary search,” “evolutionary computing”, “evolution strategy,” and “evolutionary algorithms.”

As for the journal, it seems like a peculiar place to conduct a debate regarding biological origins.  But  since the article is not about biological origins -- it is about mathematical computer models of search algorithms -- this is not a problem.  The interests of the Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society are as follows:

Development of systems engineering technology including problem definition methods, modeling, and simulation, methods of system experimentation, human factors engineering, data and methods, systems design techniques and test and evaluation methods.

Integration of the theories of communication, control, cybernetics, stochastics, optimization, and system structure towards the formulation of a general theory of systems.

Application at hardware and software levels to the analysis and design of biological, ecological, socio-economic, social service, computer information, and operational man-machine systems.

An article on mathematical computer models may very well have a legitimate home here.  I should mention that the authors' affiliations with Intelligent Design are mentioned in the biographical blurbs that append the article.  This redounds to the credit of the journal, for it shows that nobody is persecuting the authors for their religious beliefs by preventing them from publishing an article about mathematical computer models.  The journal does not hold against Dembski the fact that (in his own words spoken elsewhere) "what drives [him] in this [his support of Intelligent Design] is that [he] think[s] God's glory is being robbed by these naturalistic approaches to biological evolution."  Or the fact that he sees himself in a "cultural war" and wants "to see God get the credit for what he’s done."  Did I mention that the article is about mathematical computer models? A technical analysis about the paper can be found in the Metropolis Sampler, which concludes that "Dembski-Marks approach to evaluating model assumptions is both arbitrary and a poor reflection of scientific reasoning."  Yet another critical evalution can be found here.  But that's another story.  The story here is that, given that the Dembski now claims the paper is a case for Intelligent Design suggests its publication as something about quite different was a deceptive maneuver to attain scientific credibility.  This paper -- which the Institute showcases among its top six -- is, in fact, a Trojan horse in the service of God.

3) Stephen Meyer, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories" [sic] Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 117 (2004): 213-239.

Meyer is an executive officer and founding member of the Discovery Institute.  He is a philosopher of science, not a scientist.  He is also the author of the first article the Institute's list of featured  publications, and here makes an appearance for the second time, thus exposing the shallow depth of Intelligent Design's scholarly support.  His article is a review of literature and contains no new scholarship.  Details concerning the dubious "peer review" in this case can be found here.  But in short, the editor of the journal, Richard Sternberg, is a proponent of Intelligent Design, who resigned after the publication of this particular edition.  Contrary to standard editorial practise, he "reviewed" the article entirely on his own.  The “peer review” in this case became such an object of controversy and embarrassment that the journal’s publisher, the Council of the Biological Society of Washington, repudiated the article.  It noted that the paper was published “contrary to typical editorial practices” and that it “would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history.”  While the Discovery Institute hails the appearance of the article in a legitimate scientific journal as a sign of Intelligent Design's scientific credibility, it is in fact evidence of the duplicitous manner in which proponents of Intelligent Design pursue credentials and of a shameful betrayal of trust.

4) Lönnig, W.-E. Dynamic genomes, morphological stasis and the origin of irreducible complexity, Dynamical Genetics [sic], Pp. 101-119.

This article is often cited by Intelligent Design proponents, most frequently by the Discovery Institute itself.  But I couldn’t find anything regarding the "peer review" about this publication -- apart from the fact that it was removed from the Max Planck Institute's website because it didn't deal with "scientific issues."  That speaks volumes.

5) Jonathan Wells, "Do Centrioles Generate a Polar Ejection Force?," Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum 98 (2005): 37-62.

This is the only paper that appears legitimately in a peer reviewed journal and as such marks a major victory for Intelligent Design.  As to what the paper contributes to science, that's another question -- though, according to one critic, the support of Intelligent Design is superficial.  For a more in-depth critique of Well's approach to the subject more generally, check out the Panda's Thumb.

6) Scott Minnich and Stephen C. Meyer, "Genetic Analysis of Coordinate Flagellar and Type III Regulatory Circuits," Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Design  & Nature, Rhodes Greece, edited by M.W. Collins and C.A. Brebbia (WIT Press, 2004).

With this fine piece of scholarship, Meyer makes his appearance for the third time in a list of six articles that, according to the Institute, merits special attention.  And he is still not a scientist.  More important, however, is that this is by far the most ridiculous publication of the bunch.  I didn’t find anything about the paper, but I did find a few fellows from the Technical University of Vienna who, in relation to a different conference organized by the publisher (the Wessex Institute of Technology), denounced the publisher and warned that conferences organized by the WIT “will destroy confidence in scientific life.”  Describing the nature of "peer review" conducted by WIT, they pointed out that the conference organizers "accept EVERYTHING"; their proceedings are "worth NOTHING AT ALL." Suspecting that the operation was a fraud, they prepared four nonsensical papers in response to a call for papers on engineering and architecture: 1) how to create footprints on walls in public rooms; 2) how to render interior rooms without light; 3)  a copy of the conference organizer’s own introduction in its “call for papers”; 4) forty random phrases taken from a dictionary on information processing and linked together with technical sounding language.  All four papers were “reviewed and provisionally accepted” and would be published upon payment of a “registration fee.”  WIT seems to be operating what might be termed a cash-for-credibility scam.

And there we have it.  With all of its non-profit lucre, the Discovery Institute will no doubt be paying for a many more mock International Conferences on Design & Nature in order to bolster the scientific credentials of its theocratic agenda.  Or maybe they'll send their cultural warriors into the nation's libraries and slip pamphlets about Intelligent Design between the pages of scientific journals and thus proclaim that their theories are indeed in more peer-reviewed scientific journals than ever before.  On the basis of their fraudulent scholarship, the charlattan "scientists" of the religious right seek access to the public schools.  Instead, they should lose their license to operate all vehicles of scholarship, including pencils.