Discovery Institute

I’d like to call attention to two recent articles over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. The first is about Casey Luskin, blogger for the Discovery Institute. The second is about William Dembski, the “Isaac Newton of information theory." In the first piece, Brayton writes about how Luskin has referred to Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education as “Darth Vader.” Brayton quotes Luskin: “In the past I’ve compared Eugenie C. Scott to Darth Vader because she is full of internal contradictions, knows in her heart she’s lying, powerful, persuasive, and most importantly, she travels around representing the dominating power (the Empire) and fighting the good guys. All in the name of …well, I’m not exactly sure what her motivation is yet. It’s certainly not truth." Yet Luskin provides no examples of lies or ulterior motives, and has used false statements to argue against statements she has made. In one example: “I asked her why she thinks ID isn’t science. She said it isn’t science because it does not refer to natural law (a reference to Ruse’s testimony which he later recanted).” Brayton, speaking directly to philosopher Michael Ruse, asked him if, in the face of criticisms from other philosophers about his position on the demarcation between science and non-science (e.g., see Larry Laudan’s piece in Ruse’s book But Is It Science?), he holds that Intelligent Design is non-science. As Brayton writes, “He replied that it is non-science because it does not refer to natural law. If Ruse has recanted, he appears to be unaware of it." As Brayton notes in the same piece, when he’s made charges of dishonesty against William Dembski, he’s backed them up–and he’s done so yet again, showing that Dembski has continued to misrepresent the work of Douglas Axe. In a 2000 paper, Axe did work which focused on a particular gene which confers resistance to certain antibiotics. As Brayton summarizes the paper, “it showed that this particular enzyme could retain most of its function even if it was hit with a major mutational event that resulted in changing as many as 10 of its amino acid residues simultaneously, could retain some of its function (and thus still be capable of selection) even if a mutation resulted in as much as 20% of its total amino acid residues being substituted simultaneously, and that if 40 mutations happened simultaneously, it would stop functioning." Dembski, however, summarizes it this way: “But there is now mounting evidence of biological systems for which any slight modification does not merely destroy the system’s existing function, but also destroys the possibility of any function of the system whatsoever (Axe, 2000)." Brayton points out that Matt Inlay criticized Dembski for this misrepresentation on The Panda’s Thumb back in February, and that Inlay has shown that Dembski has known this is a misrepresentation for at least two years. Brayton concludes: Dembski has crossed over a line at this point, I think. I don’t think it’s any longer possible to maintain that he is merely an ideologue undergoing cognitive dissonance, or that he’s just engaging in wishful thinking of the type we are all probably prone to when defending ideas we have a personal stake in. He is now simply lying outright, and he has to know that.

This is old news, but I haven’t noted it here before–the two planned expert witnesses from the Discovery Institute for the Dover trial were Stephen Meyer and William Dembski, who both withdrew from the case. The DI attempted to back-door their testimony into the trial in the form of an amicus brief. The judge ruled that the brief was inadmissible, concluding: In addition, after a careful review of the Discovery Institute’s submission, we find that the amicus brief is not only reliant upon several portions of Mr. Meyer’s attached expert report, but also improperly addresses Mr. Dembski’s assertions in detail, once again without affording Plaintiffs any opportunity to challenge such views by cross-examination. Accordingly, the “Brief of Amicus Curiae, the Discovery Institute” shall be stricken in its entirety.A fuller quote (as well as a Fuller quote) may be found at Stranger Fruit. I seem to recall reading a comment from the judge with respect to DI’s legal representation that he wasn’t running a law school… if I find it I’ll update this entry with a link.

In the Dover trial, Behe was questioned at some length about what was demonstrated in the paper he co-authored with David Snoke, “Simulating Evolution by Gene Duplication of Protein Feature that Requires Multiple Amino Acid Residues,” which the Discovery Institute lists as a peer-reviewed journal article supporting intelligent design. At the Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog, Ed Brayton quotes a long section from Behe’s cross-examination about this paper about what it actually demonstrates. It has been represented as demonstrating that a particular kind of irreducibly complex system cannot evolve. What it actually shows is something rather different. As Ed puts it: Yet what does he admit under oath that his own study actually says? It says that IF you assume a population of bacteria on the entire earth that is 7 orders of magnitude less than the number of bacteria in a single ton of soil…and IF you assume that it undergoes only point mutations…and IF you rule out recombination, transposition, insertion/deletion, frame shift mutations and all of the other documented sources of mutation and genetic variation…and IF you assume that none of the intermediate steps would serve any function that might help them be preserved…THEN it would take 20,000 years (or 1/195,000th of the time bacteria have been on the earth) for a new complex trait requiring multiple interacting mutations - the very definition of an irreducibly complex system according to Behe - to develop and be fixed in a population. In other words, even under the most absurd and other-worldly assumptions to make it as hard as possible, even while ruling out the most powerful sources of genetic variation, an irreducibly complex new trait requiring multiple unselected mutations can evolve within 20,000 years. And if you use more realistic population figures, in considerably less time than that. It sounds to me like this is a heck of an argument against irreducible complexity, not for it.The full exchange quoted at Dispatches is worth reading, and more commentary can be found at The Panda’s Thumb, where John Timmer points out that Based on the math presented there [in Behe & Snoke], it appears that this sort of mutation combination could arise about 10^14 times a year, or something like 100 trillion times a year.

That they are primarily involved in a PR effort is made clear by the way they declare victories where they’ve lost, as they did with regard to science standards in New Mexico. This time, they suckered the NYT into repeating the falsehood.

The Intelligent Design movement recently hired a PR firm to promote its views. A critic using the name “vax” commented on this at William Dembski’s (the “Isaac Newton” of ID) blog: Why would ID need to be ‘promoted’? If it is science (as claimed) then the arguments and facts and should speak for themselves. If it’s just a public relations exercise combining religion, politics and deceptive scientific-sounding jargon, however… This led to a response from “Dan”: ...