Saturday, July 06, 2013

Discovery Institute Claims Bias in Eric Hedin Case

The Muncie Star Press is reporting on a complain filed by the Discovery Institute that the panel set to review the class of Eric Hedin is biased away from ID.  Seth Slabaugh writes:
A national organization supporting assistant professor of physics Eric Hedin is charging that a faculty panel appointed to review Hedin’s “Boundaries of Science” course at Ball State University is far from impartial. Three of the four panelists are connected to groups opposed to intelligent design, says John West, vice president of the Seattle-based, intelligent-design think tank The Discovery Institute.
The people that are on the panel are experts in the field of astronomy, biology and philosophy. The complaint does not seem to address that. The problem is that, as scientists, they don't like ID. There is a distinct problem here. It is not likely that anyone qualified to sit on that panel will like ID. Whatever the Discovery Institute thinks, your average scientist does not think that ID is science. It has no testable framework or general theory and consists largely of taking pot shots at evolution. I doubt the DI could find anyone that would be acceptable on that panel except their own fellows, at which point the rank and file scientists would come out of the woodwork and cry foul—justifiably. Therefore, they can complain about the setup but they have  nothing to put in its place. 

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