BIO-Complexity: A New Journal

The Discovery Institute is promoting a new peer-reviewed journal, BIO-Complexity, which is funded by the Biologic Institute, an arm of the Center for Science and Culture. Here is the mission statement:

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.

Jay Richards has written a story about the new journal on the Discovery Institute's main site in which, along the way, they commit another terminological inexactitude.One of the major complaints voiced by those espousing ID is that they cannot get heard. Richards claims that the peer review process is a Catch-22 because, while an article has to face review and revision, if it has a hint of "design" it is rejected. He writes:

But surely, you might ask, there’s an open-minded editor at some journal somewhere who would give ID a fair shake? I do know of one such editor, Richard Sternberg, who several years ago sent out for review an article by some guy defending a design perspective and then, when the article passed peer-review, Sternberg published it. If there are any remaining open-minded editors willing to send out similar articles for peer-review, the Sternberg affair reminds them what will happen if they do.

This account is wholly and completely false. Here, in fact, is what happened.

• Stephen Meyer (some guy) wrote a paper on the Cambrian Explosion called The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories, which showed up in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington in 2004. The paper was reviewed quite negatively in many places, Panda's Thumb being one, the Paleontological Association being another.
  
• Richard Sternberg handled the entire editorial process himself. He claims that he sent the paper out to several individuals to read but has never identified who these people were.
• A statement issued by the Council of the Biological Society of Washington, the publishers of the journal states that the paper never would have made it through the review process had it been done so correctly. It reads:

  The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors 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.

  
  
• The paper was withdrawn subsequent to publication when it was pointed out that the quality of the science was unacceptable.
  

Following the Sternberg affair, the American Association for the Advancement of Science issued a statement on Intelligent Design. All the Sternberg affair should tell prospective article writers is what happens when the proper procedures for peer review aren't followed. The whole publication of the article has the appearance of having been done "under the table." It is not encouraging that a writer for the Discovery Institute cannot get the basic facts right regarding so prominent an incident.

Beyond this, however, there is a further, perhaps deeper problem inherent in this whole endeavor. Much of Richards' post (and indeed much of the writings of most ID supporters) laments the fact that intelligent design cannot get a "fair shake" in the academic community as a whole and that, with the advent of this new journal, things will be different.

Why, then, is the editorial board composed almost entirely of Discovery Institute fellows or people that are already known to be sympathetic to the intelligent design argument? The editorial board for the journal consists of thirty individuals. This list includes Michael Behe (Darwin's Black Box, The Edge of Evolution), Scott Minnich, William Dembski (No Free Lunch), Richard Sternberg, Robert Marks, Jonathan Wells (Icons of Evolution) and Douglas Axe to name a few.

This is how the review process is set up:

Manuscripts submitted as Research Articles or Critical Reviews that fall within the stated scope and adhere to the journal's standards of originality, clarity, format, and tone are assigned to a member of the Editorial Board for peer review. Two or more reviewers will be consulted for each reviewed manuscript. Authors are encouraged to suggest suitable reviewers, though the Editor may elect to use other reviewers.

Now here's the real catch-22 situation: in order to gain much needed credibility, the BIO-Complexity editorial board must employ reviewers that are well-known in the biological community and can competently vet (or not) a given paper. Without this assurance, the scientific community will have no way of knowing how any given ID-supportive paper was reviewed and no credibility will have been gained. This is exacerbated by the fact that the Discovery Institute does not have a good track record in published literature supporting intelligent design.

To give up the identity of the reviewers, on the other hand, compromises the "anonymous reviewer" aspect of the process. Compounding this might be the reluctance of many well-respected biologists to want to be known as having reviewed an ID-supportive paper.

This was all gone about the wrong way. One way that this could have worked is if an isolated researcher without ties to the Discovery Institute decided to start a new biocomplexity journal and recruited known experts in the field. Then, and only then, could papers be submitted in an impartial way and only then would ID stand on its own merits. The way BIO-Complexity is currently set up, with a heavily pro-ID editorial board, it already looks like the fix is in.

What would they do with a paper that is sent out to an anonymous reviewer who tears it up? The only paper in recent memory other than the Meyer 2004 paper that has attempted to support intelligent design in an academic setting is the Dembski/Marks paper from a few months back which was criticized (here and here) as having little bearing on biological systems and mathematically unsound.

The only other way that this would work is if competent scholars in biological complexity were to submit papers. Then the journal would probably get a wide variety of papers, some supportive of ID (maybe) and some not. Even if some of them were not supportive, though, the board would be foolish not to publish them. If it only accepted ID friendly papers which were then reviewed by the biological community as a whole and found wanting, it would be another nail in the coffin for the scientific argument for ID.

The Discovery Institute have set themselves up a huge task here and are finally putting their cards on the table. Lets see what kind of hand they have.

The Creation/Evolution Debate: A Tale of Two Sides

Ambassador Kosh once said: "There are three sides to every argument: your side, their side and the truth." A Tad over two weeks ago, while I was hip-deep in finishing up classes and planning final exams, a debate over Intelligent Design and evolution took place between Stephen Meyer and Richard von Sternberg on one side and Michael Shermer and Donald Prothero on the other. As they say, it is all a matter of perspective. Prothero writes an account for Panda's Thumb:

My subjective summary of it is that our side did very well: I caught them off-guard with new arguments they had no answer for; Shermer pushed them hard repeatedly to state who the “Designer” was (and Meyer finally conceded it was God), while we both pushed them hard on the fact that neither of them ever addressed the topic of the debate, “Origins of Life.” I could tell that they were rattled a number of times, and I definitely shook up Meyer and got under his skin with my answers. Several times Meyer and Sternberg were arguing with each other, leaving the moderator, our side, and the audience wondering who runs their show. The best sign of my effect on them was Meyer trying to challenge MY credentials, or dodging a tough question by playing the sympathy card and calling me “condescending” — and the virulent post on the Discovery Institute site this morning, full of lies and spin. Of course, the event is staged so that no one will really “win”. Their supporters turned out and dominated the audience, but I had a LOT of people come up to me during the book signing (we sold a LOT of books) and congratulate me, or discuss points further with me. And we got just as much applause and sympathetic laughter at our well-turned phrases as they did.

As far as the actual points of the debate were concerned, it was territory recently trod by both sides. Prothero writes:

Meyer had debated Shermer many times before, but apparently he did little to prepare for me. Just minutes before the debate, he ran out and bought a copy of my 2007 “Evolution” book (since he had never read it), after he tried to cadge the copy for free from my wife who was guarding the Skeptics Society booth. (She insisted that he pay for it). I know I caught him off-guard, since I have degrees in both biology and geology, and know most of their arguments better than they do. The only time I did not get a solid reply in was during the statements where there was no opportunity for rebuttal, or when we had run out of time.

Our “affirmative side” went first, and Shermer did a quick run-through about why ID is a religious and not a scientific doctrine, methodological naturalism and the scientific method, and “god of the gaps.” I took the remaining 15 minutes with my Powerpoint presentation where I slammed them hard and fast with long list of things: why ID is not testable (including bad designs like the left recurrent laryngeal nerve, the inverted retina, and the whale’s pelvis and femora); then a five slide run-through of the molecular research into origin of life, from Miller-Urey to the stuff published in the past few years, emphasizing over and over how many successes the molecular biologists have had at simulating every step of the process; then a quick run through the Pre-Cambrian fossil record, focusing on why it is not the “Cambrian explosion” but the Cambrian “slow fuse” (and pointing out that I’m a paleontologist, I’ve actually seen and collected these outcrops, and neither of my opponents had).

That the two sides seem to be light years apart on these arguments is clear from the article by Rob Crowther that the Discovery Institute ran about the debate. This is how they saw things:

It was all shaping up to be a serious heavyweight bout. And then Meyer and Sternberg simply KO'd the competition in the opening round. If I were being generous I might say that Prothero tripped over his own arrogance and impaled himself on his condescension, but let's be honest; he was completely knocked out by Sternberg. I think Sternberg earned a third degree tonight, one in evolutionary bulldozing.

The debate video will be made available at some point by American Freedom Alliance, the sponsors of the debate, along with Center for Inquiry, The Skeptics Society and Discovery Institute.

That there is no love lost between Prothero and the Discovery Institute was relayed in the closing of the article:

To call the debate a massacre would be a discredit to Sitting Bull. The only thing I can say is that Shermer needs to add a point to his booklet on how to debate "creationists" — namely, leave Donald Prothero at home in his van by the river.

This guy is to be taken seriously? I had to remind myself not to laugh every so often during his presentation — it was so pathetic and ill-informed. Basically, Shermer and Prothero blathered on about supernaturalism, and Meyer ceded his time to Sternberg, who made an interesting presentation about whale evolution. Then he proceeded to point out the topic of the debate to Shermer and Prothero: Has Evolutionary Theory Adequately Explained the Origins of Life?, something which they never addressed because they were so busy falling all over themselves to denounce intelligent design.

One wonders what was debated since both Prothero and Crowther claim that the other side did not know the topic of the debate. It certainly doesn't help either cause when the principals are so vitriolic and obviously show such disdain for each other. I have not read Meyer's book yet and should before commenting on it. Prothero wrote a review of the book for Amazon that is scathing. It did not help that many of the people that commented on his review accused him of never having read it. We must have civil discourse in this debate if we are to accurately make our views heard.

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