[00:00:04] Speaker A: Id the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
Welcome to id the future. Im your host Andrew McDermott. Today im welcoming back to the show writer and teacher Daniel Witt to reflect on the 2004 controversy that erupted when doctor Richard Sternberg published a paper supportive of intelligent design in a peer reviewed journal. We'll talk about the strategies that have been used by id detractors in the last quarter century to mock the intelligent design research project. And on the flip side, the progress that has been made since that unfortunate incident now 20 years ago. Daniel, welcome to id the future.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Hi Andrew.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Thank you for being with me tonight. Well, you wrote an
[email protected] recently that reflects on the Sternberg Smithsonian saga, but your focus was actually the fallacies and rhetorical strategies used to intimidate, persecute and cancel doctor Sternberg, as well as other id scientists and scholars before and after him. So let's start where your article starts, by reviewing the claim that id isn't bona fide science because it isn't published in peer reviewed journals. And as an example, you give us Wikipedia, whose own co founder, Larry Sanger, has called it an appallingly biased source. If you pull up the entry for intelligent design, I'm not talking years ago, I'm talking right now. If you pull the entry up in Wikipedia, not only will you be greeted with appallingly out of date images of id theorists like William Demski and Michael Behe, you'll find a host of appallingly inaccurate information and claims about the theory. Here's one such gem. The intelligent design movement has not published a properly peer reviewed article supporting id in a scientific journal and has failed to publish supporting peer reviewed research or data. Of course, this isnt true at all. As you point out, weve got a list, a running list of 186 pages and counting of peer reviewed and mainstream publications supporting intelligent design. The Wikipedia entry goes on, though, to suggest the idea that intelligent design articles are often blocked by journals because of their id content is pretty much a hoax or a conspiracy theory. Now, this move to criticize ID because of a supposed lack of peer reviewed published research and then turn right around and criticize the id theorists who point to journals as a closed shop against their work actually goes way back. You point to some 2001 comments by computer scientist Jeffrey Shallett about Bill Demski's book no free lunch.
So tell me, what does Shallot write about id, and what advice does he give to id theorists?
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Well, yeah, he has some very helpful advice. He says that id theorists could benefit enormously from peer review, implying, of course, that that hasnt occurred to them or that theyre avoiding trying to submit articles for peer review.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. So hes saying, hey, might be a good idea, guys, if you actually put some research in a, in a peer reviewed journal. Right. But he's kind of mocking in this way, although let's just pretend he's honest and he's well intended and this is constructive criticism. Right. He and other critics of ID should have been pleased when, in 2004, Stephen Meyer managed to get a paper that argued explicitly for intelligent design published in a respected peer reviewed journal that was the proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. Did Charlotte and others come out in praise of this development? Was this the start of a better relationship between id theorists and their opponents?
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Yeah. No.
I mean, you would hope so. But it's like if you don't peer review articles or you don't publish them in peer reviewed journals, then it's, oh, you know, if you want to be a real scientist, you should think about trying to publish real peer reviewed science. But then when one pro id article actually does get published, all hell breaks loose and you have everyone saying, how did this happen? This is a shame to the journal, and they can't be real peer reviewed. It must be fake. Must be. Maybe he submitted it to unqualified peer reviewers or, you know, they're coming up with all these reasons why it can't really have been peer reviewed if it's an ID article.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: Right?
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Kind of like a no true Scotsman fallacy. Like no true Scotsman would put sugar in his porridge. Well, I know a scotsman who does. Well, he's not a true scotsman if he puts sugar in his porridge. So therefore, no Scotsman's put sugar in their porridge.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: I don't know. You're a Scotsman. I'm curious, your take. Do scotsmen put sugar in their porridge?
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Well, you know, I do like a bowl of oatmeal porridge, as we call it. And I put all kinds of things in there, you know, cranberries, raisins, brown sugar. So I'm proving that fallacy wrong.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: You're not a Scotsman then.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: But, you know, this really shows the disingenuous nature of Jeffrey shallots comments, you know, and it kind of reveals this mocking tone. Okay, go ahead. You know, publish some peer reviewed work, and then when it actually comes out, it's quite the opposite. Um, you know, it was more like consternation that this was allowed to happen. Okay, let's review the basics of the Sternberg controversy. For those who aren't familiar or may have forgotten, where was doctor Sternberg working at the time, and what did he do to cause such a fear?
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Yeah. So, of course, he was an editor for the proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. That was just a volunteer position that he was doing. In his spare time, he worked for the National Institute of Health as an invertebrate taxonomist, and as part of that position, he was able to spend half of his time at the Smithsonian Institute working as a research associate for the National Museum of Natural History.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: And so he published this paper by Steve Meyer. He wasn't himself an id proponent. He wasn't sold on id, but he was open to considering it. And Steve Meyer submitted this article. He sent it in for peer review. It came back with notes. He sent it back to Steve Meyer. Steve Meyer updated it accordingly, and he published it, which is how peer review is supposed to work. But his associates at the Smithsonian Institute, they felt humiliated to be associated with someone who would publish a pro id article.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. So let's talk about the ways that Sternberg had his career systematically destroyed for daring to publish this.
What was kind of the result? Walk us through it. From the beginning to the unfortunate end.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Right. So they didn't.
It was. It was difficult for them to just fire him, just sort of dismiss him, because he still had three years on his contract, and they were worried about making a martyr of him. They say this in emails that have been revealed.
And so they got in touch with the National center for Science Education, which is an anti id and anti creationism organization, to sort of figure out a plan of how are we going to get rid of this guy? And they started creating a hostile work environment for him, taking away his keys and that sort of thing. There were rumors spread like crazy stuff, like he's some sort of creationist sleeper agent. He's not a real scientist.
He actually had. He has two PhDs in biology, and some of his colleagues had to actually circulate his cv to show actually, okay, he is a scientist. Then people were saying, well, before he was a scientist, he had extensive training as an orthodox priest.
Yeah, I think he was even accused of being a Republican, which I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, but there was just out of control paranoia going on, and they were looking for any excuse that they could to terminate his contract. They couldn't find one. One of the emails says that he hasn't yet been discovered to have done anything wrong, particularly compared to his peers.
So they didn't have a very good reason to terminate him. But that use of the word yet shows that they were looking for a reason, trying to find a reason so they could have an excuse other than, oh, he published an id paper, which isn't a valid reason to terminate his contract.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Right, right. So spreading conspiracy theories, wild accusations, questioning his qualifications as a scientist, and then starting to search for a pretext to fire him. All of these were happening as soon as this paper was published. Now, did they fire him or did they oust him another way?
[00:09:48] Speaker B: They eventually drove him out with a hostile work environment.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: Yeah. And how did they do that? What kind of things was he having to face now?
[00:09:56] Speaker B: Well, they changed his supervisor to someone who was hostile to him. They took away his privileges to access a certain area, like his office keys. They. You know, you had his colleagues saying a pro id person shouldn't be allowed to live on the same floor as the other scientists. It was just a very toxic situation. And actually, even the Smithsonian director of government relations, Nell Paine, she agreed with that assessment. She said that it looks to her like, after she reviewed some of the emails that were revealed by an investigation, she said it looks like the sort of management pressure that Sternberg was complaining about. And she kind of protested that you can't fire someone for doing things in their spare time. And the proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, his private, it wasn't connected to them, but unfortunately, she wasn't heeded.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She did come to his defense in certain ways and pointed out some. Some very common sense points. But as you say, she was not to prevail.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Well, she may have been heated in that they couldn't or they decided it would be unwise to just directly fire him.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: True.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: So they looked for other ways to do it and actually brought in this organization to counsel them on how to get rid of him without getting into legal trouble or a pr disaster or something.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, two federal investigations were eventually conducted to probe whether Doctor Sternberg had been the subject of unfair treatment. The US Office of Special Counsel and the subcommittee staff of the US House Committee on Government reform. What did those investigations find?
[00:12:02] Speaker B: Yeah, both investigations found that Sternberg was correct, that there had been discrimination against him, that he was being subjected to pressure by his managers, and, you know, they're trying to push him out of his job. They vindicated him. They couldn't do anything legally because of jurisdiction issues and because of his kind of complicated status as a research associate. But they concluded that yes, there was wrongdoing.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And he actually interviewed in the documentary expelled, no intelligence allowed. Ben Stein sat down with him and reviewed this chapter. And I recall Sternberg saying that his colleagues began to view him as an intellectual terrorist. And that's how bad it looked and felt, you know, as they were trying to, trying to cancel him and oust him from all this. Well, you linked to the findings of both of those investigations in your
[email protected]. dot so, listeners, if you want to read the letters that came from those investigations, we'll include links in the episode show notes, because it does make for interesting reading. Now, let me read more from your article. You right. So Sternberg lost his job, but at least now the truth was out. It was apparent to the world that the closed shop theory was right, and ID theorists werent to blame for the lack of ID friendly peer reviewed articles. After all, what editor would dare to submit a pro ID paper to peer review knowing he or she would get Sternbergs treatment? So everyone who had accused ID proponents of making up excuses and conspiracy theories apologized and dedicated themselves to making the scientific community more open to honest disputation. Ha. And then you write, just kidding. They went on as usual. Of course, in 2006, before the dust had even fully settled on the Sternberg fiasco, the NHS ran a hit piece titled defending Science education against intelligent a call to action. Let me read a few lines from that. Another plea often articulated by ID proponents is the idea that there is a community of ID scientists undergoing persecution by the science establishment for their revolutionary scientific ideas. A search through PubMed fails to find evidence of their scholarship within the peer reviewed scientific literature. Now, what kind of faulty logic is on display here?
[00:14:33] Speaker B: Daniel yeah, it's difficult to poke a hole in the logic because it's a little difficult to see what the logic actually is. They seem to be saying they claim to be persecuted by the establishment or shut out, but we didn't find any articles by them searching through Pubmed or articles supporting ID searching through PubMed. I don't know how they searched. Maybe they typed in intelligent design into Pubmed and we didn't find anything. And so therefore they're not being persecuted by the establishment.
I can think of two ways to interpret this. They could be they didnt realize that if the establishment is against you, then it will be difficult to publish peer reviewed articles. I dont see how they would be unaware of that, though, given what had just happened with Sternberg. So it seems like what theyre saying is a real scientist publishes peer reviewed articles, which, of course, are peer reviewed in mainstream journals controlled by what you would call the scientific establishment. They have not published peer reviewed articles, therefore they're not scientists, and therefore they're not persecuted scientists because a persecuted scientist is a subset of scientists.
So it's like if somebody was claiming that they had been, like, imagine there's an artist, a painter, and they claim they're being snubbed by the art establishment. And someone says, well, I looked at all these elite art galleries run by the establishment, and none of your paintings are here. And if your paintings aren't in these galleries, you're not a real artist. Therefore you aren't an artist being snubbed by the establishment because you're not an artist at all. It's a very convoluted kind of argument.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think you've put your finger on it. It's a very strange, convoluted argument and really just a way to mock intelligent design and those who are theorizing on it without actually saying those words.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't.
Okay. I should say, I doubt that they actually expect people to buy the arguments that they're putting out.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you liken this to the tactic that bullies sometimes use to intimidate their victims. You call it the stop hitting yourself rhetorical move. Tell us about that.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: Right, so, you know, a bigger kid, wax a smaller kid with the kid's own hand. It says, stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself. We've all seen that probably. But he's not actually expecting anyone to believe him that the littler kid is hitting himself. And actually, that would defeat the point if somehow everyone did believe him. The point is actually that people know that he's lying, and specifically, the kid knows that he's lying, but he can't do anything about it. So it's sort of flaunting the falsehood of what you're saying in order to taunt someone who's less powerful than you.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Right. You're trying to achieve a display of dominance when using this.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, why don't you peer review? Why don't you peer review? It would be really helpful if you peer reviewed when it's obvious to everyone that you submit an article arguing for intelligent design in biology, you're not likely to get a fair hearing. The unusual thing about Sternberg is that he found biologists for the peer review that would give it a fair hearing.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Sternberg, in doing what he did and allowing that to be published through a peer review process, he's putting it out there and saying, okay, let's evaluate this. You know, it's part of the whole scientific approach.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. And Sternberg's. Because some people claimed, oh, he must not have done the peer reviewed process correctly if they accepted it. Sternberg has pointed out that in the peer review ethics class that he was required to take for the NIH, they teach that you shouldn't submit an article for peer review to peer reviewers who, you know, aren't gonna give it a fair hearing or who are gonna be hostile to it from the outset and vice versa. Not somebody who's going to be biased in favor of it, either. So he did what you're supposed to do and find the best approximation of impartial judges who are qualified to review the article.
Yeah, but the attitude in the scientific community is, if it passed peer review, peer review, the peer review must have been somehow faulty because id isn't science, and so it shouldn't be able to pass peer review, which is kind of funny, because then if you ask people, why is id not science? One of the reasons they'll give is that, well, it hasn't been peer reviewed, which is a circular argument.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: Right. And why hasn't it been peer reviewed? Because it's not science.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: Well, yeah, we won't peer review that garbage. It's unscientific.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: I mean, this is one way to run away from an argument. I thought if you had the higher ground, you should stand your ground and not be afraid to evaluate opposing ideas. But this isn't right.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: You would think they would be happy to sort of bring some light onto the controversy.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: I mean, in the proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, they ran an article trying to refute Meyers article after that, and that's perfectly fine. That's how scientific discourse should work. But what a lot seem to prefer is just that the discussion doesn't happen.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you know that this sort of tactic has a fortunate downside. Boasting of one's ability to act without consequences may intimidate some of your opponents, but it lets everyone know that the true source of your dominance is brute force, not truth. And, you know, as I read this in your article, this made me think of the way the neo darwinian paradigm is propped up today. A growing number of scientists recognize that it doesn't stand by itself under the weight of the latest scientific evidence, so they've got to prop it up by brute force. But eventually, gravity kicks in. Your article concludes on a hopeful note about the progress that's been made in recent years. Can you share that with us?
[00:21:27] Speaker B: Yeah. So the newer generation of people coming into the sciences seems to be less patient with just being told what they're allowed to ask about this sort of thing.
Dennis Noble says that he's noticed that Dennis Noble is an Oxford physiologist, retired now, but he is involved in, of course, the academic world and new upcoming scientists. And he says that, yeah, people just aren't willing to let the old guard of neo Darwinism say, oh, you can't question neo Darwinism anymore. So you have scientists like Joanna Javier, who's not an id proponent, but she has published, for example, an article that's very brutally honest about the results from origin of life research up to this point. And she says that we need to stand up to the censors and bullies and call them out for what they're doing.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: And it seems like more and more young scientists or scientists who are willing to go against the stream are able to do that.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: And that's really encouraging. You know, we need that, that courage. We need that bravery. It does take courage to stand up and, you know, stick your neck out and risk job and career and reputation and funding. I mean, it really does, you know, let's be honest. And so it's really good to see these hopeful signs happening, and it does give us hope. Well, Daniel, I'm glad you wrote on this recently, because it does give us a good opportunity to review this unfortunate chapter in ID history. And, of course, remind ourselves that progress has been made despite the best efforts of some who would continue to prop up an inadequate theory with all the force they can muster. So thank you for coming on and sorting this out with us and giving us some hope.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Well, listeners, we'll include links in this episode's show
[email protected] to help you learn more about the Sternberg controversy, including a link to the offending paper itself by our esteemed colleague, doctor Stephen Meyer. And for more of Daniel's writing, you can look him up under the writers
[email protected]. dot so for id the future, I'm Andrew McDermott. Thanks very much for listening. Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org dot this program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
