Richard Sternberg & ID

Caught this guy on O'Reilly tonight. He was the editor of a biological journal that published a paper by Stephen Meyer on "Intelligent Design". Sternberg was claiming he's been subject to tremendous harassment by the scientific community for publishing this supposedly peer reviewed paper. O'Reilly was only too happy to jump in and claim the usual claptrap about the secularist scientific community being intolerant of any dissent.

Or maybe, it's just really, really bad science! Real scientists tend to be against that, too. The always reliable Panda's Thumb has the full dissection of the merits of Meyer's paper.

They also point out that Sternberg has a creationist background, and the topic of the paper itself is well outside the normal area of study and review of this particular publication. That in itself lends suspicion to the idea that this paper was seriously peer reviewed, as Sternberg claimed. O'Reilly didn't mention either of these facts.

The thing is, if you want to compete in the real science world, you have to actually do real science - serious peer review, testing of hypothesis that can be independently verified, that sort of thing. If the IDers actually had some real science, maybe they'd be taken seriously by real scientists, and not have to play their cards via politicians, and on "the factor".

The conclusion of the article says it best:

"There is nothing wrong with challenging conventional wisdom - continuing challenge is a core feature of science. But challengers should at least be aware of, read, cite, and specifically rebut the actual data that supports conventional wisdom, not merely construct a rhetorical edifice out of omission of relevant facts, selective quoting, bad analogies, knocking down strawmen, and tendentious interpretations. Unless and until the "?intelligent design"? movement does this, they are not seriously in the game. They'?re not even playing the same sport."


UPDATE: Excellent Analysis of the O'Reilly segment over at evolutionblog.