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Author
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Topic: ID and Peer Review
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William A. Dembski
Member
Member # 7
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posted 02. July 2003 10:14
From a chapter in a book of mine that will be appearing next year....
If intelligent design is a scientific research program, why don't design theorists publish or have their work cited in the peer-reviewed literature?
The claim that design theorists do not publish or have their work cited in the peer-reviewed literature is false. In fact, it is false any way one interprets that claim. The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (www.iscid.org) has emerged as the professional society of the intelligent design community. That society, at the time of this writing, lists over fifty research fellows. The fellows of the society include full-fledged senior faculty at such schools as Oxford University in England, Princeton University in the United States, University of New Brunswick in Canada, University of Sydney in Australia, University of Auckland in New Zealand, Hanyang University in Korea, Helsinki University of Technology in Finland, and the State University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt Germany (see www.iscid.org/fellows.php).
The ISCID fellows cover the gamut of disciplines, including the full range of natural sciences. All the fellows are distinguished researchers in their own right and have published extensively in the peer-reviewed literature in their respective disciplines. Fritz Schaefer, the inventor of computational quantum chemistry, stands out. With over 900 peer-reviewed publications, he is the third most cited chemist in the world and has been considered for the Nobel Prize five times. Hence there is no question that design theorists publish and have their work cited in the peer-reviewed literature -- they are credible scientists and scholars.
Of course, the real question is whether design theorists publish work that supports intelligent design in the peer-reviewed literature. Here again there is no problem. Readers may refer to the ISCID bibliography at www.iscid.org/bibliography/bibliography.php for works in the peer-reviewed literature by design theorists that support intelligent design (note that this is a bibliography of design-relevant literature and thus also includes references to work by scientists who are not design theorists). Rather than list a number of such works, it may be instructive for me here to describe the peer review process for my book The Design Inference because it points up intelligent design's progress in breaking into the peer-reviewed literature as well as the obstacles we face.
The Design Inference appeared in Cambridge University Press's monograph series Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory. This series is the equivalent of a journal. It has a general editor, Brian Skyrms (who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences). It also has an editorial board, which at the time of publication consisted of the following: Ernest Adams, Ken Binmore, Jeremy Butterfield, Persi Diaconis, William Harper, John Harsanyi (who in 1994 shared the Nobel Prize in economics with John Nash, the protagonist of A Beautiful Mind), Richard Jeffrey, Wolfgang Spohn, Patrick Suppes, Amos Tversky, and Sandy Zabell. This editorial board constitutes a literal who's who in the statistics and inductive reasoning world.
The Design Inference went to three anonymous referees for a grueling year-long review process. The first referee was overwhelmingly positive. The second referee was on balance negative, though s/he had some positive things to say about the manuscript. The general editor wanted the book in his series and therefore gave it to a third referee as a tie breaker. The third referee was very positive about the manuscript but wanted significant revisions (the referee report was seven single-spaced pages). I agreed to do the revisions, whereupon the book was recommended to the Cambridge Syndicate, which in turn then issued me a contract to publish the monograph. The review/referee process for The Design Inference was more rigorous than anything I've experienced in the peer-reviewed journals in which I've published, and that includes math, philosophy, and theology journals. The only reason The Design Inference didn't appear in a journal is that the argument required a book-length treatment. This book has been widely cited, and that includes the peer-reviewed scientific literature (e.g., The International Journal of Fuzzy Systems).
Although peer review was a good thing for The Design Inference, I decided to forego peer review for its sequel, No Free Lunch. While I was still writing No Free Lunch, I contacted Cambridge University Press about publishing this book as a sequel to The Design Inference. Because The Design Inference had been Cambridge University Press's best selling philosophical monograph in several years, it seemed likely that they would be interested in a follow-up volume. I wanted a contract for this book on the basis of a prospectus and some sample chapters, not an uncommon request for a sequel to a highly successful monograph. I sought this so that I wouldn't have to wait almost two and a half years between the time I submitted the completed manuscript and its publication, as in the case of The Design Inference. My work was being widely discussed, and I wanted the sequel to appear without delay.
The New York editor at Cambridge (not Brian Skyrms) informed me that even though The Design Inference was one of their bestsellers, it was controversial, and even though the press didn't mind controversy as such, it had come to light that I was being labeled a "creationist." Thus, before Cambridge University Press could issue a contract, I would have to submit the most controversial chapters of the new book. Besides this, I had inside information that even if No Free Lunch was accepted this side of the Atlantic, it was unlikely to be accepted with the Cambridge Syndicate in England, whose biologists were now disposed against my work. This news was actually quite surprising because the Cambridge Syndicate typically rubber stamps any recommendations for publication from the United States. That an exception was to be made in my case indicated that the review process, instead of working dispassionately and fairly, would be rigged to work against me. I therefore took my business elsewhere and published the book with Rowman and Littlefield.
My own experience with the peer review process confirms an observation by Paul Gross: "Being right isn't enough. What you say, however right, must be said in a currently acceptable language, must not violate too brutally current taste, and must somehow signal your membership in a respectable professional club." (www.mbl.edu/publications/Gross/Heilbrunn) I was an unknown entity when I published The Design Inference, and the book didn't address the implications of the design inference for biology. Once those implications became clear, however, getting my work published in the peer-reviewed literature became more challenging -- though certainly not impossible. I have, for instance, another book coming out with Cambridge University Press titled Debating Design co-edited with Michael Ruse. Six out of seven referees approved it enthusiastically and the lone dissenter grudgingly admitted that it would sell very well.
For research within an accepted framework, peer review is useful for quality control. But for radical new ideas and thinking outside the box, peer review is more often a hindrance than a help. That should come as no surprise given the nature of peer review. Peer review is primarily in the business of seeing that the standards, norms, and practices of an established guild are respected. Only after they have been respected does the question of originality and innovation receive consideration. Peer review is essentially conservative. Peer review is therefore the last place we should expect to see a scientific revolution vindicated.
The history of peer review bears this out. As Frank Tipler has pointed out to me, the very idea of peer review as the touchstone for scientific truth and merit is a post Second World War invention. In physics, for instance, peer-reviewed journals were not the norm until after 1950. In Germany, during the "Beautiful Years" -- the period when quantum mechanics was being invented in the 1920s -- one of the leading German physics journals, Zeitschrift für Physik, was not peer-reviewed: any member of the German Physical Society could publish there by simply submitting the paper.
Hence, if you had a really wild idea, all you had to do to get it published was ask a member of the German Physical Society to submit it for you.If you were a member, you could of course submit it for yourself. Heisenberg published his paper on the uncertainty principle in this journal, and Friedmann published his paper on the Friedmann universe (now the standard cosmological model) there as well. No peer review. Lots of brilliant physics.
All these observations about the history and nature of peer review are no doubt very interesting, but critics of intelligent design are unlikely to be impressed. It's all very well to say that design theorists publish work in the peer-reviewed literature that supports intelligent design. But intelligent design's main focus is biology. Are design theorists publishing and having work that supports intelligent design cited in the peer-reviewed biological literature? In other words, are we actually making inroads into mainstream biology? Design critics like Eugenie Scott, Paul Gross, and Barbara Forrest will often state publicly that design theorists have published exactly ZERO articles in the peer-reviewed biological literature that support intelligent design.
Where do they get the number ZERO? I happen to have in front of me articles from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Molecular Biology, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, and Annual Review of Genetics (the latter explicitly citing my book No Free Lunch). They are all written by design theorists and listed in the ISCID bibliography (www.iscid.org/bibliography/bibliography.php). They all, in my view and that of its authors, support intelligent design. But that's just the problem. How can anything support intelligent design?
Critics like Eugenie Scott, Paul Gross, and Barbara Forrest don't just deny that design theorists have published any works in the peer-reviewed literature that support intelligent design. They also deny that there could be any evidence at all that supports intelligent design. Yes, the articles I'm looking at are by design theorists. And yes, they are in the peer-reviewed biological literature. Yet according to critics they can't support intelligent design. But is it that no evidence supports intelligent design? Or is it that plenty of evidence supports it provided that evidence is not ruled inadmissible on a priori grounds? Apriorism has an unhappy place in the history of science. For instance, science in Kepler's day knew that the orbits of the planets had to be circular (Kepler's contemporary Galileo was adamant on this point). Thus Kepler's evidence for elliptical orbits was ruled inadmissible because science "knew in advance" that the orbits had to be circular. In the end, however, Kepler was vindicated and the apriorist science of his day had to backpedal. That's always the danger with apriorism in science.
Critics of intelligent design who want to maintain that the number of articles in the peer-reviewed biological literature that support intelligent design is ZERO are playing a losing hand. That fiction is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Even so, I expect it to be maintained for a time. The problem is that to get work that supports intelligent design published in the peer-reviewed biological literature, biologists who are design theorists have to play their cards very close to the vest. As Michael Behe pointed out in an interview with the Harvard Political Review (www.hpronline.org/news/251835.html), for a biologist to question Darwinism endangers one's career: "There's good reason to be afraid. Even if you're not fired from your job, you will easily be passed over for promotions. I would strongly advise graduate students who are skeptical of Darwinian theory not to make their views known."
In the current intellectual climate it is impossible to get a paper published in the peer-reviewed biological literature that explicitly affirms intelligent design or explicitly denies Darwinian and other forms of naturalistic evolution. Doubting Darwinian orthodoxy is comparable to opposing the party line of a Stalinist regime. What would you do if you were in Stalin's Russia and wanted to argue that Lysenko was wrong? You might point to paradoxes and tensions in Lysenko's theory of genetics, but you could not say that Lysenko was fundamentally wrong or offer an alternative that clearly contradicted Lysenko. That's the situation we're in. To get published in the peer-reviewed literature, design theorists have to tread cautiously and can't be too up front about where their work is leading. Indeed, that's why I was able to get The Design Inference published with Cambridge University Press but not No Free Lunch, which was much more explicit in its biological implications.
By the way, you may be wondering why I don't here simply provide a list of peer-reviewed articles by design theorists from the biological literature that support intelligent design. The reason is that I want to spare these authors the harassment they would receive if I listed their work. Overzealous critics of intelligent design regard it as their moral duty to keep biology free from intelligent design, even if that means taking extreme measures. I've known such critics to contact design theorists' employers and notify them of the "heretics" in their midst. Once "outed," the design theorists themselves get harassed and harangued with emails. Next, the press does a story mentioning their unsavory intelligent design associations (the day one such story appeared, a close friend and colleague of mine mentioned in the story was dismissed from his research position at a prestigious molecular biology laboratory -- he had worked in that lab for ten years). Hereafter, the first thing that an Internet search of their names reveals is their connection with intelligent design.... Welcome to the inquisition.
I close with one final point about peer review. Although intelligent design research is being published and cited in the peer-reviewed scientific literature (including the biological literature), even if it were not, that would not invalidate intelligent design. Lack of peer review has never barred the emergence of good science. Nor for that matter have peer-reviewed journals been the sole place where groundbreaking scientific work was done. As I noted, the peer-review process is inherently conservative, working nicely for filtering good incremental science from less rigorous work within an established paradigm, but it is lousy at opening its arms to paradigm revolutions. Thomas Kuhn, along with other eminent historians of science, have settled this point definitively: the old guard never opens its arms to a scientific revolution; they have too much invested in the old paradigm. The most important revolutions in science bypassed the peer-review process entirely and appeared in books. Copernicus's De Revolutionibus, Galileo's On Two World Systems, and Newton's Principia are cases in point. None of these works were peer-reviewed. Nor was that book by a retiring English biologist from the nineteenth century -- an unconventional work titled On the Origin of Species.
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Paul A. Nelson
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Member # 26
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posted 02. July 2003 11:28
The passive voice in English often indicates the presence of unnamed persons. "It has been proposed that..." (i.e., someone proposed something, but the author isn't saying who). I was amused, but not surprised, to see that the first sentence of the recent Lenski et al. paper in Nature used the passive voice:
"A long standing challenge to evolutionary theory has been whether it can explain the origin of complex organismal features."
Did this challenge spring up by itself, like weeds in a summer garden? No, but using the active voice -- "Persons X, Y, and Z challenge evolutionary theory to explain the origin of complex organismal features" -- would require beginning the sentence with a subject (noun) who can raise a challenge, i.e., a person or persons.
And naming that subject, in a journal like Nature, can have what we might delicately call political consequences. Hence, the passive voice, as a drapery for modesty over what might otherwise shock, shock, the tender sensibilities of the readers of Nature. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
The debate about design has entered the mainstream literature in all but name. When the prose style -- "challenges have been raised," ugh -- catches up with practice -- here's another research paper, Lenski et al., replying to ID-based criticisms -- scientific honesty will get a boost.
P.S. Historical footnote: Nature was founded by T.H. Huxley and the other members of the X Club as an outlet, in Oxbridge-dominated England, for the X Club's then-heretical ideas about scientific naturalism. I wonder how Huxley would have refereed an ID paper submitted to Nature?
[ 02. July 2003, 13:43: Message edited by: Paul A. Nelson ]
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fish
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Member # 213
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posted 02. July 2003 11:40
Can I respectfully suggest that this topic is in danger of quickly getting boring.
It is in the nature of radical scientific ventures that they need alternative outlets and alternative (or creative) funding at the outset. And this should not be a source of complaint.
Ultimately ID will be judged on the fecundity of its output. Scattered articles by ID advocates in mainstream journals prove little. As does the absence of ID in mainstream journals. As a mainstream scientist I am very happy that IDists have started their own peer review venture here, and it is on the total quality, coherence and quantity of this output that ID should be judged.
Although peer review definitely has its flaws and can sometimes be a great waste of energy, it does, on the average, improve the quality of what gets published. For example, I recently had a paper rejected from journal A (Nature) based on a series of uncomprehending reviewers. Finally we got it into journal B (Science)where we only had one uncomprehending review, by which time it was more comprehensible but just as revolutionary (or not - this is in the eye of the beholder).
Complaining from the outside about a system (or more accurately a spectrum of systems - there are many different forms of peer review across the literature) which scientists have created over time, for themselves, is simply besides the point.
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Paul A. Nelson
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posted 02. July 2003 12:05
Fish wrote:
quote:
Ultimately ID will be judged on the fecundity of its output. Scattered articles by ID advocates in mainstream journals prove little. As does the absence of ID in mainstream journals.
I agree, except that I would unpack "fecundity" into "fruitfulness for discovery and knowledge" (just churning out ID papers that lead nowhere won't do). But this business about peer review and the mainstream literature, which I also agree has great potential for tedium and pointlessness, is really a reply to a major criticism of ID.
Go here, for instance:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?G24F12025
Forrest and Gross argue that ID is a Very Bad Thing Indeed mainly because it hasn't shown up in the mainstream literature -- by my count, 5 of their 9 chapters will make this point, mostly.
Fora such as this webpage don't count for Forrest and Gross. While you may find this site interesting and worthwhile, for them it's just another part of the wicked Wedge.
[ 02. July 2003, 12:07: Message edited by: Paul A. Nelson ]
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fish
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Member # 213
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posted 02. July 2003 12:08
Paul Nelson makes a nice, provocative point (about the Lenski paper).
I think however that the form of wording is defensible, aside from politics. It is the mainstream view that ID is simply articulating common, longstanding, misgivings about evolutonary biology, but without putting anything in its place. Therefore ID does not deserve special mention in a scientific article discussing possible resolutions of one of these common misgivings.
[ 02. July 2003, 12:11: Message edited by: fish ]
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Argon
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Member # 276
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posted 02. July 2003 13:03
Paul Nelson writes:
quote:
"A long standing challenge to evolutionary theory has been whether it can explain the origin of complex organismal features."
Did this challenge spring up by itself, like weeds in a summer garden? No, but using the active voice -- "Persons X, Y, and Z challenge evolutionary theory to explain the origin of complex organismal features" -- would require beginning the sentence with a subject (noun) who can raise a challenge, i.e., a person or persons.
I understand your point but this challenge has existed since Darwin published (actually, even before Darwin) and has been voiced by numerous people over the past century. Should they have referenced Henry Morris? Byron Nelson? Ronald Reagan?
[ 02. July 2003, 13:04: Message edited by: Argon ]
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Pim van Meurs
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Member # 541
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posted 02. July 2003 13:17
Dembski argues that
quote:
By the way, you may be wondering why I don't here simply provide a list of peer-reviewed articles by design theorists from the biological literature that support intelligent design. Tahe reason is that I want to spare these authors the harassment they would receive if I listed their work.
I find the argument to be very weak in that it presumes that listing such articles (if they exist, something we may perhaps never know) would lead to harassments of its authors. Furthermore, while the papers may be in 'support' of intelligent design, this need not mean that the authors consider these papers as such. I remember for instance earlier claims about Doug Axe and the relevance of his work to intelligent design. Any updates on this beyond Bill's email to Arnhart?
As far as research is concerned, neither ISCID nor other journals seem to have published research which has furthered the case of intelligent design or which has made an effort to apply its tentative claims to biological structures.
While I cannot blame Dembski for being proud of the fact that ISCID membership includes some renowned people, one has to be careful to use such appeal to suggest that intelligent design has a solid scientific foundation. In fact I am not aware of any publications by these people which help further our scientific understanding of intelligent design.
We also see some equivocation of the term "intelligent design and peer review" in that Dembski suggestst that "Hence there is no question that design theorists publish and have their work cited in the peer-reviewed literature"
But of course that was not really the original argument which was that there is some doubt that design theorists publish in the peer reviewed literature work directly relevant to intelligent design.
Additionally Dembski now makes claims that there are works which 'support intelligent design' but that claim is highly subjective and meaningless.
Dembski then attacks the peer review process, which I find fascinating since if the argument is that design theorists have published in the peer reviewed literature, there is really no need to attack the peer review process?
Let me suggest that peer review of work furthering directly the ideas of intelligent design may be helpful vetting out which ideas may have some value and which ideas need much work.
Nelson points to the Lenski paper, arguably one of the first papers to really address some of the tentative claims made by design theorists.
Fish ponts out a major shortcoming in design theoretical work namely that so far it seems to be limited to claims against the prevailing theories without offering its own theories of ideas.
And while Dembski is right that lack of peer review need not lead necessarily to bad science, I find the lack of any supportive research into the claims of intelligent design theorists to be a significant failure. The lack of any non-trivial application of the design inference for instance make the claims furthered in TDI and NFL merely of theoretical interest without practical application.
I concur with Fish that "Ultimately ID will be judged on the fecundity of its output"
Additionally there remains the shadow of the Wedge hanging over the intelligent design movement. An approach which values time-lined publicity may rightly decide to forego the peer reviewed process.
"Phase II. The primary purpose of Phase II is to prepare the popular reception of our ideas. "
[ 02. July 2003, 13:21: Message edited by: Pim van Meurs ]
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andyg
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Member # 415
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posted 02. July 2003 13:27
Paul wrote:
quote:
The passive voice in English often indicates the presence of unnamed persons. "It has been proposed that..." (i.e., someone proposed something, but the author isn't saying who). I was amused, but not surprised, to see that the first sentence of the recent Lenski et al. paper in Nature used the passive voice:
"A long standing challenge to evolutionary theory has been whether it can explain the origin of complex organismal features."
Did this challenge spring up by itself, like weeds in a summer garden? No, but using the active voice -- "Persons X, Y, and Z challenge evolutionary theory to explain the origin of complex organismal features" -- would require beginning the sentence with a subject (noun) who can raise a challenge, i.e., a person or persons.
And naming that subject, in a journal like Nature, can have what we might delicately call political consequences. Hence, the passive voice, as a drapery for modesty over what might otherwise shock, shock, the tender sensibilities of the readers of Nature.
I agree with Paul that it was very naughty of the Adami paper not to give credit to Charles Darwin.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
AndyG
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Paul A. Nelson
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Member # 26
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posted 02. July 2003 13:32
Pim wrote:
quote:
Nelson points to the Lenski paper, arguably one of the first papers to really address some of the tentative claims made by design theorists.
Actually the precedent for such papers is long-standing. For instance, Tom Schneider's 2000 paper on the origin of biological information cites Behe by name (as I recall):
Schneider, T. D. (2000). Evolution of biological information. Nucleic Acids Res., 28:2794- 2799. http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/.
Dr. Schneider is too feisty to use the passive voice. We can expect a lively reply from Schneider to Ian Strachan's critique of the former's Ev simulation (Strachan's critique was first published here at ISCID). One paper will count, per the requirement "Publish in the mainstream literature" (e.g., Nucleic Acids Research)-- while the other will be web-based samizdat and less-than-proper, even though the interlocutors in the discussion are grappling with exactly the same issues, albeit from differing perspectives.
"I'm having an argument with those guys over there, and it's quite interesting, but I'm standing within the magic chalk circle. They're over there in the tall grass, however, and I'm sure they haven't had a bath in weeks."
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
[ 02. July 2003, 13:47: Message edited by: Paul A. Nelson ]
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gedanken
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Member # 594
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posted 02. July 2003 13:45
Paul Gross has asked that the following reply be posted on his behalf, with respect to a portion of the introductory post:
quote:
If anybody among the addressees knows how to post something directly to Dembski, or to the web site of his Institute, please forward this reply for me to this quote from him (announcing a forthcoming Dembski work), to wit:
************
"My own experience with the peer review process confirms an observation by Paul Gross: "Being right isn't enough. What you say, however right, must be said in a currently acceptable language, must not violate too brutally current taste, and must somehow signal your membership in a respectable professional club." (www.mbl.edu/publications/Gross/Heilbrunn) I was an unknown entity when I published The Design Inference, and the book didn't address the implications of the design inference for biology. Once those implications became clear, however, getting my work published in the peer-reviewed literature became more challenging -- though certainly not impossible. I have, for instance, another book coming out with Cambridge University Press titled Debating Design co-edited with Michael Ruse. Six out of seven referees approved it enthusiastically and the lone dissenter grudgingly admitted that it would sell very well.
"For research within an accepted framework, peer review is useful for quality control. But for radical new ideas and thinking outside the box, peer review is more often a hindrance than a help. That should come as no surprise given the nature of peer review. Peer review is primarily in the business of seeing that the standards, norms, and practices of an established guild are respected. Only after they have been respected does the question of originality and innovation receive consideration. Peer review is essentially conservative. Peer review is therefore the last place we should expect to see a scientific revolution vindicated."
***************
1. Nuts, in general, and advisedly.
2. This quotation from my old paper on Professor L. V. Heilbrunn and Calcium is characteristically quote-mined and ridiculously misused, recently by Berlinski and now again by Dembski.
Heilbrunn, the subject of the article, published prolifically in the standard (peer-reviewed!) scientific literature. He was, also, the author of the most-used textbook, for two decades, of general physiology in English -- a work of originality as well as massive scholarship in the peer-reviewed literature. He had enemies, but they did not prevent publication of his works in that literature. It was good enough. His story, and the case to which my shoplifted remarks referred, has no relationship with that of the ID theorists, who do not publish in the standard literature and have established, instead, an industry of finding excuses for the fact.
3. It is history of science so bad as to approach demagoguery to suggest that no scientific revolution has appeared in the peer-reviewed literature. One can only wonder WHAT modern scientific revolutions Dembski is thinking about: relativity? quantum mechanics? valence bond and molecular orbital structural chemistry? the chromosome theory of heredity? Morgan's genetics? the structure of DNA? ...? ...? All these and a dozen more I have thought of in the five minutes before lunch appeared from the start in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
PRG
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Paul A. Nelson
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Member # 26
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posted 02. July 2003 14:10
A few years ago, the journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (Michigan State University Press) published a special issue on the intelligent design debate. The issue editor, John Angus Campbell (then at the University of Washington) and I invited Paul Gross to participate, as a biologist who both doubted ID and had well-known views on the public perception and role of science. Gross was invited to say whatever he pleased, no matter how critical, about ID.
Gross turned down the invitation. That special issue of Rhetoric and Public Affairs has now become a big anthology from Michigan State, with critical contributions from Michael Ruse, Will Provine, Massimo Pigliucci, and many others:
http://msupress.msu.edu/bookTemplate.php?bookID=725
I can understand Paul Gross's complaints about IDers not trying to get into his party -- but it strikes me as overly fastidious to turn down invitations to have a critical go at ideas he despises...and then to complain that IDers are making a public ruckus away from the grown-ups.
[ 02. July 2003, 14:11: Message edited by: Paul A. Nelson ]
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andyg
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posted 02. July 2003 14:43
Dembski wrote:
quote:
By the way, you may be wondering why I don't here simply provide a list of peer-reviewed articles by design theorists from the biological literature that support intelligent design. The reason is that I want to spare these authors the harassment they would receive if I listed their work.
There is a Usenet paraphrase of such a statement.
It is known as "The lurkers support me in e-mail". A poetic realization of this idea can be sung to the tune "My Bonnie lies over the ocean":
THE LURKERS SUPPORT ME IN E-MAIL
(by Jo Walton)
The Lurkers support me in email
They all think I'm great don't you know.
You posters just don't understand me
But soon you will reap what you sow.
Lurkers, lurkers, lurkers support me, you'll see, you'll see
off in e-mail the lurkers support me, you'll see.
The lurkers support me in email
"So why don't they post?" you all cry
They're scared of your hostile intentions
they just can't be as brave as I.
Lurkers, lurkers, lurkers support me, you'll see, you'll see
off in e-mail the lurkers support me, you'll see.
One day I'll round up all my lurkers
we'll have a newsgroup of our own
without all this flak from you morons
my lurkers will post round my throne.
Lurkers, lurkers, lurkers support me, you'll see, you'll see
off in e-mail the lurkers support me, you'll see.
AndyG
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Micah Sparacio
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Member # 6
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posted 02. July 2003 15:21
Two things:
1. The ISCID bibliography contains over 3 thousand entries. Not all of them fit Dr. Dembski's description. There is no pre-generated list at that URL that fits Dr. Dembski's description (as far as I know)
2. The ISCID bibliography is a members only service and will stay that way for practical purposes.
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