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Germany, Chemistry, Science, Christian faith, living in Japan |
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Support for Pro-ID publication
This is a letter to several individuals, science organizations, and publishers that I sent in response to a pro-intelligent design paper by Steve Meyer.
Letter to the Editor,
Unappropriate reaction of the BSW Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 10:31:34 +0900
To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Dear Sir, Madam,
As a scientist, I am very concerned about the reaction of scientific
associations and societies to the paper by Dr. Steve Meyer, "The Origin
of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories" in the
Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (volume 117, no. 2,
pp. 213-239).
Even more alarming is the recent 'witch hunt' of Mr. Sternberg at the
Smithonians, as described in the Wall Street Journal on January 28, 2005.
The main stream science was upset and harshly critizised the author of
the original paper, Steve Meyer, and the editor in charge of the
journal, Rick Sternberg.
Even 'Nature' had its part in narrow-minded replies ("Peer-reviewd paper
defends theory of intelliogent design" by Jim Gilles, Nature 431, 114)
has the introducing sentence "A new front has opened in the battle
between scientists and advocates of intelligent design..." - as if all
scientists were against ID, or only non-scientists would advocate it).
Following the media uproar, the Biological Society of Washington (BSW)
decided to ban all further publication of manuscripts critical of
neo-darwinism.
In the statement, the BSW writes that "The Council, [...] 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. For the same reason, the journal will
not publish a rebuttal to the thesis of the paper, the superiority of
intelligent design (ID) over evolution as an explanation of the
emergence of Cambrian body-plan diversity."
The reason that the different field of study led to this decision
is extremely dubious. I am sure that in the past 122 years the
Proceedings have published papers that do not fit into the main field of
study of the journal.
The next sentence of the resolution makes it clearer what this is all about.
"The Council endorses a resolution on ID published by the American
Association for the Advancement of Science
(http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2002/1106id2.shtml), which observes
that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID as a
testable hypothesis to explain the origin of organic diversity.
Accordingly, the Meyer paper does not meet the scientific standards of
the Proceedings."
For the sake of scientific advance, we as scientists must be dedicated
to finding the truth and discussing scientific findings without our
personal ideologies intervening. This is a basic concept of
scientific practice. Thus it is vital for science to discuss
controversial topics in a scientific manner.
What is even more alarming that this ban is enforced by citing an
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) resolution
that concerns teaching (!) of non-evolutionary orgin of life (e.g. in
schools), ergo has nothing to do with scientific discourse.
The AAAS resolution (which in itself is appropriate or not is
another question) says nothing about blanket-banning unconventional
scientific findings from publication in scientific journals, and thus is
misused in order to silence non-darwinistic standpoints in the
scientific community.
One main argument of Darwinists is that the intelligent design
(ID) theory has not made it into peer-reviewed scientific journals, thus
ID is not scientific.
The resolutions of the AAAS and BSW makes sure that they never
will be able to, making it a textbook case of circular reasoning:
"ID is not scientific, because it does not appear in peer-reviewed journals.
ID must not appear in peer-reviewed journals, because it is non-scientific."
yours
Olaf Karthaus
links:
AAAS resolution
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2002/1106id2.shtml
Meyer's publication (on the discovery.org site, since the original paper
at the BSW site is not internet accesible.
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2177
BSW resolution
http://www.biolsocwash.org/id_statement.html
NCSE homepage
http://www.ncseweb.org/
page of R. Sternberg, the managing editor of Proceedings of the
Biological Society of Washington at the time of Meyer's publication
http://www.rsternberg.net/
The Wall Street Journal commentary by David Klinghoffer
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006220 geovisit(); 
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