The ID Report
Archives for: March 2011, 07
03/07/11
Science is self-correcting ... no make that self-repeating
by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent
In a review of several recent science books, Dartmouth professor Alan Hirshfeld offers us a view of the Royal Society (former employer of sinner in the hands of an angry god, Michael Reiss), and similar societies, as engines of perpetual revolution (The Wall Street Journal), opining "The Royal Society's history of open-minded debate epitomizes science as a self-correcting process":
The group is more effective than the individual at sussing out weak hypotheses, flawed experiments or biased observations, and one of the vital contributions of Europe's "natural philosophers" during the Enlightenment was the creation of societies to disseminate and evaluate their ideas. Such conclaves served as intellectual hubs before the rise of modern research universities and institutes, and remain important today.That was then. And, as mathematician David Berlinski says, now it is now.
A statement like that, applied to current science, has the flavour of the after-dinner speech we wash down with fresh, hot coffee from the tanker. The current science we skewer so often here is not the product of great minds but of lecture room mediocrities and tax-hungry lobbies. Never mind "weak hypotheses, flawed experiments or biased observations", it’s hard to get past the tide of scandals in this atmosphere.
If "science is self-correcting" means only that heads roll in the wake of a really big one, then science doesn't differ appreciably from politics, religion, finance, or the military.
The real difference is the inappropriate authority granted to science by the public today, given the circumstances.
Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.
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We are a group of individuals, coming from diverse backgrounds and not speaking for any organization, who have found common ground around teleological concepts, including intelligent design. We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation.
- The Design Inference - The Writings of William A. Dembski
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Website dedicated to comparing scenes from the "Inherit the Wind" movie with factual information from actual Scopes Trial. View 37 clips from the movie and decide for yourself if this movie is more fact or fiction.
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Australian biologist Stephen E. Jones maintains one of the best origins "quote" databases around. He is meticulous about accuracy and working from original sources.
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Most guys going through midlife crisis buy a convertible. Austrialian Stephen E. Jones went back to college to get a biology degree and is now a proponent of ID and common ancestry.
- Darwinian Fairytales by David Stove
Complete zipped downloadable pdf copy of David Stove's devastating, and yet hard-to-find, critique of neo-Darwinism entitled "Darwinian Fairytales"
- ID The Future
Intelligent Design The Future is a multiple contributor weblog whose participants include the nation's leading design scientists and theorists: biochemist Michael Behe, mathematician William Dembski, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, philosophers of science Stephen Meyer, and Jay Richards, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson, molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, and science writer Jonathan Witt. Posts will focus primarily on the intellectual issues at stake in the debate over intelligent design, rather than its implications for education or public policy.
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A Philosopher's Journey: Political and cultural reflections of John Mark N. Reynolds. Dr. Reynolds is Director of the Torrey Honors Institute at
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