The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Listen to these, and don't have a fight with someone on your cell phone while driving:

1.

Moving the Goalpost: How Darwin's Theory Survives

It's easy to win the game when you can move the goalpost.

On this episode of ID the Future, biologist and Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Jonathan Wells explains how Darwinism, unlike football, has only one rule: survival of the fittest. The fittest are those who survive, and Darwinists are determined to survive at all costs—even if it means moving the goalpost.

Go here to listen.

(Note: This one is quite interesting because Wells talks about how his observation that a specific type of speciation needed by Darwinism has not been observed was recently distorted in a science mag to say that speciation - as such - has never been observed. This tells me that the commitment of many scientists to Darwinism is not to the idea of speciation as such, but to a broader philosophical commitment to a method by which it must happen, a method that supports broader philosophical ideas. Remember that 78% of evolutionary biologists are pure naturalists - no God and no free will.)

2.

Is the Cell Like a Computer?

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin interviews Dr. Donald Johnson, author of Probability's Nature and Nature's Probability: A Call to Scientific Integrity. As both a chemist and a computer scientist, Dr. Johnson explains how the cell uses programming code, much like a computer, and he elucidates how the information is processed and converted from proteins into DNA. Listen in as Dr. Johnson shares the science of how the cell is like a computer.

Donald E. Johnson holds PhDs in Computer & Information Sciences from the University of Minnesota and in Chemistry from Michigan State University. He can be reached at his website,ScienceIntegrity.net.

Go here to listen.

(Note: In two important way, cells are not like computers. When my machine is bust, it is just bust, and my local nerd must visit. If I need a new one, it must be bought and unpacked, and inevitably, I will need him back again as something is sure to go wrong. Millions of cells die every day and are replaced, with no loss of function. Fancy that, computer!)

3.

Alfred Russel Wallace: Champion of Natural Selection or Intelligent Design?

On this episode of ID the Future, CSC's Robert Crowther takes a look at Alfred Russel Wallace, who, along with Darwin, co-presented the theory of natural selection in letters to the Linnean Society of London over 150 years ago. Contrary to Darwin, Wallace actually believed that it was possible to detect design in nature. What would modern Darwin defenders make of Wallace today? Listen in and find out.

Go here to listen.

(Note: Actually, they have been doing a number on Wallace for centuries, as Mike Flannery points out. Go here or here for an example. Wallace, with thought design played a role in evolution, was just not as useful for propaganda purposes and was of a much lower social class than Darwin. Here is somewhat from my review of Flannery's book.)

4.

Deepening Darwin's Dilemma With Jonathan Wells

This episode of ID the Future features biologist and Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Jonathan Wells, who explains why Darwin saw the Cambrian explosion as a serious argument against his theory. Darwin countered it by supposing that fossils of the ancestors of Cambrian animals once existed, but were destroyed.

Listen in and learn how the discovery of microscopic and soft-bodied Precambrian fossils makes Darwin’s excuse sound hollow.

Go here to listen.

(Note: It gets better. The Smithsonian sat on the Cambrian fossils for decades because they did not support Darwin's theory. Yes, yes, that Smithsonian, currently alleged to have pressured California Science Center into cancelling a Cambrian film that - I gather - raises the Cambrian problem. [Almost all modern phyla of life forms appeared rather suddenly about 550 million years ago. This is just not the story Darwin was telling and he knew it and so did his supporters, and now so do more and more people.])

Any chance all those dusty drawers in the Smithsonian's cellar will be seized as evidence? Maybe we could learn something, and not about the current functionaries' e-mails.

Free advice to the public in general, not to anyone in particular: Do NOT feed bones to the shredder. Nor paper clips. Never feed anything but paper to the shredder, and feed paper with staples only if the firm warrants that the shredder will accept staples.]

5.

"A Matter of Dismal Wet Plops": Stephen Meyer Interviews David Berlinski on Darwinism

This episode of ID the Future features a clip from the recent "Signature in the Cell" event in Tampa, FL, featuring Stephen Meyer, Michael Medved, David Berlinski and Tom Woodward. Listen in as Dr. Meyer interviews Dr. Berlinski about the questions that led him to criticize Darwinism.

Go here to listen.

(Note: Besides being brilliant, Berlinski, a mathematician, is as funny as heck - not always a common combination. We are all familiar, I suppose, with the genius who doesn't get a joke. Well, that's not him, as the title of this pod suggests. I had a lot of fun reading his Devil's Delusion, a shot at publicly funded nonsense in science, of which many people are getting royally tired. Science advisor to Marie Antoinette, check your e-mail.

Never forget: Most people fund science because they think it will help find cures for cancer or get one's country a Nobel Prize in physics [and ain't we proud!] or offer one's kid a stable, respectable job wearing a lab coat. So take that away - make science mean folly about Stone Age Man, exposed e-mail plots, court cases about broken contracts, reasonable doubts subjected to inquisition and persecution - and what happens?

One thing that might very well happen is that people who used to just sigh and pay the bill might start thinking differently. As in ... we've got the headache already, Now, where is the payload?)

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Here is my post at Examiner on why. I thought it would never happen, actually. But I should have remembered - all psychology fads are inherently ridiculous because they are attempts to evade the depth of the human condition with some silly new idea.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

David Warren is a Canadian journalist who writes for the Ottawa Citizen. He often expresses skepticism about Darwinism. Here he reflects on the "just-so" story usually used to explain Darwinian evolution:

The account of the Beginning of the Armadilloes, in the High and Far-Off Times -- and on the banks of the turbid Amazon -- is especially instructive. It supplies a theory of the convergent evolution of the clever armadillo, from the Stickly-Prickly Hedgehog and/or his friend the Slow-Solid Tortoise, under the ministrations of the Painted Jaguar.

Consulting it today, I realize that my skepticism toward the dogmas of neo-Darwinism might well originate from that story. It is not that I prefer Kipling's account of the origin of species, which was a quite intentional (and very amusing) farce. Rather, that it spared me from developing a taste for quite unintentional farces.

In logic, a "just-so story" is known as the "ad hoc fallacy." The Latin means "for this," and it applies to any "pourquoi" explanation of things, given for the express purpose of supporting an otherwise unprovable hypothesis.

The perfect example would be the whole pseudo-science of "evolutionary psychology," which seeks to explain why man is the way he is, by means of evolutionary plausibilities. We start from the hypothesis that everything in nature, as Darwin says, adapts exclusively to the end of survival. And then we return to the same place, by a logical circle.

Here are more of Warren's columns on this subject. (The first one begins with a reader's letter on one of his columns.)

Here are more stories on evolutionary psychology.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

Academic Freedom Update: California Science Center Engaged in Illegal Cover-Up

This episode of ID the Future features an academic freedom update on the California Science Center's cancellation last October of a screening of a pro-ID film, Darwin's Dilemma, by a private group. How does a government agency try to evade its obligations to the First Amendment? By suppressing information. Listen in to learn about the evidence that the Discovery Institute has uncovered in its lawsuit against the Science Center.

Go here to listen.

Well, of course they cancelled it. I cannot imagine why anyone would doubt that outcome.

Look, when I first started blogging - the only real news media today - I had to deal with the controversy over the Smithsonian withdrawing support for the screening of Privileged Planet. Go here for more.

But the Smithsonian was the famed institution where Walcott basically did nothing for decades about the critical evidence from the Cambrian evolution that showed that Darwinism is wrong.

If that's the science we want, fine. Our taxes pay for it.

Another podcast:

Rodney LeVake: Expelled Science Teacher, Part 1

On this episode of ID The Future, CSC's Casey Luskin interviews Rodney LeVake, the plaintiff in the Academic Freedom court case LeVake vs. Independent School District #656. LeVake, a former high school biology teacher, informally expressed doubts about evolution to a colleague who then reported him to the principal. LeVake ended up losing his biology position, not because he taught creationism or intelligent design, but merely because he expressed reservations about evolution to a colleague. Listen as he tells his story of clear academic persecution.

Go here to listen.

But what else is new? If LeVake had expressed doubts about the decline of bears* in Canada, he would have run into the same problem. Once a supposed "science" theory has become a big time theory-a-rama, you don't need evidence. You just need to keep inciting the base of people who are either paid or pay to support you. And administration is easily cowed.

So why don't they all seek work in the dairy industry?

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

This contest seemed to have attracted a lot of discussion, with 148 entries, so I spent all yesterday getting through the entries. Its basis was a fawning review by David B. Hart, of Richard Dawkins's The Greatest Show on Earth. We are informed - on the mag’s cover - that Dawkins "gets a gold star" for his book of that name (January 2010 Number 199).

Well, Darwinism is certainly one of the greater shows on Earth, and Dawkins is worthy a life membership in an illusionists' association.

The winner this time is Paul Giem at 111 (minor correction offered at 112), for

To come back to the point of this post, we were asked to critique the comment,

The best argument against ID theory, when all is said and done, is that it rests on a premise - irreducible complexity" - that may seem compelling at the purely intuitive level but that can never logically be demonstrated. At the end of the day, it is – as Francis Collins rightly remarks – an argument from personal incredulity. While it is true that very suggestive metaphysical arguments can be drawn from the reality of form, the intelligibility of the universe, consciousness, the laws of physics, or (most importantly) ontological contingency, the mere biological complexity of this or that organism can never amount to an irrefutable proof of anything other than the incalculable complexity of that organism's phylogenic antecedents.

My reply:

There are several problems with this paragraph. For example, there is the idea that ID rests on the premise of irreducible complexity. In fact, the origin of life is a far stronger foundation for ID (see Signature in the Cell), and the Privileged Planet hypothesis does not need irreducible complexity.

Another problem is the difficulty with the last sentence. If the "biological complexity" of an organism is "an irrefutable proof" of the "incalculable complexity" of its progeniters, and their progenitors had it, and so forth, did the incalculable complexity come from an originally "Incalculably complex" organism which arose spontaneously, or was the "irrefutable proof" somehow violated somewhere, or multiple times? Or does the concession constitute a proof of ID, in spite of the author's protestations?

But the part of the argument that stands out as the worst is the assertion that irreducible complexity "may seem compelling at the purely intuitive level but that can never logically be demonstrated." At this point I feel like I'm watching a movie, where the villain has been tracked down by the detectives who have put the clues together, and suddenly switches from pretending innocence to saying, "You can’t prove a thing!" He has now lost the audience (including any remaining doubt in the detectives). All that remains is the power play and the legal maneuvering. We now know the truth of his villainy to a moral certainty.

Science has never been about proof, and those who expect to attack ID because it can't be proved have committed a category error. The fact that they have to resort to this kind of argument suggests a fundamental weakness in their position.

Nor is the appeal to the supposed fallacy of "personal incredulity" helpful. What is the opposite? "Personal credulity?" If the contest is between faith and skepticism, it would seem that the proper scientific attitude would be skepticism.

There are other mistakes, but this belief that ID must be wrong until it can "logically be demonstrated" is obtained is the worst. If that's the "best argument against ID theory", then ID has it made.

I appreciated his point that science is about evidence, not "irrefutable proof". The latter is the domain of pure mathematics. (Why we cannot square a circle or meaningfully divide by zero.) But statistics and information theory are about the balance of evidence, and if the evidence does not support the idea that Darwinism creates much information, then it is not a good theory.

A free copy of Expelled goes to him, on condition of providing me with a working postal address, at oleary@sympatico.ca ]

I also appreciated Jerry's thoughtfulness in 137 through 139.

Further comments:

Just about everything Hart said about intelligent design theory, as quoted by Giem above, is wrong, and that is not an easy feat. It is hard to know where to begin, with stuff like this. For one thing, what is wrong with "purely intuitive level" and "personal incredulity"? If a landlady thinks that her drunken boarder will not pay his rent come Friday, though he swears up and down he will, that is a purely intuitive level of personal incredulity. She cannot predict the future because she is not God Almighty. But she is probably right anyway in her assessment, and should act on it.

And the rest is just bafflegab. For more on "bafflegab" (a term I did NOT invent), see below.

Go here for more.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Recently, a correspondent was advising me that business is about Darwinian competition.

Naturally, my mind wandered to self-described Darwinian capitalist Conrad Black, who did not fare too well in the United States's justice system. Admittedly, Canadian journalists were inclined to give him a bad rap because of his habit of suing journalists, so I will not make him an issue.

Anyway, as a long-time business teacher for people in media, I replied as follows:

This much I know is true, so let me restate it:

Darwinism is worthless as an explanation of how prosperous economies operate, though clever analogies can be drawn to "evolution, speciation, extinction, mutation, survival of the fittest" by people with the time, inclination, and contracts for books destined for the airport kiosk.

Reality check: Darwinism is - to use Edward Banfield's book title as a phrase - "the moral basis of a backward society."

In a state of practical Darwinism, families, clans, and tribes form tight little groups with little interest in the public welfare. They distribute public assets among themselves. So public assets are minimal and poorly maintained, as far as the general public is concerned. For example, money is stolen at the Post Office, but "no one" is responsible for the theft. It's untraceable.

Here is an example: When I used to write for a road building association trade mag, I heard about a contractor who had lost a brand new bulldozer. He went on a vacation in a far away country, and guess what - he saw his own 'dozer at work on a site - and they hadn't even bothered to unscrew the Canadian licence plate! That's how he knew for sure it was his. No one cared that the 'dozer was stolen goods. He assumed, rightly or wrongly*, that it would be useless to contact the police there.

*I would think that any foot patrol officer might wonder why that service vehicle bore a Canuck licence plate. Couldn't the owner be dinged for not getting a local plate?

No wonder such a country is "less developed." They are never going to get anywhere unless they give up practical Darwinism, and adopt codes of business ethics that owe nothing to Darwinism.

Why? Because few investors want to front large, complex businesses in such places. One never knows when the power or water will be off, due to corruption and incompetence - leaving a firm's technical staff with an unscheduled but paid vacation.

The fundamental basis of prosperous societies is co-operation, not competition. The power is on, the water is clean, the roads are maintained, your business taxes go to something other than graft, the police target criminals (not dissidents), girls are in school (not in brothels), and if you smash up on the highway, a paramedic ambulance will arrive promptly to pick up whatever remains of you and try to snuff it back to life. That owes nothing to Darwinism, and everything to co-operation between large groups of individuals in the public interest - which helps the private interest as well, and thus promotes prosperity.

As far as I am concerned, as a business owner and business teacher, you can take Darwinism and blow it out the window. It is not what builds up a good environment for business.

Yes, of course there is competition in a favourable environment for business. But it is the favourable environment that makes competition viable. Practical Darwinism (= everyone out only for his own pack or herd) breaks down the needed environment for prosperity.

Golly, I hope someone listens.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Tom Heneghan advises, “As Darwin Year ends, some seek to go ‘beyond Darwin,’” (Reuters Faith World: Religion and Ethics, December 14, 2009).

So I was intrigued by a conference held at UNESCO here in Paris recently about scientists who believe in evolution but want to go "beyond Darwin." Organised by French philosopher of science Jean Staune, its speakers argued that Darwin could not explain underlying order and patterns found in nature. "We have to differentiate between evolution and Darwinism," said Jean Staune, author of the new book Au-dela de Darwin (Beyond Darwin). "Of course there is adaptation. But like physics and chemistry, biology is also subject to its own laws."

Well, say it in French or in English, but just say it out loud: "le darwinisme, c’est incroyable;" “Darwinism is unbelievable."

Still, here is the story in a nutshell: Once a person claims to me that the chimp in the zoo is 99% identical to one of my grandkids, I know I am dealing with an unbelievable belief. Just how to deal with it is a difficult question, especially if the belief is government-funded and supported by all the right people (who don't think I should have grandkids anyway).

Michael Denton, a geneticist with New Zealand's University of Otago, said Darwinian "functionalists" believed life forms simply adapted to the outside world while his "structuralist" view also saw an internal logic driving this evolution down certain paths. His view, which he called "extraordinarily foreign to modern biology," explained why many animals developed "camera eyes" like human ones and why proteins, one of the building blocks of life, fold into structures unchanged for three billion years.

Here's more from Denton:

Q: What do you think of "intelligent design" now?

I have some sympathy with the intelligent design movement. I can see their point. But in the end, I think natural self-organising matter plus natural selection can probably explain it. I don't like the attitude of the Darwinian establishment towards intelligent designers because one thing the Darwinist establishment certainly can't explain is the origin of life. That's for sure. Probably special creation is better than what they've got. That's almost like confessing a murder, I know, but I don't mind being quoted on that. Because I personally see so much fitness in the cosmos for the ends of life, then that it is at least compatible with a design hypothesis like Aristotle or Aquinas. I'm quite irritated by the way the Darwinists claim they have all the answers. I don't think they can explain the fitness of the universe for life. They can't explain the origin of life. So I think they should be a little bit more humble.

Well, Michael Denton has himself been going beyond Darwin a long time. He has been described as a post-Darwinian, and his views have been vindicated by evidence. His book Nature’s Destiny is a long explanation of why he doesn’t believe the garbage fronted - by law - to publicly funded schools in places where you, gentle readers, probably pay taxes. Merry Christmas - no, not to you, serfs, but to your Darwinist masters, whom you support.

Many of us doubt that Denton's self-organizing matter can explain the origin of information. That's like thinking the Scrabble pieces can organize themselves in such a way that when you scatter the pieces they form a perfect, intelligible message. Friends have suggested that Denton read Polanyi and Yockey. Otherwise, he is stuck with "the mother gives birth to herself."

But I recommend Denton anyway because he understand marsupial mammals, and many North American pundits do not. We have only one: the Virginia opossum. I have never seen an opossum in the Toronto area; they are not well furred and apt to suffer from frostbite.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Here is her interview with David H. Koch, a Darwin-thumping multi-millionaire who has done much to front the cult to the public ("Evolution Sea Change?: David H. Koch Weighs In ," Archaeology Today, February 17, 2009). Mazur made headlines last year when she wrote about the Altenberg 16, scientists who met in Austria to plan a way of understanding evolution that was free of tax-funded Darwin worship. Anyway, among other things, we learn:

Next year, the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins opens at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where evidence of 6 million years of human evolution will be part of an interactive display that includes the Laetoli footprints and a reconstruction of Lucy. Visitors will be able to pass through a time tunnel to view early humans "floating in and out of focus," touch models of ancient human fossils as well as watch their own faces morph into those of extinct species. The Smithsonian display follows the creation of the American Museum of Natural History's David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing.

Rendering of proposed "Human Characteristics" display at the Smithsonian's David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins, now in development. (Courtesy David Koch)
Richard Potts, director of the Smithsonian's Human Origins Program, explained about the new exhibition, "David's commitment to science and the study of human evolution will enable the Smithsonian to bring the latest discoveries in this field to the broadest audiences. The exhibition, still in the planning stages, encourages the public to explore the lengthy process of change in human characteristics over time. It also presents one of the new research themes in this field--the dramatic changes in environment that set the stage for human evolution. Although the subject can be controversial, the unearthed discoveries that bear on the question of human origins are a source of deep interest and significance for everyone to contemplate."

David Koch is Executive Vice President of $110 billion Koch Industries (he owns 42%) and CEO of its subsidiary, Koch Chemical Technology Group. He is often described as Manhattan's wealthiest resident, and contributes to Lincoln Center, Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and the fertility clinic at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, to name a few. He is also is the principal private funder of PBS's Nova series.

It gets better when she begins to challenge him:

Suzan Mazur: As a man committed to the principles and practices of freedom, including scientific freedom, and as a scientist yourself with degrees from MIT in chemical engineering - is it your perspective that we are now witnessing a sea change in evolutionary thinking? That even as the global celebration begins for Charles Darwin's 200th birthday, the man who brought us the theory of evolution by natural selection 150 years ago--Darwinian selection, or survival of the fittest, is now being viewed by serious evolutionary scientists as not enough to explain our existence?

To quote from my interview several months ago with NASA astrobiologist Chris Mckay, who was featured in the recent Nova Mars documentary you helped underwrite: "Something had to precede Darwinian natural selection. The Darwinian paradigm breaks down in two obvious ways. First, and most clear, Darwinian selection cannot be responsible for the origin of life. Second, there is some thought that Darwinian selection cannot fully explain the rise of complexity at the molecular level." So the question is: Is it your perspective that we are now witnessing a sea change in evolutionary thinking?

David Koch: No. I don't think it's a sea change. The sea change occurred back when Darwin published his evolutionary theories, backed up by massive, overwhelming evidence. What's happened since is that there's been a rather steady progressive acceptance of the concepts of evolution in the general public. It's amazing to me that in America a large faction of the population still doesn't believe in it.

Suzan Mazur: But the point is that Darwin started with life. He addressed what happens once you have life. He didn't address the origin of life. That's what Chris McKay, the NASA astrobiologist is saying.

And so it goes, until she gets him to admit that he does not know what he is talking about.

Well, we must give the guy marks for honesty. The average third-rate biology prof is just content to emit Darwin noises and know as little as possible about real challenges.

Also just up at the Post-Darwinist:

Darwinism and popular culture: Mathematician Jeffrey Shallit weighs in

Signature in the Cell: Darwinist demands to rewrite product copy

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

This controversy erupted over estimates of war deaths since World War 2 (1939-1945):

Researchers from Canada, the UK and Sweden have slammed the influential British Medical Journal (BMJ) for publishing an error-filled study on global war deaths, refusing an equivalent rebuttal article and having a flawed peer-review process.

Apparently, the contested article took issue with the fact that Oslo's International Peace Research Institute data show that global war deaths "declined by more than 90 per cent between 1946 and 2002."

"This is not some trivial academic disagreement," says Andrew Mack, director of the Simon Fraser University-based Human Security Report Project (HSRP), which p published a detailed critique of the BMJ's claims in the December issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution (JCR).

"Accurate statistics on the health impacts of war are critically important not just for researchers but also for humanitarian organizations whose assistance programs save millions of lives around the world."

The BMJ doesn't deny the problem:

"But the BMJ is well aware that its peer review process is flawed," says Spagat. "A recent study, whose authors include the journal's current editor, revealed that, on average, only a third of the 'major errors' deliberately inserted in a BMJ article were picked up by reviewers."

In what other line of work would such incompetence be accepted? Would you like your electrician to achieve only this level of competence? He only "gets" one third of the electrical safety hazards in your home?

And remember, if you live in the UK, your taxes pay for these scholars to "do their thing."

Adds Mack: "There appears to be no way of effectively rebutting BMJ articles that contain unwarranted -- and damaging -- critiques of the work of other scholars.

A couple of years back, I wrote on the problem of peer review: Often, it is simply the way establishment hacks prevent competition from new information and new interpretations.

Re war deaths, two notes:

- It would hardly be surprising if deaths in battle declined steeply, post World War II, because battlefield medicine has greatly improved. Indeed, it was improving during the war itself (1939-1945), and some sources credit the Allies' victory in part to discovery of penicillin, which restored personnel who might otherwise have been disabled or dead. Plasma, anti-malarials, and other drugs also received a huge boost due to the War.

- Modern warfare increasingly targets civilians. It could be 9-11. Or 7-11. Or it could be someone's granny, shopping at a Halal meat market in Iraq, to prepare a family celebration. When the conflict is between a trained terrorist and your granny, you should expect lw "battlefield" casualties. That is not a battlefield, after all; it is a monstrous crime scene.

- Still, it ought to be possible to maintain another point of view, with solid references. That's one thing peer review should enable, but it is increasingly obvious that peer reviewers do not want to bother.

Anyway, the intelligent design controversy is hardly the only area where peer review can merely maintain a convenient consensus - or tweak beards in a politically correct way.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

1. What makes Darwinism politically correct?

This episode of ID the Future features Robert Crowther interviewing CSC senior fellow Dr. Jonathan Wells on his book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. Dr. Wells explains the peer-pressure involved with Darwin's theory and shares from his studies in 19th century Darwinian controversies and evolutionary development at Yale and UC Berkeley, respectively.

Listen here.

The book's Web site is here.

In my view, Darwinism is politically correct because it is a tax-funded racket parasitizing real science. It attracts the sort of people who like free form speculation about the tyrannosaur's parenting skills, Neanderthal man's sex life and why homo sapiens (modern man) believes in God (not because some had an encounter with God, of course; such an idea could never be entertained).

2. The Design of Life: What the Evidence of Biological Systems Reveals

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin discusses The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems with author Dr. William Dembski. Is design in nature just an "illusion," as Richard Dawkins proclaims? Dembski and co-author Dr. Jonathan Wells show the answer is "no." Biologists have and continue to use the assumption of design successfully, precisely because design in biology is not an illusion but real.

Listen here. Design is not an illusion, but then neither is the cushy position that current society grants to people who claim it is. Almost any other position, no matter how ridiculous, can be fronted (space aliens, multiple universes ... and I suspect that is only a start.)

3. How to teach responsibly without getting sued?

This episode of ID the Future features Casey Luskin interviewed by Kevin Wirth on the key legal cases involving teachers teaching evolution. What does the case law say about teachers' rights and free speech?

Luskin, a lawyer with a science background, published a survey of case law in Hamline University Law Review to help the public understand what the courts have ruled on the topic of teaching origins.

This survey of twenty-one cases investigates the question many teacher, parents, and students ask: what is legal when it comes to teaching evolution? Can public schools teach scientific critiques of evolution? What does Discovery Institute recommend for teaching in schools? Find out by downloading the survey of case law here.

Listen here.

Two reasons I realized years ago that the legacy mainstream media are gone cats are

a) the inability of the average reporter to get certain basic facts straight, for example:

Doubts about Darwin do not turn on the age of the Earth, but on implausible claims about the origin of high levels of information - you know, the jumbo jet slowly materializes from the scrap heap, with no intelligent input at all ... And so does the trilobite and the tyrannosaur, and man. And that Alfa Romeo you always wanted (but you had to buy a minivan when your wife had twins)? Yeah, really.

b) passive, gullible acceptance of completely stupid claims about human psychology, whose only purpose is to prop up Darwinism.

As I wrote to some friends recently:

I have said this many times, but indulge me while I say it again: The "big bazooms" theory of human evolution - taken seriously by Psychology Today as the biggest truth - is a classic in the field.

Allegedly, men prefer well-endowed women so that their selfish genes can determine whether the woman is fertile.

Oh? So it has nothing to do with the reasons many men prefer big steaks, big mugs of beer, SUVs vs. Golf Minis, bagging a moose vs. bagging a prairie chicken?

Who knew? Who could ever have guessed?

As I have pointed out elsewhere, animals show similar preferences to people.

Wolf packs prefer bringing down a caribou or a beefalo to bringing down a deer. The deer is as much trouble to chase, but doesn't give anywhere near the number of servings.

So if we want to talk about the evolution of the preference for abundance vs. non-abundance, we must go way, way back into mammal or vertebrate evolution. No need to spend a lot of time with Old Stone Age Man.

The only reason for the Darwinist's Old Stone Age Man schtick is to find a question that "evolutionary" psychology can supposedly answer in a materialist way.

I have yet to see it perform better than psychology in real time.

Yet sponsored Darwinist nonsense is everywhere now, and it corrupts both thinking and behaviour.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).