Scientific support continues to elude Intelligent Design

Over at Sciencewatch, my friend Darrick Dean makes this observation:

"While we have seen no science in the journals supporting young-earthism what-so-ever, here is what may be #200,899,999 evidence for an old universe..."

That got me thinking. Just how much evidence is there for Intelligent Design? Interestingly, the ID movement set itself a clear goal on this point. The Wedge Document, made public in 1997, Set ID a "five year" objective of "One hundred scientific, academic and technical articles by our fellows". That five year period ended in at least 2002. And what has been published in support of ID?

"Although Davis and Kenyon... claim that intelligent design represents a viable alternative to neodarwinian evolution, the scientific literature does not support that claim. Compared with several thousand papers on evolution, the combined searches produced only 37 citations containing the keyword "intelligent design." A closer look at those 37 references suggests that none reports scientific research using intelligent design as a biological theory."

George W Gilchrist, The Elusive Scientific Basis of Intelligent Design Theory March 16, 2001


"Ultimately, whether a scientific issue is controversial or not is determined by the number of papers published in peer-reviewed journals. When the ratio is 1:1, there's a controversy. When it's 3:1, there's a dominant view and a more heterodox but still respectable view. When it's 100:1, it's safe to say that there's no controversy. In the case of evolution vs. creationism, if I had to bet I'd say that the ratio is in the vicinity of 10,000:1 in general and 1:0 in Nature and Science (i.e. no pro-ID papers have been published in either of these journals)."

Alon Levy, commenting on Lisa Peters is a hero!, at Pharyngula, 14-MAY-05 at 11:39

When faced with this lack of scientific papers supporting ID, its supporters generally claim that ID scientists are "censored" or ostracised by their peers. (The case of Richard Sternberg is often given as an example). But the thing is:Even "Intelligent Design" Scientists admit that ID is not yet a "Theory".

If there's no science for ID supporters to publish, then what is there to censor!?

Given the all but absolute lack of scientific support for "Intelligent Design", there surely can't be long left before its "supporters" give up on it as a theory all together...




Update: I'll link to this post from my ongoing discussion with “bareshiyth”.

Update 2: I meant to link to the Index to Creationist Claims page on Peer review & Intelligent design...