Monday, May 03, 2010

Seer Reviewed, or I'll take "Bar Trivia" for $500, Alex.

Like a gigolo or philanderer looking for his next ex-wife, the ID community, with a similar regularity, is proudly launching it next failed "peer-reviewed" journal: Bio-Complexity. The editorial board is veritable who's who of ID proponents:
  • David Abel, Origin of Life; The Origin-of-Life Science Foundation, United States
  • Douglas Axe, Protein Structure–Function; Biologic Institute, United States
  • William Basener, Statistics and Population Modeling; Rochester Institute of Technology, United States
  • Michael Behe, Biochemistry and Biological Complexity; Lehigh University, United States
  • Walter Bradley, Origin of Life; Baylor University, United States
  • Stuart Burgess, Biomimetics and Biomechanics; University of Bristol, United Kingdom
  • Russell Carlson, Biochemistry; University of Georgia, United States
  • William Dembski, Mathematics and Information Theory; Discovery Institute, United States
  • Marcos Eberlin, Chemistry; State University of Campinas, Brazil
  • Charles Garner, Prebiotic Chemistry; Baylor University, United States
  • Loren Haarsma, Biophysics; Calvin College, United States
  • Peter Imming, Organic Chemistry; Martin Luther University, Germany
  • James Keener, Bioengineering and Mathematics; University of Utah, United States
  • David Keller, Biophysical Chemistry and Molecular Machines; University of New Mexico, United States
  • Branko Kozulic, Biochemistry; Gentius Ltd, Croatia
  • Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, Plant Genetics; Max Plank Institute for Plant Breeding Research (retired), Germany
  • Jed Macosko, Biophysics and Molecular Machines; Wake Forest University, United States
  • Robert Marks, Evolutionary Computing and Information Theory; Baylor University, United States
  • Norman Nevin, Medical Genetics; Queen's University of Belfast (emeritus), Ireland
  • Edward Peltzer, Ocean Chemistry, United States
  • Colin Reeves, Genetic Algorithms and Information Theory; Coventry University, United Kingdom
  • Siegfried Scherer, Microbial Ecology; Technische Universität München, Germany
  • Ralph Seelke, Microbiology; University of Wisconsin-Superior, United States
  • David Snoke, Physics and Modeling; University of Pittsburgh, United States
  • Richard Sternberg, Genomics, Cladistics and Theoretical Biology; Biologic Institute, United States
  • Scott Turner, Physiology, Ecology and Evolution; State University of New York-Syracuse, United States
  • Jiří Vácha, Pathological Physiology and Evolutionary Theory; Masaryk University (emeritus), Czech Republic
  • John Walton, Chemistry; University of St Andrews, United Kingdom
  • Jonathan Wells, Cell and Developmental Biology; Biologic Institute, United States

Well, fair-enough—any group can band together and publish their own papers. All it takes is a website—although with even such modest requirements previous ID "journals" are littered not with submissions but electronic tumbleweed.

But a board like this--such a board! Why, it is reminiscent of mailman Cliff Clavin (of Cheers! fame) and his "dream" board when he appeared on Jeopardy.

You really have to wonder how, with a deck stacked like this, Dembski could write, with a straight face:
"Check out this new ID-relevant ["ID-friendly" is too strong -- ID proponents will get no preferential treatment] peer-reviewed journal"
Technically he is correct. It is peer-reviewed. In their case it's a bug, not a feature. It is peer-reviewed--just like the Journal of Homeopathy is peer-reviewed.

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