(Also published, without formatting, at the site linked above.)
It's occurred to me that Intelligent Design/Intelligent Origin Theory may be the scientific equivalent of Harriet Miers.
At the heart of the uproar over Harriet Miers' nomination to the Supreme Court is the lack of a paper trail. Without this trail, we have only the word of her supporters that she's qualified. Phyllis Schlaffly's article seems to cover the doubts quite well. A few items:
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- You said, "Trust me." But why should we trust you when experience proves we could not trust the judgment of President Reagan (who gave us Justices ...O'Connor and ...Kennedy) or President George H.W. Bush (...Souter)? Are you more trustworthy than Reagan or your father?
- You said, "She's not going to change. ... Twenty years from now she'll be the same person, with the same philosophy that she is today." Isn't that claim ridiculous after Miers already made a major change in her philosophy from Democrat ...to Republican in the 1990s?
- In presenting Miers as the most qualified person for this Supreme Court appointment, is there any evidence to convince us that she is more qualified than Judges Edith Jones, Janice Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owen?
- Because Miers hasn't written anything memorable or important by age 60, how can we assume she has the capability to write Supreme Court opinions? Is there any constitutional or conservative principle on which Miers ever took a stand?
The issue is that Miers' nomination is essentially based on faith.
If Miers were a sitting judge, or even a former judge, we'd have access to written opinions as evidence of her thinking and her understanding of the law. If she'd written some op-ed pieces, especially on Constitutional matters, we'd have that. Instead, we have bits that have surfaced here and there which are, at best, unpromising.
Miers' curriculum vitae is not terribly impressive. Those who would prefer a nominee who hails from a big-name law school, and who has done more than work as legal counsel for individuals and businesses. In effect, they would be more comfortable with someone who had "paid her dues."
This is not to say it's impossible that Miers could be a fine associate justice, or even a legendary one, it's just that evidence is lacking. Maybe I could be a fine associate justice, but I'm not waiting by the phone to hear I've been nominated.
What does this have to do with ID/IOT?
Intelligent design has not paid its dues.
There are procedures any new idea has to go through in order to win acceptance by the scientific community. Those procedures exist for a reason, and any idea that wants the respect of the mainstream scientific community has to go through them. Any idea. Einstein could not have gotten away with, "Here's this great idea, and I have the math to support it in my files somewhere." And he didn't . He submitted his idea for publication, and supported it, tensor after bloody tensor. After the scientific establishment tried to knock it down, they finally admitted it really did work better than Newton's ideas and accepted it. Now Einstein's ideas are part of the foundation for further exploration, and cited in paper after paper. No one feels any need to prove Einstein right all over again.
Darwin's theory has paid its dues. As soon as it was published, attackers swarmed over it, trying to knock it down. Eventually, the attackers gave up. Darwin's theory consistently explained things, by use of definable and understandable mechanisms, that were otherwise unexplained and unexplainable. Now, a century and a half later, it's routinely used as the basis for biological research, and no one who cites it in a paper feels the need to prove it all over again, any more than they would need to prove that 2+2=4.
Intelligent Design has not paid its dues, and shows no inclination to make the attempt. For the most part, ID/IOT supporters don't submit papers to peer-review journals. Nowhere do we see anyone taking the ideas of Intelligent Design and showing how they explain anything in nature. The only expositions of ID/IOT are found in books and articles aimed at the general lay population, and these are so vague as to be useless for any sort of scientific inquiry.
Wesley Elsberry has suggested the Discovery Institute, one of the supporters of ID/IOT, should publish a workbook with examples showing how the theory is used for biological systems. It would cover each example, from start to finish, and most important, it would show its work. When complex specified information is found in some molecule or molecules, it would show the equations and calculations used to determine that the information was, in fact, complex. It would be able to give some sort of estimate of *how* complex it is. Rather than merely asserting that the information is specified, it would show where the specification can be found, and what it looks like. Ideally, it would show why specification A is the correct one instead of specification B, C, D, or E.
And the workbook would be very useful if all it did was give the definition of "information" that's being used, and show how it's measured or calculated using real-world systems.
The proponents of ID/IOT, when challenged with examples where their theories don't work, counter with, "It's too sophisticated for you to understand." That won't wash. The whole purpose of science is to explain things. If you can't explain your explanation, you're not going to succeed at science.
Harriet Miers' supporters need a better argument than "Trust us." Intelligent Design supporters need a better argument than "Trust us."
Harriet Miers' critics are demanding evidence that Ms. Miers is a better legal scholar than Judges Edith Jones, Janice Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owen. The critics of Intelligent Design want evidence that ID/IOT is a better explanation than the current evolutionary synthesis.
Miers' critics want to see a paper trail. They want to see some of her writings, so they can judge whether she'll be able to write Supreme Court opinions. Critics of Intelligent Design want to see a paper trail. They want to see papers where ID/IOT is actually used to explain some aspect of nature. Any aspect will do. Where does it provoke investigation in some direction not suggested by evolution, and turn out to be right?
In particular, critics of ID/IOT want evidence of a theory that is capable of reaching any conclusion other than, "It's designed – we give up! It's too hard! We'll never understand how it was made!"
In the case of Harriet Miers, Beldar has been making his case for judging Miers by different standards, and making the argument that those standards are just as valid as the ones Schlaffly uses. Maybe he's right. Maybe not. I don't expect anyone in the Senate to ask me. In the case of ID/IOT, and indeed, in any field of "alternative" science or medicine, supporters argue that the rules of science should somehow not apply. Unfortunately, if you want to call your pet cause "science", you have to get it past the gatekeepers and play by the rules of science, whether you're promoting homeopathy, chakra balancing, astrology, or Intelligent Design. If you have some alternative set of standards you want to use, it's up to you to show those standards are valid.
Intelligent Design is not valid science just because William Dembski likes it any more than Harriet Miers is Supreme Court material just because George W. Bush likes her.
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