Intelligent design in the scientific literature
Intelligent design in the scientific literature
Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.
Francis Bacon
Do ID theorists generate data?
Science Citation Index* - the last 16 years (15 million articles, 5300 journals as of 3/15/06)
224 articles use the key phrase "intelligent design" in titles, keywords, or abstract.
....Of these only 98 refer to biological intelligent design
....The bulk of the "articles" are letters to the editor critical of ID
....None of articles promoting ID (primarily letters to the editor) is in a research journal.
....For comparison more than 400,000 articles use the keyword "evolution", including 45,000 in 2009.
.....Many refer to biological evolution and are in research journals.
The notorious Stephen Meyer article in The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington does not use the key phrase "intelligent design". This is likely a strategy for slippng articles into (obscure) scientific literature.
The key ID concept "specified complexity" - 1 article (a book review)
Another key ID concept "irreducible complexity" - 13 articles.
....The two in research journals criticize irreducible complexity.
....(Why irreducible complexity is silly)
Key evolutionary term "natural selection" - 6801 articles
For comparison, "flat earth" returns 64 articles. "Cold fusion" returns 708 articles!
Intelligent Design Network implies that evolution and design should be taught equally. Clearly these two concepts are not of equal stature in the scientific literature.
*Eugene Garfield founded the Institute for Scientific Information in 1958. His intent was to improve accessibility of scientific literature for bench scientists. Science Citation Index, ISI's main database (now part of the Web of Knowledge), is a major international resource which not only supports scientists but helps policy makers evaluate scientific trends as well as importance of particular journals and articles.