Why isn't intelligent design found published in peer-reviewed science journals?

Why isn't intelligent design found published in peer-reviewed science journals?

http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1700-why-isn-t-intelligent-design-found-published-in-peer-reviewed-science-journals#2687

Darwinists use a similar rule—I call it “Catch-23”—to exclude intelligent design from science: intelligent design is not scientific, so it can’t be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. How
do we know it’s not scientific? Because it isn’t published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Catch-23!

Point A. Science is not done by committee. It does not matter that intelligent design is rarely found in the journals because as free-thinking responsible scientists, we must test a theory ourselves and see if it holds up and not judge a theory based upon its apparent lack of presence in mainstream journals, or even by the "popular opinion" of the scientific community.

Point B. ID proponents have published articles in peer reviewed science journals advocating their pro-design positions. Admittedly, these articles are rare. However, even if it does matter that intelligent design is scarcely found in mainstream peer reviewed journals, the counterpoint is that design is not excluded from the journals on the basis of its merits, but rather because of "new paradigm opposition." History of science has taught us that journals tend to exclude ideas which are radically opposed to current paradigms. Intelligent design is at odds with both the prevailing paradigm of biology today, evolution, as well as the prevailing mechanistic philosophy of science dominating origins science. Thus, exclusion of intelligent design is only to be expected, even if intelligent design is supported by evidence.

Point C. Though "opposition to new paradigms" plays a major role in the exclusion of design from journals, the exclusion is also the byproduct of a political controversy, which serves to instill misunderstandings about intelligent design theory in the minds of many scientists, who are misled to believe that intelligent design is an untestable religious theory that has no place competing with true empirically based scientific theories in the journals. Misunderstandings about the theory itself--and not opposition to its evidential merits--play a very large role in its exclusion.

Point D. Actually, upon closer inspection, once one understands the predictions of intelligent design theory, it becomes clear that there is much data published in the journals already supporting intelligent design theory; researchers simply have not been inferring design because the implications of their results have not been made clear to them. 

http://www.discovery.org/a/1212
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1163

The Catch-22 of Peer-Reviewed Journals

by Kyle Butt, M.A.

https://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=2508

Those of us who advocate that an Intelligent Designer created the Universe are often ridiculed by evolutionary scientists. This ridicule comes in many different forms, but one of the most often used tactics of atheistic evolutionists is to claim that creation science is simply not good science. As “evidence” that creation or intelligent design is not “good science,” atheistic evolutionists exult in the fact that the standard peer-reviewed scientific journals do not publish papers that support intelligent design. A couple of sample statements to this effect follow:

“ID [Intelligent Design—KB] advocates complain that their views are rejected out of hand by the scientific establishment, yet they do not play by the normal rules of presenting their views first through scientific conferences and then to peer-reviewed journals and then in textbooks” (Scott, 2006, p. 22).

“Most telling, perhaps, is intelligent design’s near total failure to make any headway in the peer-reviewed publications that are the gateway to scientific success” (Wexler, 2006, p. 94).

Why are there no peer reviewed scientific papers of intelligent design in mainstream scientific journals ?

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1700-why-isn-t-intelligent-design-found-published-in-peer-reviewed-science-journals#3540

The reasoning here is that if creation or intelligent design were scientific, then it would be included in peer-reviewed journals. Since it does not appear in peer-reviewed journals, then it must not be scientific. The problem with this reasoning is the circular process by which papers are accepted for inclusion in such journals. The scientists in authoritative positions have established their own preconceived definition for science. “To be scientific in our era is to search for solely natural explanations” (Hewlett and Peters, 2006, p. 75, emp. added). Thus, if a paper even hints at something other than a “natural” explanation, it is rejected as “unscientific” regardless of the facts or research presented in the paper. Creationists’ papers are not allowed in peer-reviewed journals, not because they are poorly written or documented, but because they do not offer “solely natural explanations.”

An example of this prejudicial dismissal of intelligent design material occurred in 2004. In that year, Richard Sternberg allowed a paper that presented evidence in favor of intelligent design to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. Concerning what happened as a result, Sternberg wrote:

In 2004, in my capacity as editor of The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, I authorized “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories” by Dr. Stephen Meyer to be published in the journal after passing peer-review. Because Dr. Meyer’s article presented scientific evidence for intelligent design in biology, I faced retaliation, defamation, harassment, and a hostile work environment at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History that was designed to force me out as a Research Associate there (2008).

Reacting to the fact that an intelligent design paper was published in the journal, The Council of the Biological Society of Washington, which sponsors the journal, wrote an official statement concerning the ordeal:

The paper by Stephen C. Meyer...was published at the discretion of the former editor Richard v. [sic] Sternberg. Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history.... The Council endorses a resolution on ID published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science...which observes that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID as a testable hypothesis to explain the origin of organic diversity. Accordingly, the Meyer paper does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings (“Statement from...,” n.d.).

The way the council presents the matter, it seems that Sternberg did not go through the proper peer-review process. But that is not the case. The article was peer-reviewed and revised in accordance with the reviewers’ suggestions. The article did not cause a stir because it did not pass the review process. It caused a stir because it did not meet the “scientific standard”—in other words, because it advocated the possibility of an intelligent Designer.

The Council alluded to a resolution on ID issued by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. That resolution was adopted in October of 2002. In that resolution, the AAAS stated: “Therefore Be It Further Resolved, that AAAS calls upon its members to assist those engaged in overseeing science education policy to understand the nature of science, the content of contemporary evolutionary theory and the inappropriateness of ‘intelligent design theory’ as subject matter” (“AAAS Board...,” 2002, emp. in orig.). This simply means that if any book, article, or paper has anything about intelligent design in it, do not publish, promote, or condone it in anyway.

Thus, it is clear that the oft-repeated accusation against creation science’s lack of peer-reviewed papers is seen for what it is: an intentional exclusion based, not on the merits of the paper, but on the agreed-upon, but false, definition that true science entails only “natural explanations.” The scientific establishment’s stance is similar to that of a child who forms an exclusive club, one of the stipulations for membership being that all members must be “extremely smart.” The child then includes in the by-laws the statement that all smart people should think that he (the founding member) is always right. Thus, he concludes that those who do not think he is always right are not smart. Then, he proceeds to malign those not in the club based on the idea that they are not smart. And as proof that they are not smart, he states that it is obvious they are unintelligent because they are not members of his club. In reality, his motivation for castigating those outside his club is simply the fact that they disagree with him, which is the same motivation that propels the evolutionary establishment to reject all creation science articles. You will not see articles advocating intelligent design in the majority of peer-reviewed journals, not because the findings are unscientific, not because they fail to provide evidence and proof of their conclusions, but because they are not atheistic and evolutionary.

REFERENCES

“AAAS Board Resolution on Intelligent Design Theory” (2002), [On-line], URL: http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2002/1106id2.shtml.

Hewlett, Martinez and Ted Peters (2006), “Theology, Religion, and Intelligent Design,” Not in Our Classrooms, ed. Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch, (Boston, MA: Beacon Press).

Scott, Eugenie (2006), “The Once and Future Intelligent Design,” Not in Our Classrooms, ed. Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch, (Boston, MA: Beacon Press).

“Statement from the Council of the Biological Society of Washington” (no date), [On-line], URL: http://www.biolsocwash.org/id_statement.html.

Sternberg, Richard (2008), “Smithsonian Controversy,” [On-line], URL: http://www.rsternberg.net/smithsonian.php.

Wexler, Jay D. (2006), “From the Classroom to the Courtroom: Intelligent Design and the Constitution,” Not in Our Classrooms, ed. Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch, (Boston, MA: Beacon Press).

While I think those behind the publication of the Fine-tuning paper

Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519320302071?via%3Dihub

on the science journal of Theoretical Biology landed a surprising coup, and the feat that it passed peer review, I think the content is rather disappointing. First, it seems more that the main intuition was to get published in a major secular science journal, rather than to provide information of a new finding.

Secondly, calling the finding a functional amino acid sequence in a vast sequence space as fine-tuned, is unprecedented, and maybe not the adequate description. The sequence is simply functional. And that alone is a feat that demands an explanation, which unlikely is a natural one. It was done by Douglas Axe in 2004, and that was a genuine paper, providing relevant new information, and is worth of merit.

There ARE examples of fine-tuning in biology, but the authors have not mentioned any of them.

Secondly, they could have adopted a strategy to point rather implicitly and in a subtle way to an intelligent designer. But rather than that, they did it VERY explicitly, and referenced to the entire Discovery Institute crowd, which made it glaringly clear that the boys from Seattle had probably somehow their fingers in the play, in special as it is known that one of the authors has connections to the institute.

As such, it would not wonder me if the paper will be soon retracted, rather than be a precursor and true break-through, and paradigm shift. There were other attempts to do the same, as Sternberg & Meyer, and the only result was retraction by the journal, and persecution of the peer reviewers. That will probably happen as well in this case. I already saw some asking who reviewed the paper.

The day when the tracks will be changed into a different direction, and when ID will become mainstream, will probably be the day of Saint never. I might be too pessimistic, but the mainstream science culture & landscape is too dominated by a secular scientific establishment which does not seem to be willing to accept this change - the rather quick protest paper in the writing is a sign of that.

Large sample spaces do not imply biological systems are ‘fine-tuned’https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002251932030312X?via%3Dihub#b9005

It would be a healthy move for science itself, if the philosophical framework would be permitted to change for the good, and in historical sciences, an intelligent designer permitted as a POSSIBLE explanation. Without pressure, but just letting it go, and giving to any science authors the permission to mention intelligent design as an alternative.

I don't know what would be required for that change to occur, but I feel today, the gap of the two camps is too deep. And forcing it to happen might rather backfire.

Or they eventually have made the bet, played, and will succeed. I hope they will Time will tell. But I am not very hopeful and enthusiastic, that this is the case. The precedence has happened. It's a good move. Let's see....

Biochemical fine-tuning - essential for life
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2591-biochemical-fine-tuning-essential-for-life