Icons of ID: Apples and Oranges

Posted 30 January 2005 by PvM

↗ The current version of this post is on the live site: https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/01/icons-of-id-app.html

On ARN Mike Gene is arguing, amongst others, that there is a similarity between the publication of Meyer’s paper in PBSW and Pennock’s paper in Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics. Mike is wrong.

When the Meyer paper came out, the critics began to complain the Meyer paper was a drastic departure from the traditional focus of the journal. Now that we can see how the Pennock paper undercuts this complaint, we finally get some ad hoc rationalizations. I am utterly unswayed by Myrmecos’ attempt to argue one is a drastic departure from the traditional focus, while the other is not.

What Mike seems to forget is that the departure by PBSW was made by a single editor and not by the board and was a significant departure from standard practices.

If Mike’s argument is that the argument that Meyer’s paper does not belong in the PBSW is invalidated by Pennock’s publication in Annual reviews then he overlooks some basic differences:

1. The PBSW board clearly opposed the paper having been published and considered it a departure from standard practices.

A biological society that published an article critical of evolutionary theory issued a statement this week saying its council did not approve the paper.

…

The Biological Society of Washington, which publishes the journal, said the article was published without the prior knowledge of the Council. The society said, “We have met and determined that all of us would have deemed this paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings.”

Can Mike tell us if a similar conclusion was reached by the Annual Review board?

2. Annual review invites contributors to write a review article.

Founded in 1932, Annual Reviews provides researchers, professors, and scientific professionals with a definitive academic resource in 29 scientific disciplines. Annual Reviews saves you time by synthesizing the vast amount of primary research literature and identifying the principal contributions in your field. Editorial committees comprised of the most distinguished scholars in the discipline select all topics for review, and the articles are written by authors who are recognized experts in the field. Annual Reviews publications are among the highest cited publications by impact factor according to the Institute for Scientific Information

Suggesting that the editorial committees identified and selected the topic for review. So in other words Annual Review invites the authors to contribute…

Pennock’s article on Intelligent Design, its motivations, its history and how scientists can help play a role in improving science education, seems quite appropriate for Annual Review. Too bad that such articles can not be distributed amongst other journals but science generally frowns upon such practices. Given that ID’s main claims include the genetic code, I’d say that the journal made a good decision. Nevertheless it was a decision made by the editorial committee.

Sources:

Pennock, R Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics (Vol. 4: 143-163, Sept. 2003) (PDF)
UPI Biology group rejects anti-evolution paper
Annual Review general information

Other Notable Papers in Annual Reviews

Reilly PR., Public concern about genetics, Annu Rev Genomics Hum Genet. 2000;1:485-506.

Throughout the twentieth century and continuing into the present, the general public has been fascinated by advances in genetic knowledge. At times, individuals and groups have either inadvertently or deliberately misused genetic knowledge in the service of political goals. At other times, advances in genetics have challenged deeply held societal or religious beliefs. During the 1990s, there were many advances that focused an unprecedented level of public attention and concern on genetics. In particular, the public has expressed deep concern about gene mapping, cloning, and genetically modified foods. In each case, the origin of the concern and the nature of the public response have been different. I consider these topics and argue that the scientific community must increase its commitment to public discourse.

5 Comments

Alex Merz · 30 January 2005

Yes, that's the way it works at Annual Review of Your Favorite Subdiscipline.

SteveF · 31 January 2005

Ad hoc rationalizations? In light of the PBSW statement concerning the publication of Meyer's paper, feeble rationalisations is all that the IDists have (who'd a thought it?).

In any other situation invloving vaguely rational people, the statement would be the end of the matter. Of course we aren't in a normal debate nor are we dealing with rational people.

Hysterical fools appear to be demanding the right to dictate science education in public schools. Marvellous.

PvM · 31 January 2005

The real 'scandal' to me seems to be the quality or lack thereof of the paper by Meyer. Hans Sues from the Smithsonian referred to it as unscientific nonsense and as PT contributors have shown, it suffers from some real problems.

The first opportunity to be published and all ID can do is present what appears to be a rush job with no effort to present the case for ID let alone a scientific theory or hypothesis of ID.

Mike objects to this that there are many bad papers published. But that should hardly be a reason to be proud of Meyer's 'accomplishments'. If those are the standards of ID then something seems to be very wrong.

Steve Reuland · 31 January 2005

I just love the constant tu quoque invocation. So Meyer's paper was completely out of place in PBSW? No problem, a completely different journal, with a completely different subject matter, published a completely different article which did not claim to be peer-reviewed research by an ID skeptic.

In what universe does one have to live in to believe that this absolves the initial wrongdoing? Even if the situation were in any way comparable, it's not as if every sin is washed clean the minute someone else is caught doing it.

This is the sort of sophisticated ethical reasoning we get from the moral self-righteousness crowd.

PvM · 1 February 2005

Mike Gene in an attempt to save his argument now argues that he was misunderstood and that he was arguing about the 'odd behavior of critics at ARN'. (Ironically, one may ask Mike Gene about the odd behavior of ID prononents when it comes to Pennock's article)

I am not arguing for any similarity in the publication procedure. I am commenting on the odd behavior of the critics here at ARN. In fact, let's consider more context.

Mike claims that

There is no way any editor in his right mind would publish an article like Meyer's, whose [b\theme is such a drastic departure from the traditional focus of the journal, without consulting other editors. I focused on the assertion that is highlighted above. The argument is not about publication procedures. It's about cherry picking. I fail to see how Pennock's article is not a "drastic departure from the traditional focus of the journal." Given that it is a drastic departure, that undercuts this "drastic departure" complaint. So finally, after a year, we start getting some ad hoc rationalizations. What were they?

Let's first point out that Mike now is arguing that he was responding to the highlighted assertion alone, taken out of its context. Mike Gene is thus totally missing the point namely that the Annual Review invites authors to contribute so how can it be a drastic departure? But even accepting Mike's 'argument' that this paper was a 'drastic departure', it was one made with the involvement of the editorial team. In the case of Meyer's paper, it seems that procedures were not followed and that indeed the paper WAS a drastic departure from the practices of the journal and that neither the other editors nor the board were advised of such a departure. Mike is also pointing out that 'as you can also see from that thread, no critic was interested in explaining things at the time as Myrmecos explains things today. ' So what? Why should critics explain these things to Mike Gene's satisfaction. Mike may call it cherry picking because Mike cannot understand the difference between a journal inviting an author to contribute on a particular topic and a paper being published apparantly without the consent of the board and other editors. A paper which departs, according to the editorial staff and board, significantly from the acceptance standards of the journal. Was the publication of Pennock's paper a drastic departure? Mike has not given any evidence that it was, unlike the board of the PBSW which released the following statement supporting the drastic departure. Mike accuses critics of cherry picking when in fact he focuses on a narrow issue of a much larger claim namely the departure from accepted standards without the consent of the editorial staff and/or board.

The paper by Stephen C. Meyer, "The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories," in vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239 of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, was published at the discretion of the former editor, Richard v. Sternberg. Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the 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. For the same reason, the journal will not publish a rebuttal to the thesis of the paper, the superiority of intelligent design (ID) over evolution as an explanation of the emergence of Cambrian body-plan diversity. The Council endorses a resolution on ID published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (www.aaas.org/news/releases/2002/1106id2.shtml), 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. We have reviewed and revised editorial policies to ensure that the goals of the Society, as reflected in its journal, are clearly understood by all. Through a web presence (http://www.biolsocwash.org) and improvements in the journal, the Society hopes not only to continue but to increase its service to the world community of systematic biologists.

Then we have the Mission statement of Annual Review

The Scientific Review The mission of Annual Reviews is to provide systematic, periodic examinations of scholarly advances in a number of fields of science through critical authoritative reviews. The comprehensive critical review not only summarizes a topic but also roots out errors of fact or concept and provokes discussion that will lead to new research activity. The critical review is an essential part of the scientific method. To argue that Pennock's article may have better belonged in another journal is irrelevant, the editors of the journal found the topic relevant enough to invite Pennock to contribute. Since ID's argument includes claims about gene duplication, genetic information I see no reason why the reader cannot be introduced to the ID movement, its foundations and its claims. Pennock discusses how science has addressed the claims of the ID movement, and the problems with the concept of irreducible complexity. Pennock then introduces the concept of specified complex information and finishes with some recommendations. All in all a very nice introduction to the ID movement, its political motivations, its approaches and its failure to be scientifically relevant. Pennock does exactly what the Annual Reviews was set up to provide, an overview of the issues Until recently, most scientists were unaware of the developments in organized opposition to evolution that led to the current state of the creation/evolution controversy, and even now few understand the ways and the extent to which the movement has progressed. This essay aims to give a brief overview of these developments, especially as they have occurred in the last decade.

Of course other journals could have equally benefitted from Pennock's article but science in general frowns upon cut-and-paste articles. Pennock concludes

The AAAS Board's goal is to educate policy-makers about evolution. This is clearly important, but the scientific community and especially academic scientists need to put their own house in order as well. For instance, too few university biology departments explicitly require an evolution course. Theodosius Dobzhansky famously said that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution (20). However, scientists too often assume that the fundamental importance of evolution is obvious and thus fail to make the connections apparent for students. Even better than a required evolution course would be to thoroughly and explicitly integrate evolution in every biology course. This is easy to do in genetics courses, and there is no reason that it couldn't also be done in courses on cell and molecular biology, plant and human biology, anatomy and physiology, and so on (8, 53, 76). Such a systematic incorporation would do more than anything to help students understand Dobzhansky's point that evolutionary theory is biology's unifying explanatory framework.

As I said, Mike is comparing apples and oranges here. Mike also tries to argue that

When the Meyer paper came out, the critics began to complain the Meyer paper was a drastic departure from the traditional focus of the journal. Now that we can see how the Pennock paper undercuts this complaint, we finally get some ad hoc rationalizations.

What did PT authors state? The combination of the dismal quality and the nature of the journal raised some questions as to how the paper passed peer review. These are legitimate questions, given the abysmal quality of the paper.

The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (PBSW) is a respected, if somewhat obscure, biological journal specializing in papers of a systematic and taxonomic nature, such as the description of new species. A review of issues in evolutionary theory is decidedly not its typical fare, even disregarding the creationist nature of Meyer's paper. The fact that the paper is both out of the journal's typical sphere of publication, as well as dismal scientifically, raises the question of how it made it past peer review. The answer probably lies in the editor, Richard von Sternberg. Sternberg happens to be a creationist and ID fellow traveler who is on the editorial board of the Baraminology Study Group at Bryan College in Tennessee. (The BSG is a research group devoted to the determination of the created kinds of Genesis. We are NOT making this up!) Sternberg was also a signatory of the Discovery Institute's "100 Scientists Who Doubt Darwinism" statement. [3] Given R. v. Sternberg's creationist leanings, it seems plausible to surmise that the paper received some editorial shepherding through the peer review process. Given the abysmal quality of the science surrounding both information theory and the Cambrian explosion, it seems unlikely that it received review by experts in those fields. One wonders if the paper saw peer review at all.

And remember what Myrmecos stated and the narrow focus given to the statement by Mike Gene

There is no way any editor in his right mind would publish an article like Meyer's, whose theme is such a drastic departure from the traditional focus of the journal, without consulting other editors. Especially an article that the editor must certainly know is highly controversial. If a meteorological journal decided to publish a report on, say, new findings in cancer research, you can bet that there'd be a flurry of consultation among the editorial staff.