Stephen Meyer Responds to Research on Irreducible Complexity

Comments from Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture in response to Science magazine’s forthcoming article “Evolution of Hormone-Receptor Complexity by Molecular Exploitation” and regarding irreducible complexity, evolution and intelligent design.

The Bridgham et. al. study published in Science is trivial. ID theorists have long known that a few mutations can slightly alter an existing protein fold. What we question is whether mutation and selection are sufficient to search the enormous combinatorial space of possibilities necessary to finding fundamentally new protein folds and structures. This study does nothing to allay our skepticism on that score.

Contrary to what the authors assume receptor-hormone pairs do not constitute irreducibly complex systems. The receptor-hormone pair is only a small component of a signal transduction circuit that regulates other complex physiological processes. For such pairs to have any selective or functional advantage many other protein components have to be present, including the other components of a signal transduction circuit and the physiological processes that such circuits regulate. If this is the best that Michael Behe’s critics can do after ten years of trying to refute him, then neo-Darwinism is in deep trouble.

The really interesting thing about this paper is not the science it contains—its scientific results are trivial—but the sociological dynamics surrounding the publication of these papers. The AAAS has repeatedly insisted there is no scientific controversy about intelligent design. Now Science, the AAAS flagship journal, publishes two articles taking positions on a controversy that the AAAS says doesn’t exist. Will Science now allow Michael Behe to respond or will it only publish articles about the controversy which claim that ID is wrong? 

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