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NOTE: The Washington Post has followed up on this bit of breaking news and published a piece on Sternberg, Controversial Editor Backed

Read David Klinghoffer’s January 2005 story on Rick Sternberg, “Branding of a Heretic“.

The Smithsonian Institution is a national treasure of which every American can legitimately feel a sense of personal ownership. Considering this, I’d imagine widespread displeasure as more Americans become aware that senior scientists at the publicly funded Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History have reportedly been creating a “hostile work environment” for one of their colleagues merely because he published a controversial idea in a biology journal.

The controversial idea is Intelligent Design, the scientific critique of neo-Darwinism. The persecuted Smithsonian scientist is Richard von Sternberg, the holder of two PhDs in biology (one in theoretical biology, the other in molecular evolution). While the Smithsonian disputes the case, Sternberg’s version has so far been substantiated in an investigation by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an independent federal agency.

A lengthy and detailed letter from OSC attorney James McVay, dated August 5, 2005, and addressed to Sternberg, summarizes the government’s findings, based largely on e-mail traffic among top Smithsonian scientists. A particularly damning passage in the OSC letter reads: 

Our preliminary investigation indicates that retaliation [against Sternberg by his colleagues] came in many forms. It came in the form of attempts to change your working conditions…During the process you were personally investigated and your professional competence was attacked. Misinformation was disseminated throughout the SI [Smithsonian Institution] and to outside sources. The allegations against you were later determined to be false. It is also clear that a hostile work environment was created with the ultimate goal of forcing you out of the SI.

Meanwhile, on the basis of the “misinformation” directed against him, Sternberg’s career prospects were being ruined.

Offensive Proceedings

What exactly was his offense? Some background is in order. In a January Wall Street Journal op-ed, I reported the story of how Sternberg, a Smithsonian research associate, suffered as a result of his editing a technical peer-reviewed biology journal, The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.

The journal is housed at the Smithsonian, though it’s nominally independent. For his part, formally, Sternberg is employed by the National Institute of Health, though his agreement with his employer stipulates that he may spend 50 percent of his time working at the Smithsonian. So when the August 2004 issue of the Proceedings appeared, under Sternberg’s editorship, Sternberg’s managers at the Smithsonian took a keen interest in a particular article–the first paper laying out the evidence for ID to be published in a peer-reviewed technical journal.

President Bush has committed the unforgivable sin. When asked earlier this month whether students should be exposed to the growing controversy surrounding Darwin’s theory of evolution, Bush responded, “You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas. The answer is yes.” The reaction from the Darwin-only crowd was immediate: There is no controversy worth mentioning, Read More ›

It’s unfortunate that intelligent design is standing trial in Pennsylvania. Scientific theories require decades, sometimes centuries, to develop, to withstand scrutiny before they are accepted as legitimate. Trying to force acceptance – or denial – quickly is an end-run around the scientific method and the spirit of free inquiry. Whatever the lower courts decide about whether intelligent design can be Read More ›

NOTE: This is a rush transcript of the Nightline interview with Dr. Stephen Meyer of Discovery Institute on August 8, 2005. The interview took place in Discovery Institute’s office in Seattle, Washington. The transcript was prepared from an audio tape of the interview and has not been corrected by Dr. Meyer or the other participants. Click here to download and Read More ›

This week, about 100 miles from the Liberty Bell, a trial is taking place in Harrisburg over the teaching of “intelligent design.” This is an opportunity for a federal judge to heal a crack in the law over how biological origins is taught in public schools. The Dover school board has mandated that teachers discuss intelligent design in science courses. Read More ›

Click here to listen to an MP3 recording of the radio appearance by George Gilder and Richard Dawkins, or click here for a RealAudio version. Seattle — Minutes before a scheduled NPR radio debate with Discovery Sr. Fellow George Gilder today, Oxford-based Darwinist Richard Dawkins advised the producers he would not debate after all, but only present his views, which appeared Read More ›

Should government regulate business? I expect most people would answer “yes” to that question, but if you ask them why, I expect these same people will have a harder time giving an answer that makes sense.

Some may say, “in order to prevent businesses from engaging in fraud or misrepresentation.” But we do not need regulation to do that; there are already many federal, state and local statutes against fraud and misrepresentation, and businesses that behave badly can be dealt with through normal civil and criminal legal means. Others who are a bit more sophisticated might argue that we need to regulate business in order to protect people from “market failures.” However, the empirical evidence is that there are far fewer “market failures” than commonly imagined, and many of these so-called market failures are actually a result of misguided government policy or regulation.

For a minute, try to imagine a world without government regulation, but where all of the standard laws against theft, fraud, misrepresentation and bodily injury still exist. Under such a scenario, what do you think would happen if we had no food and drug administration to tell us what was safe to consume? No financial regulators to protect us from bank failures and financial scams? No health and safety regulators to protect us from unsafe products? Would we all die? Not likely, because the judicial system, coupled with private standard setting associations, would likely give us an equal, if not a higher, level of protection than we have now.