In August of 2004, news agencies began reporting on the controversy surrounding the publication of an article arguing for the theory of intelligent design in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. Then editor, Dr. Richard Sternberg, came under intense scrutiny and even persecution for publishing the article, written by Discovery senior fellow Dr. Stephen Meyer. The Read More ›
This article, published by Fox News, contains a transcript of Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture Senior Fellow Richard Sternberg’s interview with Bill O’Reilly on The O’Reilly Factor:
Read More ›BILL O’REILLY, HOST: In the “‘Factor’ follow-up” segment tonight. As you may know, there’s a bitter debate over whether public schools should be allowed to teach students an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution, a concept called Intelligent Design.
That concept puts forth that a higher power oversaw the evolutionary process. And that’s why man will never completely understand it.
One year ago, the editor of a scientific journal called Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington ran an article by Dr. Stephen Meyer of Cambridge University in England that stated intelligent design should be taken seriously as a theory. Well, since that time, Dr. Richard Sternberg’s life has been hell. He joins us now from Washington.
Seattle, Aug. 19 – In a letter to Smithsonian biologist Dr. Richard Sternberg, the United States Office of Special Counsel writes: “it is… clear that a hostile work environment was created with the ultimate goal of forcing you out of the [Smithsonian Institution].” Dr. Sternberg, who holds two PhDs in evolutionary biology, was persecuted by Smithsonian colleagues for allowing the publication Read More ›
Science is typically praised as open-ended and free, pursuing the evidence wherever it leads. Scientific conclusions are falsifiable, open to further inquiry, and revised as new data emerge. Science is free of dogma, intolerance, censorship, and persecution.
By these standards, Darwinists have become the dogmatists. Scientists at the Smithsonian Institute, supported by American taxpayers, are punishing one of their own simply for publishing an article about Intelligent Design.
Stephen Meyer, who holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge and is a research fellow at the Discovery Institute, wrote an article titled “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories.” As Mr. Meyer explained it to WORLD, his article deals with the so-called Cambrian explosion, that point in the fossil record in which dozens of distinct animal body forms suddenly spring into existence. Darwinists themselves, he showed through a survey of the literature, admit that they cannot explain this sudden diversity of form in so little time.
Mr. Meyer argued that the need for new proteins, new genetic codes, new cell structures, new organs, and new species requires specific “biological information.” And “information invariably arises from conscious rational activity.” That flies in the face of the Darwinist assumption that biological origins are random.
Mr. Meyer submitted his paper to the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, a scientific journal affiliated with the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Natural History. The editor, Rick Sternberg, a researcher at the museum with two Ph.D.s in biology, forwarded the article to a panel of three peer reviewers. In scientific and other academic scholarship, submitting research to the judgment of other experts in the field ensures that published articles have genuine merit. Each of the reviewers recommended that, with revisions, the article should be published. Mr. Meyer made the revisions and the article was published last August.
Whereupon major academic publications —Science, Nature, Chronicles of Higher Education — expressed outrage. The anger was focused not on the substance of the article, but on the mere fact that a peer-reviewed scientific journal would print such an article.
Original Article Intelligent design, which holds that only an unspecified superior intellect can account for the complexity of life forms, is increasingly appearing in science forums and journals as an alternative to evolution theory. Evolution has been widely accepted in scientific circles ever since Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species revolutionised biological sciences 145 years ago. But the new theory’s support Read More ›