Personally I suspect Sternberg has been doing lateral thinking. The new discoveries in evolution will probably be made laterally. I'm guestimating the linear lines of thinking on it are mainly exhausted.

In his how his ideas evolved link he talks about "reading" as helping form his interests and I think that develops "lateralness".

You seem to be confusing peer review with grand cover up. The reason this work is not published is because experts in the field go over it, see it is full of massive holes and do not allow its publication in reputable journals. You seem to be confusing the way the church operates with the way science does.

If you could produce good evidence for ID I'm sure nearly all scientists (and not just biologists as I have to keep banging on about) would welcome it as a huge step towards understanding the world and a great new avenue of research. What interest do hundreds of scientists, from totaly different and unique backgrounds, all have to gain by suppressing this magic evidence that would open up a whole new avenue of research for them?

Well, I only know this man from google. I see he is an ID advocate, which in itself isn't necessarrily a problem, but when he let a paper on ID into a journal which is controversial and claimed by many to be very lacking then it does indeed raise concerns about his credibility.

As an academic he should have understood the implications and that people would pose questions, named himself unfit and passed this article on to another editor.

If the article was actually good this would STRENGTHEN the article, instead his actions cast doubts over it. As an editor I would say he handled himself very poorly regardless of motives he might have or not had.

So this guy is a double phd in evolutionary biology and is an ID proponent?

Also, anyone read the paper in question? I am going to try and find it now and try and wade through it. Most likely I will not understand a lot of it, so if anyone with more knowledge then I reads this paper please comment on your thoughts.

No, he has a PHD in molecular evolution and one in systems science and was/is a proponent of process structuralism and also served/serves on several boards associated with the ID movement.

Frankly; That he didn't excuse himself from being editor for the article is reason enough to question his integrity, because he damaged both the article's, its author's and the journal's credibility by his actions.

Not that I'll claim the article wouldn't have been gutted without his actions, but an academic editor should know much better than to involve himself in such a manner when we're talking about controversial material. He has to take steps to ensure it is only the material that can be brought into question.

He said in his statement of facts:

I hold two PhDs in the area of evolutionary biology, one in molecular (DNA) evolution and the other in systems theory and theoretical biology

Didn't I just say he held a phd in molecular evolution and systems science? Systems science by its very definition is a cross-science subject and can not be purely biology.

It doesn't even matter. It's not his academic credentials that are being brought into question.

Yes you did and you almost never make a mistake.

I make mistakes all the time, and if this is one of them it's one of the smallest ones I have made today.

But anyway to return to the point that actually matters; it's not his credentials that are being brought into question, but his actions as editor.

I can't see that the criticisms are not justified. He would have to have known this would look bad, and the only way I could see it justified is if he did it as a protest (which would have been rather interesting)...but according to himself he did not.

In practice, you can only be "peer-reviewed" if you get published and if editors don't want to publish you, you're screwed. Politics is everywhere and certainly influences science.

And, in fact, science is full of fuddy-duddies. Yes! That's right! I said it right out loud! F-U-D-D-Y D-U-D-D-I-E-S!!!

They don't want new ideas. The old guys have the tenure, they wrote the textbooks, and they don't want to hear anything new from young guys. Especially if young guys might prove them wrong, somehow. Older and fuddier duddies run the journals.

A lot of scientists pushing edges end up publishing in marginal publications or just writing popular books. Then they get labeled "fringe scientists." Or just ignored.

Worse is the suppression of thought by the slavish adherents of political correctness. In any other species with the variation that humans have, some geographically isolated and not inter-breeding groups would be designated sub-species.

The general public rules, however, and because they think "sub" means inferior, we have exempted h.sap from the same kind of taxonomic and phylogenetic rules we use for other species.

Perfect objective science is a nice ideal. "Fantasy" might be a better word.

i dont get it.

when atheists harp on the fact that compared to the general population, scientists are brilliant and more likely to be atheist, some theists love to bring up the fact that there are still many brilliant scientists who are theist!

then, we have this post where "religious scientists" are being snuffed by the "politics" of the big bad atheist machine known as science.

what they fail to remember is, despite there being many brilliant theists in the field of science, almost all of them agree with the atheists in regards to evolution. The major point of disconnect is:

1. the origin of life
2. if evolution is "guided" or not

both which are pretty much not going to be discovered at least for another 200 years.

Number 1 will be discovered before that imo, number 2 will never be discovered unless God writes another book.

It's so great that you "know" so much about how science works on the inside. Where does this information come from exactly because it is the exact opposite of my inside experience on many points?

Here's some facts from the field of theoretical physics:

Nowadays papers at arXiv.org - a free non-peer-reviewed online "journal", are used, cited and valued much more than all of the peer-reviewed journals combined. The only reason people still submit to officially peer-reviewed journals is because of technical funding issues.

Young people's ideas are more than encouraged by the older faculty and any and all even craziest ideas I've ever had have always been met with respect and understanding as long as I actually have put at least some basic amount of thought into them.

My recent office-mate was a guy who does something that is considered completely crazy by almost everyone I've met, yet he still is able to do it and is one of literally 3 people in the world who have any interest in that subject.

I can go on.

I'm hardly going to claim science is this perfect machine, but this here is just plain wrong. If anything science's weakness is the desire for controversy and uniqueness to sell your article, not adherence to tradition.

Lol are you kidding? You are such an anti-intellectual prima dona

And you are an undergrad where, exactly?

Not in my experience. What they want is the next expected step - or something that pushes a bit on the old. Like, they really like articles that push the temporal boundaries. We once had a giant beaver partial that dated less than 10k. Oh boy! There was a journal article!

And what kind of lab did you work in for how long?

Do you really think politics and personality don't enter into science?

You'll like this. There's this fossil of an elasmosaur. It's a very complete one, one half had all the ribs intact in situ - it's a type specimen. Of course, with pleisiosaurs, every damn one is a "type specimen" but that's another discussion.

So, the museum that had it decided to cast it and sell the casts and do a new display of two hanging from the ceiling, like they were swimming.

Those specimen casts hanging in that major museum? What you see never existed. The chief preparator couldn't get them to look right so he took a sawzall and just cut about oh - 40% of the distal portion of the ribs off. Hey! That looks better - sleek, ya know?

I love science. I love real working scientists. I revere Darwin. I greatly admire true intellect and most especially intellectual honesty.

The fact is, science is rife with the same politics and corruption and ineptitude as any other field. Science in this country is business. Higher education in this country is also business.

And the whole evolutionary question is as political as it gets.

lol wat?

It is just a fact. It is not political in the slightest. The only reason it is political is because a bunch of people who cannot prove anything they say try and include their views in a field which is based on proof.

No sense in posting arguments against an article no one has read so here it is: The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories
By: Stephen C. Meyer
Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington
May 18, 2007

http://www.discovery.org/a/2177

And if anyone's interested in more sources to con arguments here are some "thinking leads" to explore: Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design (Annotated)

(scroll down for the list of publications): http://www.discovery.org/a/2640

thats a pretty pathetic list. The list of "Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Evolution" is 1000, no 10,000, times that list, but of course you dont care. You are only looking for any possible shred of support to continue believing what you are "forced" to by your religion.

Again, please explain to me why you like to tout the fact that many brilliant scientists are theists, yet completely ignore the fact that these 90% of these theists believe in the theory of evolution and consider ID to be ridiculous.

None of this is particularly indicative of my intentions.

But thank God my days of having to think I have to indulge smirking control freaks is just about over. Time is precious so spend it with the people who will enable you. My current motto is "God loves the hell right out of you". Easy to remember.

This is supposed to be a scientific article? What the hell, that thing is a complete joke. Scientific articles doesn't go around putting people into camps and groups and declaring what said groups believe or don't believe.

That thing is patently ridiculous. If I were to ever write a psychology article where I dubbed people "neo-heriditarists" and went around whining what they believe or not believe then please do me a favor and put me out of my misery.

No wonder the article caused outrage, it's not science - it's a damn political manifest.

Well done on answering all of my clear and basic points about ID. Someone not using logic and evidence might have constantly tried to evade the subject and give clear and concise answers to defend their view of the world.