I do not need to read anything by Behe to conclude that he is a charlatan: he has a reputation. It only takes a few minutes with Google to verify that the reputation is accurate.
Most of the people who write books on scientific subjects are not scientists. They are writers who talk to scientists and read scientific literature; while they try to get the details correct, they don't always succeed because they don't have the depth of knowledge that a trained scientist has. Most working scientists don't write books; they're too busy writing grant proposals, reviewing grant proposals, writing journal articles, attending conferences and other meetings, reading scientific journals, and so forth.
Behe is in a class of his own. He actually is a trained scientist, and is a university professor (although I didn't check if he is full professor, or some lower level). Normally, someone in his position has dozens of research-based publications in various journals, along with a fair number of reviews and other articles. One of my professors from graduate school has 182 publications dating from 1977 onwards. By contrast, Behe has 40 publications dating from 1978, of which 5 are letters to the editor and 3 are reviews. One is a theoretical article trying to show that a specific pair of amino acids will mutate simultaneously only once in 10^9 generations (I already talked about this one; it's full of wrong assumptions, GIGO). Of the remaining research articles, the vast majority are pure biochemistry--meaning that he's only looking at structure, without analysis of evolutionary factors. Surprisingly, one does touch on evolutionary factors and the results are completely consistent with the current understanding of evolutionary principle. He has not published a research based article since 1998, and apparently has not had a graduate student since 1997. The long story short here is that Behe is NOT an evolutionary scientist and there is no reason to think he knows very much about evolutionary theory, and his career isn't very impressive for a college professor. (BTW, I don't know why I could only find 11 Behe references yesterday and 40 today.)
As far as any imaginary "scientific publishing apparatus", there is no body of editors censoring whatever doesn't fit some imaginary scientific consensus. Any scientist can be asked to review a manuscript, and if the manuscript is scientifically sound and reasonably well-written, they'll recommend it for publishing.
So now I am too stupid to read an abstract?
You can read it, but do you have the educational background to understand its implications, what experiments were done, the background assumptions, etc., without reading the paper? On the basis of the abstract, can you judge whether the work described in the paper is of high enough quality to make reading the paper worthwhile?
If you posted the evolutionary sequence of the cilium, flagellum, coagulation (he actually deconstructs some work done on this, which was one of the only examples when his book was published in 1996), or various other protein mechanisms in the cell that Behe discusses, I missed it.
As Ha Ha Thats Very Logical already pointed out, it is not necessary to identify every single mutation that took place to know that the systems evolved. Behe's invention of "irreducible complexity" does not have any scientific validity. The simplest statement I can make on "irreducible complexity" is that if a system is not too complex to be formed during embryonic development--in which a single-celled zygote "reads" its DNA and builds an organism of several trillion cells formed into all kinds of complex tissues and organs--then it cannot be too complex to have evolved. For a more thorough discussion, I suggest reading the Wikipedia article, Irreducible Complexity.
I was being intentionally vague. If you can confidently slander Behe as a charlatan, you should have at least enough of a passing knowledge of "Darwin's Black Box" to provide answers to the specific cases I gave above without being prompted. You don't have to show how these mechanisms work, you just need to provide the steps on their evolutionary path. It has been sixteen years since Behe published his book. Surely someone has provided some research in that time?
If I'm going to read science fiction, I'll choose something that isn't trying to pass itself off as fact, and that has entertainment value. It's not worth my time, otherwise. Not that the scientific community at large is all that concerned about specifically refuting Behe (as I pointed out, we're a pretty busy bunch and must spend our time wisely), but just about all of his "examples" of "irreducibly complex" systems are the subjects of active research. It really isn't up to me to dig up the references to show you. If you genuinely want to know how fairly simple structures such as cilia, or more complex structures such as the heart, form or evolved, you have only to go to www.PubMed.org and search. Anyone can access PubMed. The search engine is, IMHO, very user friendly. Many of the articles indexed in PubMed can be accessed free. The information is there if you want it.
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For a more thorough discussion, I suggest reading the Wikipedia article, Irreducible Complexity.
Ever hear of an "Echo Chamber"?
Most working scientists don't write books; they're too busy writing grant proposals, reviewing grant proposals, writing journal articles, attending conferences and other meetings, reading scientific journals, and so forth.
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By contrast, Behe has 40 publications dating from 1978, of which 5 are letters to the editor and 3 are reviews.
So not only has he committed the sin of not falling in line with evolution, he communicated his ideas to the general public. You admit yourself that means he has less time to publish "serious" papers, and that is your basis for calling him a charlatan.
On the basis of the abstract, can you judge whether the work described in the paper is of high enough quality to make reading the paper worthwhile?
I am confused, are you a scientist or a priest? It must really get under your skin when us second class citizens dare to ask you to explain things to us.
Behe's invention of "irreducible complexity" does not have any scientific validity.
"If it could ever be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." - Charles Darwin
The search engine is, IMHO, very user friendly. Many of the articles indexed in PubMed can be accessed free. The information is there if you want it.
It has an M. Behe as authoring or co-authoring 131 articles. I have read several (none by Behe) that looked promising on identifying evolutionary paths, but all proved disapointing.