The American Association for the Advancement of Science has a position paper on this issue: Intelligent Design and Peer Review. Excerpts:
Stephen Meyer, the author of the paper, is Director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (DI/CSC), the primary institutional advocate of ID. He earned a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University. He is also University Professor of the Conceptual Foundations of Science at Palm Beach Atlantic University, a theologically conservative Christian institution.The editor for the issue of the Proceedings in which the Meyer article appears was Richard Sternberg, Research Associate in the Department of Systematic Biology (Invertebrate Zoology) of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. He is also a Fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID), which promotes intelligent design, and serves on the Editorial Board of the Baraminology Study Group, a creation science group. Given these associations, Dr. Sternberg would appear to be, at very least, an advocate for "intelligent design" and critical of standard peer review processes as they bear on the scientific assessment of the "intelligent design" hypothesis.
The external reviewers of the paper are unknown.
Why not? Personally, I think it's time to see who the reviewers were....
What we do know is that the reviewers disagreed with the conclusions of the paper. That might have been a red flag to a careful editor.
Actually Meyer's paper does not rise to the level of an argument. My review (here on FR) points out that Meyer fails to define "information" nor does he give a (hypothetical, even) mechanism for such an undefined entity to be generated, nor does he suggest any method for determining the speed with which the undefined entity is created. Meyer gives no comparison of speeds between Darwinian mechanisms and whatever (also undefined) he's proposing.
Rather, Meyer's paper is more on the level of undefined and unsubstantiated assertion.
So, Sternberg basically lied to the WSJ. Interesting.
INTELLIGENT DESIGN [John Derbyshire] Either before, after, or while reading my article on Intelligent Design in YOUR SUBSCRIPTION COPY OF NRODT, you might want to read David Klinghoffer's piece in Opinion Journal.
Incidentally, a little back-story to my piece: I showed it round to some academic biologists before signing off with NR editors on it. One of these professionals objected that I had used the phrase "I.D. theory" at one point. Whatever you may think of I.D., she pointed out, it's not a theory. After some cogitation I agreed, and asked the editors to drop the word "theory."
I mention this because there is a school board in Georgia (Cobb County, IMS) that has had stickers put on all its biology textbooks to the effect that standard-model evolution theory is "not a fact, but a theory." This is of course correct! Facts are what scientists observe; theories are the arguments they cook up to explain the facts they have observed. The fact (wait a minute... yes, it's a fact) that the Georgia school board thought it was striking a blow against its enemies by mandating a statement that every one of those enemies would cheerfully agree with, shows the gulf of misunderstanding that exists in this area.
But while indeed the standard model of evolution is not a fact, but a theory, then I.D. is not a theory, but only a critique of a theory. Not necessarily anything wrong with that, but let's at least keep our terms straight.
I would like to see some scientifically literate school board somewhere mandate stickers in biology textbooks stating that "INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT A THEORY, BUT A CRITIQUE." Then we might be getting somewhere with this dismal business.
And now, Part Two:
INTELLIGENT DESIGN [John Derbyshire] Following my earlier post, some readers have e-mailed in arguing that David's Opinion Journal piece demonstrates that there is a determination on the part of learned scientific journals to keep I.D. proponents out of their pages.
Well, I should certainly hope so! I hope they will also keep out of their pages proponents of the Flat Earth theory, the Hollow Earth theory, the phlogiston theory of combustion, the theory of the Four Body Humours, and the tooth fairy theory.
Not everything that anyone can think up is worthy of inclusion in a scientific journal. Speaking personally, if I were to open my copy of, say, The Astronomical Journal (supposing I were a subscriber, which I am not) and found myself looking at an article that took UFO abductions seriously, I would cancel my subscription at once.
Lay people don't realize how many pseudoscientific cranks there are out there. The world is swarming with them! A couple of years ago I published a book about an unsolved math problem. You wouldn't believe some of the mail I got -- weird, weird stuff, written in all earnestness, claiming to have solved that problem by dint of techniques from bibliomancy to yoga.
Let me tell you, the world is teeming with lunatics armed with iron conviction and reams of theoretical justification for their crackpot notions. Scientists see themselves as working to expand a little clearing of light, of reason, in a vast chittering black jungle of superstition and madness. Is it any wonder they are defensive?
Science, and its peer-reviewed journals, need solid defenses, constantly manned. I would rather scientists were over-scrupulous about what they let in than otherwise. After all, as numerous examples (e.g. continental drift) have shown, a sound theory will eventually get recognition, however wacky it might seem at first sight.
Nobody knows all this better than working scientists -- which is why (see my current NRODT piece) scientifically-trained I.D.-ers like Michael Behe know better than to submit I.D. pieces to respectable journals of real science. Posted at 02:44 PM
Sounds like the Derb has a written yet another must-read piece.