I have no objection to inference, even design inference, as long as it suggests research or makes predictions about yet undiscovered data.
Someone on a recent thread asserted that abiogenesis is impossible and should not be researched.
That attitude is unacceptable to me. I can accept the possibility that we might never solve the problem, but I will not accept the notion that we should not try. The same holds for the so-called irreducible structures.
What I find unacceptable about ID is not the hypothesis, but the implied opposition to empiricism.
That is a philosophy not a science.