They're not. They're often laughed at (for reasons which should be entirely clear by now), but they're not persecuted.
The actions taken against them by academics and the mainstream media do not look good to the public. It looks like totalitarian thought control.
...because that's the way the IDers keep trying to spin it in their dishonest propaganda.
If their research leads to nothing then evolution theory will have been strengthened.
Their continued failure has already strengthened evolutionary theory.
On the other hand, if they come up with some valid discoveries, we all benefit.
Indeed, which is why no one's stopping them on their wild goose chase.
In the spirit of free enterprise, may the best ideas prevail.
Indeed. But in the meantime, they do *not* have license to a) lie about science, b) pretend that their fumbing attempts actually *are* a science, or c) present it in schools as if they have already achieved what they have continually failed to do.
Once again, here's the short form: All we insist upon is that they stop lying. At the moment, "ID" is the Michael Moore wing of creationism.
One instance of persecution of ID scientists:
Richard Sternberg, a staff scientist at the National Institutes of Health, was the editor of a scientific journal loosely affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, where he is also a research associate.
Last year, he published in the journal a peer-reviewed article by Stephen Meyer, a proponent of intelligent design, an idea which Sternberg himself believes is fatally flawed.
Sternberg decided to publish it to promote "reasoned discourse."
"That's what I thought, and I was dead wrong."
Sternberg says his colleagues and supervisors at the Smithsonian were furious. He says -- and an independent report backs him up -- that colleagues accused him of fraud, saying they did not believe the Meyer article was really peer reviewed. It was.
Eventually, Sternberg filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which protects federal employees from reprisals. The office launched an investigation.
But Sternberg says before closing the case, the special counsel, James McVay, called him with an update. "As he related to me, 'the Smithsonian Institution's reaction to your publishing the Meyer article was far worse than you imagined,'" Sternberg says.
In a letter to Sternberg, he wrote that officials at the Smithsonian worked with the National Center for Science Education -- a group that opposes intelligent design -- to create "a strategy to have you investigated and discredited."
Retaliation came in many forms, the letter said. They took away his master key and access to research materials. They spread rumors that Sternberg was not really a scientist. (He has two Ph.D.'s in biology) In short, McVay found a hostile work environment based on religious and political discrimination.