Posted by Jason Rosenhouse on October 6, 2004 06:00 PM

I have resumed my analysis of the essays in William Dembski's anthology Uncommon Dissent. I am currently working my way through Frank Tipler's contribution, entitled “Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy?” This essay seems especially important in light of Stephen Meyer's recent paper, reported on extensively at this site and others.

My first two posts, over at EvolutionBlog, can be found here and here, I discuss four examples of Tipler distorting other's people's work or telling dubious anecdotes. For example, he suggests that the criticisms of neo-Darwinian theory offered by Lynn Margulis in her book Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origin of Species are effectively equivalent to those being made by Behe and Dembski. He further asserts that Ernst Mayr, in his foreward to the book, agrees that neo-Darwinism has the flaws Margulis (and by extension Behe and Dembski) describe. I show that both of these claims are nonsense.

Tipler's essay is long on arrogance and dubious generalities, but very short on substance. His bombast has to be cleared out of the way before his arguments can be addressed. I have not yet addressed his arguments on peer review, but that is coming in a later posting. Enjoy!

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