# Should scientific journals be allowed to publish 'creation science'? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 20, 2005, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838 "2005-08-20T02:05:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2005, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/41 "2005-08-21T22:53:07Z")
> [@Fiveyearlurker](#): > > If you’re having articles published, I don’t think that I have to tell you that peer review is far from perfect. Get the right reviewers, which you can even request a lot of the time, and you can get any crappy article published. I’m just trying to make the point that simply because something was peer reviewed does not make it accurate good (or even decent) science. Undoubtably true. I think all of us in science have had the experience of reading a paper and thinking, “Who the hell reviewed this piece of crap?!” Actually, I just got a comment published on a paper that fell into that category IMHO…and it was in a prestigious “letters” journal no-less. Fortunately, I don’t think the refereeing process has to be perfect in order for it to work okay. I.e., it doesn’t have to keep out all the garbage and let through all the good work. If it occasionally lets a piece of garbage through or rejects a good piece of work, that can be annoying (particularly for the authors involved in the latter case)…but it usually won’t dramatically set back science. However, in the political realm there has been an attempt to capitalize on this imperfection in highly politically-charged fields such as evolution / creation and global warming. So, creationists and global warming deniers will submit papers to journals (often carefully selected for known editorial weaknesses) and will then play up the papers which actually get through…i.e., try to use this to confer respectability on their point-of-view. This is why it is important to emphasize that peer-review is important but not infallible and that one still has to look at the entire body of peer-reviewed work in a field to see what the general consensus is, rather than just cherry-picking a few papers from the broad body of literature that happen to agree with one’s point-of-view. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2005, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/42 "2005-08-21T22:59:17Z")
> [@Snowboarder Bo](#): > > What about the new theory of [Intelligent Falling](http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2)? Great link! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2005, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/43 "2005-08-21T23:05:04Z")
> [@jshore](#): > > I would disagree slightly here. I.e., I think it is at the discretion of the reviewer. For Physical Review, it amounts to checking different boxes that say things such as “Reconsider after the authors have responded to my revisions” or “Publish after the authors have responded to my revisions; I do not need to see the paper again” or “Publish after the authors have considered my optional suggestions.” I think practice varies somewhat in different fields, and in different journals. In my own experience, I have only dealt with the editor once I have received the reviewers comments, and my article has never been sent back to the reviewers (at least as far as I know). In an article I have in press on African birds, of the 3 initial reviews, one was favorable with only minor comments and 2 (actually a joint review from a married couple) were highly negative. They found fault with everything I had done, nitpicked everything to death, and recommended that the article be published in a highly abbreviated form if it were published at all. Since I had never published in this area before, they didn’t know me and I think they were just being territorial. In any case, I wrote a very extended response to the editor in which I refuted most of their objections (I concede on a few minor points). As far as I know, the editor never sent it back to them, and accepted my rewrite in which I included additional data that answered the reviewers’s objections. ---
**Author:** ![citybadger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/45deac/32.png) [@citybadger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/citybadger)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2005, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/44 "2005-08-21T23:19:03Z")
I don’t get it. It seems all the paper said was the Precambrian Explosion - a unique event in the history of the planet - requires a better theory to explain that the current ones. Nothing about ID or creationism. Physicists would be jumping up and down at irregularities like this (if confirmed). Such is how science progresses. I seriously wonder about the future of the science of biology in the United States. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2005, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/45 "2005-08-21T23:51:45Z")
> [@citybadger](#): > > I don’t get it. It seems all the paper said was the Precambrian Explosion - a unique event in the history of the planet - requires a better theory to explain that the current ones. Nothing about ID or creationism. Physicists would be jumping up and down at irregularities like this (if confirmed). No, it says that no current theories can explain it, but _design_ can. From the last paragraph of the article: > [@](#): > > Conclusion > > An experience-based analysis of the causal powers of various explanatory hypotheses suggests purposive or **intelligent design** as a causally adequate–and perhaps the most causally adequate–explanation for the origin of the complex specified information required to build the Cambrian animals and the novel forms they represent. For this reason, recent scientific interest in the design hypothesis is unlikely to abate as biologists continue to wrestle with the problem of the origination of biological form and the higher taxa. Bolding mine. Of course, one thing ignored by the ID explanation is that the designer can’t really have been very intelligent at all, since a large number of the novel body plans that originated in the Cambrian disappeared in a short time when their lineages became extinct. It seems to me that the designer must have been pretty incompetent or else just screwing around. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2005, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/46 "2005-08-22T00:25:59Z")
> [@](#): > > An experience-based analysis of the causal powers of various explanatory hypotheses… [Experience-based analysis](http://www.webs1.uidaho.edu/niatt_labmanual/Chapters/traveldemandforecasting/theoryandconcepts/ExperienceBasedAnalysis.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2005, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/47 "2005-08-22T00:34:15Z")
> [@citybadger](#): > > Physicists would be jumping up and down at irregularities like this (if confirmed). There’s lots of stuff in Physics that can’t be explained adequately by current theory, including the connection between quantum theory and general relativity, dark energy, dark matter, and so on. Physicists admit there are gaps in current theory, while at the same time trying to close them. ---
**Author:** ![js\_africanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/87869e/32.png) [@js\_africanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/js_africanus)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2005, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/48 "2005-08-22T17:13:55Z")
> [@edwino](#): > > Anything that is properly peer reviewed should be published. Right, because peer review is not there to make sure an article will stand the test of criticism & time, but to make sure it has logical face validity, isn’t covering what’s been covered, doesn’t have huge holes in the background literature review, and so on. If the reviewers had caveats, but said publish it anyway, then it should be published. If it’s bunk, that’ll come out. Pointing out how current scientific theories cannot explain observation X is perfectly valid science, IMO. Hell, scientists in many fields have set out research agendas which are the roadmaps to finding scientific answers. If the author in this example jumped to an intelligent design conclusion via an argument from ignorance, it still may be worth publishing if the basic science is correct; i.e., there’s a hole in the current state of scientific understanding. If the author has a coherent argument why the gap implies intelligent design, then it should be published in order to be further investigated. Hell, the bible code was first published in a statistics journal; it got beat up and shown to be bunk by statisticians, but that’s one of the ways we produce knowledge, isn’t it? Yeah, the theory turns out to be no good, but in analyzing it we learn something. So I say that if it is logical and well done, then publish the hell out of it. But if it’s rehashing old arguments, incomplete in its lit review, or logically flawed, then don’t. No reason to let ideology stand in the way of publishing. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2005, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/49 "2005-08-22T18:36:01Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > To follow up, there are a number of ways that the editor could have subverted the review process. For example, he could have deliberately sent it to reviewers that he knew might be favorably inclined to seeing the article published, instead of sending it to those reviewers who were most qualified in that particular field of paleontology. Just because an article has been reviewed doesn’t mean it has been competently reviewed. Having some first-hand knowledge of reviewing myself, I still am a bit incredulous. It’s difficult to me to understand how one editor could sucessfully sidestep the entirety of a scientific society so harshly criticle of the paper’s content. I smell a rat. I think other ediors shrugged and looked the other way, then, seeing how violent the reaction was, did a bit of revisionist history. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2005, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/50 "2005-08-22T18:50:27Z")
> [@David](#): > > And where do you think it would be appropriate to publish in, if not that in that journal? I kind of doubt there are any creationist journals that would are considered scientific. We live in an era of online publishing. The only substantial resource required for Intelligent Design theorists to create their own journals - other than the ability to actually do science - is the willingness of some interested parties (biology professors at evangelical Christian colleges, perhaps?) to step forward and act as editors, peer reviewers, and so forth. Maybe the Discovery Institute, which seems to have plenty of money to push for ID in the schools, could find some cash to pay a couple of people to edit an ID ‘scientific’ journal. Unless one already exists, but my Web searching has come up empty. Anyone know of such a journal? If none exists, I would regard that as substantial evidence of ID’s lack of scientific seriousness: if they claim they can’t get their science published in mainstream scientific journals, then the solution is to develop their own. If too little ID science is being done to fill even a quarterly, then far too little ID science has been done to rate its being taught in the schools. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2005, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/51 "2005-08-22T19:01:02Z")
[The Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal](http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq.html) claims to be such a thing, but then there’s a difference between form and content, isn’t there? Oops, you asked for “Intelligent Design”, not creationism, sorry. 🙂 [Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity with New “Intelligent Falling” Theory](http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2) - oops again, that’s The Onion. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2005, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/52 "2005-08-22T19:04:40Z")
> [@Loopydude](#): > > so harshly criticle Bah. “_critical_”. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2005, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/53 "2005-08-22T19:46:49Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > [The Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal](http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq.html) claims to be such a thing, but then there’s a difference between form and content, isn’t there? Oops, you asked for “Intelligent Design”, not creationism, sorry. 🙂 Not to mention, it publishes articles like [this](http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/35/astrodesign.html), which basically says, “there aren’t ‘nice’ solar eclipses on the uninhabited planets, and that’s an argument for intelligent design.” > [@](#): > > [Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity with New “Intelligent Falling” Theory](http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2) - oops again, that’s The Onion. Indeed! Speaking of the divide between old-earth ID and young-earth creationism: considering that the adherents of both ideas are overwhelmingly evangelical Christians, living in the same subculture of American society, you’d expect - assuming intellectual honesty - some intense debates between the proponents of these schools of thought. But my observation is that they all feel as if they’re on the same ‘side’ against Big Bad Evilution. And they are, of course: their goal is to promote (as they understand the term) God, rather than to seek scientific truth. And if contradictory theories both achieve that purpose, then they are indeed on the same side, despite the irreconcilable differences between the two ideas. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2005, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/54 "2005-08-22T19:49:07Z")
> [@Loopydude](#): > > Having some first-hand knowledge of reviewing myself, I still am a bit incredulous. It’s difficult to me to understand how one editor could sucessfully sidestep the entirety of a scientific society so harshly criticle of the paper’s content. I smell a rat. I think other ediors shrugged and looked the other way, then, seeing how violent the reaction was, did a bit of revisionist history. AFAIK, since he was the editor in chief, all he had to do was sidestep one associate editor. There is no reason most of the society would have had anything to do with it. I know some of the other associate editors, and I am certain they would never would have stood for one second what the editor did if they had had the slightest inkling beforehand. ---
**Author:** ![js\_africanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/87869e/32.png) [@js\_africanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/js_africanus)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2005, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/55 "2005-08-22T19:55:47Z")
> [@Loopydude](#): > > It’s difficult to me to understand how one editor could sucessfully sidestep the entirety of a scientific society so harshly criticle of the paper’s content. I think I misspoke about the bible code; i.e., it was published as a “challenging puzzle.” Robert Kass, then editor of _Statistical Sciences_ wrote, in the introduction to the 1999 article debunking the bible code, the following: > [@](#): > > One of the fundamental teachings in statistical training is that probability distributions can generate seemingly surprising outcomes much more frequently than naive intuition might suggest. For good reason, experienced statisticians have long been skeptical of claims based on human perception of extraordinary occurrences. Now that computer programs are widely available to help nearly anyone “mine” available data, there are wonderful new possibilities for discovering misleading patterns. > > In this context, when the article “Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis,” by Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg, was examined by reviewers and editorial board members for Statistical Science, none was convinced that the authors had found something genuinely amazing. Instead, what remained intriguing was the difficulty of pinpointing the cause, presumed to be some flaw in their procedure, that produced such apparently remarkable findings. Thus, in introducing that paper, I wrote that it was offered to readers “as a challenging puzzle.” So I was in error. Still, I don’t see what the problem is. If the editor got gobbelty gook published, the response should be humbling at least. Surely everyone knows it’s foolish to “debate” a creationist on her terms, so let them debate under the rules of evidence and logic. ---
**Author:** ![David\_God\_of\_Frogs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David\_God\_of\_Frogs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_God_of_Frogs)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2005, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/56 "2005-08-23T00:06:06Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Anyone know of such a journal? If none exists, I would regard that as substantial evidence of ID’s lack of scientific seriousness: if they claim they can’t get their science published in mainstream scientific journals, then the solution is to develop their own. Isn’t that kind of circular though? You have to publish a journal in order to be able to publish an article? > [@RTFirefly](#): > > If too little ID science is being done to fill even a quarterly, then far too little ID science has been done to rate its being taught in the schools. Agreed on that. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2005, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/57 "2005-08-23T00:42:10Z")
> [@David](#): > > Isn’t that kind of circular though? You have to publish a journal in order to be able to publish an article? Perhaps, but there are all kinds of small niche scientific journals, literally thousands of them. If ID is as important a scientific field as it is purported to be, it undoubtedly would merit its own journal. ---
**Author:** ![LasVegasKid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@LasVegasKid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LasVegasKid)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2005, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/58 "2005-08-23T02:12:31Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > I would like to point out that, DESPITE his (her?) overuse of capitals[sup]1[/sup] and her (his?) Illinois location[sup]2[/sup], this poster is NOT me.[sup]3[/sup] > 1 - Hey, it got to be a pain bolding everything like I did my first four years here. > 2 - Pay your dues and slap some creationists around. Cheap fun! > 3 - Kid, the real way to set yourself apart from me is to NOT footnote your posts. 😉 A) I guess all caps isn’t such a capital idea and I will desist unless I REALLY think it contributes. B) I am from Chicago, born and raised in Hyde Park, though there were days when even I wondered if Hyde Park was part of Chicago C) I am not sure about the etiquette here so let me know what other things I should avoid doing. I will say I didn’t understand about setting myself apart from you. Our names aren’t similar (dropzone\<\>lasvegaskid). Am I missing something? Cheers! ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2005, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838/59 "2005-08-23T12:40:02Z")
> [@David](#): > > Isn’t that kind of circular though? You have to publish a journal in order to be able to publish an article? I don’t think so. If the ID claim is that they’re doing science, and that scientific research is being done by a number of scientists (as opposed to one or two isolated cranks), then they need some sort of medium for the sharing of ideas, so that different scientists can read and criticize each others’ work, and build on each others’ results, the way scientists do in any scientific field. Another reason why such a journal would be needed is for the vetting of the science as science. (If it’s a real scientific field, then they’ve got to have real scientific standards.) You don’t need to start a journal to publish one article. But if there’s a burgeoning scientific field here, there’s a need for a journal. And if there isn’t, then there’s no case for presentation of ID in schools. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-scientific-journals-be-allowed-to-publish-creation-science/317838.md?page=2)