“Biological Information: New Perspectives”

That's the title of an academic science book. It sure sounds sciencey, doesn't it? It got accepted by Springer-Verlag for publication. And then inside it claims that one of their conclusions is that "conventional chemical and evolutionary mechanisms seem insufficient to fully explain the labyrinth of information that is life". Oooh, more of that fancy science talk. It must be taken seriously!

Only, it turns out that this book was being peddled as a contribution to the category of "Engineering and Applied Science" rather than biology, because if it were proposed to Springer-Verlag as a biology text, it would have gotten reviewers who knew something about biology. And it was the product of a creationist conference held in a School of Hotel Administration at Cornell. And the editors are Marks, Behe, Dembski, Gordon, and Sanford, names well known for their affiliation with the Discovery Institute.

Once again, the ID crowd engages in some stealth creationism in order to get a line on their CV. Only this time, Springer-Verlag noticed, and the book has been quietly removed from their listings, pending further review.

Man, those guys at the DI are pathetic.

(Also on FtB)

More like this

That sad article on gyres as an explanation for everything has had more fallout: not only has it been removed from Science Daily's site, not only has Case Western retracted the press release, but one of the editors at the journal Life has resigned his position over it. The editorial board of the…
Last week, I mentioned that Billy Dembski is all worked up over a paper which he claimed was a peer-reviewed rejection of the climate change. The publisher, the American Physical Science, attached a disclaimer to the piece, noting that it was in fact not peer reviewed. Dembski now defends his own…
Twelve months ago I offered a roundup of the "advances" made by the intelligent design movement in 2006, a month-by-month roundup which differed significantly from the assessment of John West. I had started to do the same for this year, but quickly realized that the ID movement achieved absolutely…
Just under a year ago, I quoted and endorsed Stephen Post's argument that lack of civility isn't the problem we face in society, that incivility is a symptom, not an end unto itself. Civility matters, and there are good reasons to urge people to be more civil in their interactions, and to model…