Coyne Owns Behe

Jerry Coyne has posted a reply to Behe’s reply to his original review of Edge of Evolution. A sample:

Behe excoriates me for claiming that his defeat (and that of intelligent design [ID]) in the Dover case was more damaging than the scientific criticisms levelled at Darwin’s Black Box. His mistake here is assuming that "victory" is more pressing in the scientific than in the social arena. But it is Behe himself who has chosen to take his challenge to the social arena, publishing his ideas in a trade book and thereby bypassing the usual scientific route of having these ideas adjudicated by his peers. Both Richard Dawkins (in his review of The Edge of Evolution in The New York Times) and myself have noted Behe’s remarkable reluctance to submit his claims to peer-reviewed scientific journals. If Behe’s theory is so world-shaking, and so indubitably correct, why doesn’t he submit it to some scientific journals? (The reason is obvious, of course: his theory is flat wrong.)

In related news, Dawkins’ review (previously behind a paywall) is now freely available.