Someone named “Darwin Octonus” sent me the following example of “ID mischief” posted by someone named “Greg” in response to my comments on the Harvard Law Review having embarrassed itself.

Mischief, indeed. Herewith our latest lying liar, with my comments interspersed:

Lying Liar: “Everything Leiter said was *not* true, in fact Leiter is fairly ignorant. I’m also fairly ignorant, but I know of at least one scholarly presentation of Intelligent Design theory. W.A. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1998). This book was published by Cambridge University Press and peer-reviewed as part of a distinguished monograph series, Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory. The editorial board of that series includes members of the National Academy of Sciences as well as one Nobel laureate, John Harsanyi, who shared the prize in 1994 with John Nash.”

Leiter: One of the favorite games of the lying liars is to puff credentials whereever possible. Notice, for example, the implication that the book was refereed by a Nobel Laureate, when, of course, it was not. Notice, also, the failure to mention that the series in question is not a scientific series, but a philosophy series.

Lying Liar: “The author of the work, is Dr. William Dembski. Dr. Dembski previously taught at Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Dallas. He has done postdoctoral work in mathematics at MIT, in physics at the University of Chicago, and in computer science at Princeton University. A graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago where he earned a B.A. in psychology, an M.S. in statistics, and a Ph.D. in philosophy, he also received a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1988 and a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1996. He has held National Science Foundation graduate and postdoctoral fellowships.”

Leiter: More misleading puffery and innuendo. Dr. Dembski did not hold tenure-track positions at Northwestern or Notre Dame; he may have at the University of Dallas. The simple, and unnoted, fact is that he has been unable to secure tenure-track employment at a major research university. Of course, given the vagaries of the academic job market, that is neither here nor there as to the merits of his work–I mention it only because our lying liar wants to vindicate Dembski’s work by appeal to credentials and accomplishments, but fails to represent them accurately. (Plainly the most significant fact about Demski’s credentials is the divinity degree; Dembski is a clever and well-trained decision theorist, hell-bent on vindicating his religious faith with the tools of his trade. I wish it were more complicated than that, but it’s not.)

More pertinent, but unnoted by our lying liar, is that Dembski’s work has been repeatedly demolished by scientists–biologist Allen Orr is only the most recent (and the most amusing).

Lying Liar: “Actually, in looking for that citation, I found some more examples:
D.D. Axe, “Extreme Functional Sensitivity to Conservative Amino Acid Changes on Enzyme Exteriors,” Journal of Molecular Biology, 301 (2000): 585?595. This work shows that certain enzymes are extremely sensitive to perturbation. Perturbation in this case does not simply diminish existing function or alter function, but removes all possibility of function. This implies that neo-Darwinian theory has no purchase on these systems. Moreover, the probabilities implicit in such extreme-functional-sensitivity analyses are precisely those needed for a design inference. W.-E. Loennig & H. Saedler, “Chromosome Rearrangements and Transposable Elements,” Annual Review of Genetics, 36 (2002): 389-410. This article examines the role of transposons in the abrupt origin of new species and the possibility of an partly predetermined generation of biodiversity and new species. The authors’ approach is non-Darwinian, and they cite favorably on the work of Michael Behe and William Dembski. D.K.Y. Chiu & T.H. Lui, “Integrated Use of Multiple Interdependent Patterns for Biomolecular Sequence Analysis,” International Journal of Fuzzy Systems, 4(3) (September 2002): 766-775. M.J. Denton & J.C. Marshall, “The Laws of Form Revisited,” Nature, 410 (22 March 2001): 417; M.J. Denton, J.C. Marshall & M. Legge, (2002) “The Protein Folds as Platonic Forms: New Support for the pre-Darwinian Conception of Evolution by Natural Law,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 219 (2002): 325-342.

“No doubt this is simply the tip of the iceberg. If I, as a non-scientist, could find this in 15 minutes, imagine what Leiter could have done with an hour of fact-checking.”

Leiter: None of these articles lend empirical support to Intelligent Design creationism, and our lying liar is careful not to claim explicitly that they do–innuendo suffices. None of them even cast doubts on the truth of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection–and, again, our lying liar is careful not to say directly that they do. But since those are the only claims at issue, this literature review is irrelevant.

Alas, given the track record of the creationist lying liars in misrepresenting the content of scientific articles–see, for example, here–I think it would be a mistake to even accept the non-innuendo claims at face value. But since I don’t maintain a library of biology journals at home, I’ll have to wait for Pharyngula to demolish this part of the lying liar’s display. (UPDATE: Pharyngula, happily, has weighed in here, and puts the final nails in this coffin.)

Lying Liar: “Also ignorant is Leiter’s claim that Intelligent Design theory could be conflated with Creationism. As Dembski remarked, “The most prominent design theorist, Michael Behe, is on record to holding to common descent (the evolutionary interrelatedness of all organisms back to a common ancestor). No design theorist I know wants to teach that evolution didn’t happen.” Source: http://acs.ucsd.edu/~idea/dembskincse.htm.”

Leiter: What Leiter actually said, correctly, was that, “It makes sense to lump ID with creationism, since from a scientific point of view, they come to the same thing: ID is creationism for those who’ve consulted a lawyer and a public relations expert. By giving up the least plausible claims of the creationists (e.g., the literal truth of the Book of Genesis), ID avoids the major vulnerabilities of those trying to undermine science education.” Too bad the “fairly ignorant” “Greg” can’t read.

“Greg” doesn’t identify himself, but he’s obviously conversant with the Discovery [sic] Institute propaganda. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out he were allied with the Institute. But who he is matters less than what he says; and what he says is more of the same pathologically dishonest crap that these lying liars peddle incessantly, night and day, week in and week out, all on behalf of their campaign to undermine science education because of their dogmatic religious commitments. Can’t you pathetic creatures just leave public school kids alone?