I just discovered Opposing Viewpoints (HT The Panda’s Thumb), and decided to chime in on the discussion of Intelligent Design over there. Here’s what I wrote in a sub-forum on academic freedom and ID:
Perhaps what is needed is to distinguish between academic freedom and peer review. Many regulations about academic freedom are broad, and like laws and regulations about free speech, can protect someone like a tenured professor from being fired even if researching something that most academics consider nonsense.
Academic freedom is one thing. But whether the research being done by someone whose academic freedom is protected is in fact worthwhile or not is a completely separate question. To determine that, it is necessary to look at the evidence, the evaluation of peers and other experts, the fruitfulness of the research program, and other such factors. It is in this area that ID is clearly lacking, as even some of its proponents acknowledge.
Proponents of ID can call for academic freedom all they want, but the freedom to explore a topic has no relevance, ultimately, to the question of the merit of one’s conclusions.
Intelligent Design, it must be recalled, was the prevailing viewpoint for a very long time. So was flood geology. Far from there being a conspiracy to stifle such views, many scientists in the 19th century were extremely reluctant to depart from these established viewpoints. But the consensus changed because of the enormous amounts of evidence pointing to a different set of conclusions being more likely.
And this, in a nutshell, is the issue. The proponents of Intelligent Design and of young-earth creationism have this in common: they want to drag science back to the 19th century, as though all the progress and all the evidence amassed in the mean time doesn’t matter.
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