Saturday, May 19, 2007

Scientific Authority

Bill Dembski reports on a surprising fact about Richard Dawkins. The man who claims to be a scientist has only one peer-reviewed paper to his credit, a paper written the year he received his Ph.D and which has never been cited by any other scientist.

In other words, Dawkins' only claim to fame is that he has written popular works on evolution, but he himself has not done any actual research since his student days in the 1960s.

This is interesting because one of the (unfair) criticisms of intelligent design theorists is that they don't publish in peer-reviewed journals and don't actually do scientific research. Yet someone like Richard Dawkins, who has much to say about the controversy between Darwinism and ID and who really has no more scientific authority than "a suburban school teacher," are given immunity from such criticism.

RLC