Sunday, January 15, 2006

No One Owns The Data Of Science

A common criticism of ID is "where's the research?" Dave Scot explains why this is something of a red herring in the comments to this post:

The research question is a red herring. The research is already being done. It was not ID researchers that discovered the genetic code, desequenced the human genome, reverse engineered the flagella, picked fossils out of the Burgess Shale, and etc. The data used by ID theorists is the same data used by others. The interpretation differs. In fact the more research into the machinery of life and the fossil record that’s done the more ID is able to explain and the less evolution is able to explain. Does everyone somehow think that if data wasn’t uncovered in pursuit of a specific theory no one else is allowed to use it? I hate to burst their bubble but the data doesn’t belong to particular theories or theorists.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are rather obvious problems with ID's explanation. "It is that way because an inscrutable designer made it using an undefined process" is neither useful nor falsifiable. That vagueness is, however, essential to its supposedly superior explanatory power.

The anti-science brigade imagines that if they ask enough questions about a rival hypothesis (and do not get immediate answers) then their preferred hypothesis wins. They refuse to understand that science just does not work that way.

Matteo said...

Michael, not having read any of the ID books, why do you consider yourself to be in a position to opine on "ID's explanation"? I ask this rhetorically, of course. Please don't feel obligated to respond again with your standard answer. I've already heard it.

Anonymous said...

It seems to me that at least one of us has argued against ad hominem attacks in the debate between evolution and ID. Is your evidence truly so weak and your hypothesis so indefensible that you must resort to rhetorical fallacy?

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