Getting The Mooney Treatment

Carl Zimmer in his blog, The Loom:

Authorwebphoto2_3Things have not been going so well on the political front for the advocates of intelligent design (a k a the progeny of creationism). This election season their allies on state boards of education in Kansas and Ohio went down to defeat. On the scientific front, things have never really gone well. The Discovery Institute in Seattle claims that it has spent millions on research. They have precious little to show for it. As I wrote last year, a single evolutionary biologist produces more papers in peer-reviewed biology journals than the entire staff of the Discovery Institute. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single paper that actually claims that intelligent design is supported by original evidence. The closest they got to such a minimal standard–a review of the Cambrian explosion–was later retracted by the journal. The Discovery Institute claims that it’s got all sorts of stuff in the works, but they aren’t ready to share it with the world. Instead, they’d prefer to attack journalists.

In September, Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute posted a 31-page attack on fellow scienceblogger Chris Mooney. Mooney is the author of the excellent Republican War on Science, which details some of the strategies the Discovery Institute uses to promote Intelligent Design, and the resounding rejection of intelligent design by the courts. As I wrote at the time, Luskin’s charges were empty.

Now I’m getting the Mooney treatment.

More here.