Breakthrough for Intelligent Design? (Part 7)

This is part 7 of a series of 7 posts by Lars Johan Erkell, with comments on each by Ola Hössjer and a reply by Erkell. Part 1 will be found here. They are translations of 2020 posts in Swedish from the Biolog(g) blog of the Department of Biology of Gothenburg University, responding to an article by Steiner Thorvaldsen and Ola Hössjer titled “Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems” in Journal of Theoretical Biology

Breakthrough for Intelligent design? (part 7)

November 13, 2020

by Lars Jon Erkell

Why was the article published?

The publication of Thorvaldsen and Hössjer’s article is embarrassing for the Journal of Theoretical Biology. One could expect the journal to take drastic measures to try to restore its damaged reputation. Like withdrawing the article, firing the responsible editor and blacklisting the reviewers responsible for the scientific review. But they didn’t do that.

Instead, they let the article stand and published a disclaimer from the journal’s management. It reads:

The Journal of Theoretical Biology and its co-Chief Editors do not endorse in any way the ideology of nor reasoning behind the concept of intelligent design. Since the publication of the paper it has now become evident that the authors are connected to a creationist group (although their addresses are given on the paper as departments in bona fide universities). We were unaware of this fact while the paper was being reviewed. Moreover, the keywords “intelligent design” were added by the authors after the review process during the proofing stage and we were unaware of this action by the authors. We have removed these from the online version of this paper. We believe that intelligent design is not in any way a suitable topic for the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Here the editors distance themselves from ID as such, and say that they did not understand that it was about ID because the keyword “intelligent design” was added by the authors only after the article had been reviewed. That is a strange statement. Firstly, because the editors would not have understood that it was about ID. It is enough to glance quickly through the text to recognize familiar ID themes such as irreducible complexity, specified complexity or Dembski’s explanatory filter. If you happen not to recognize such markers, you should ask yourself what in the world this is all about, and check it out. Failure to understand that this is about creationism/ID shows ignorance and carelessness on a level that is inexcusable for a scientific journal.

Secondly, I believe that it is wrong to reject an article solely for the reason that it deals with ID. It could (theoretically) happen that someone actually managed to find good scientific arguments for ID, and then they should of course be published. That would be a sensation. But, as we saw in the previous post, Thorvaldsen and Hössjer have not managed to show anything at all. The statistical method they want to introduce is useless, and consequently they have no results. The article should not have been accepted for publication for the reason that it has no scientific interest. Added to this is all the pseudoscience the article contains.

So why didn’t the journal retract the article, and why did they write this strange disclaimer? One reason may be that the publisher that owns the Journal of Theoretical Biology, Elsevier, has had bad experiences with retracting articles related to ID. A well-known ID proponent, the mathematician Granville Sewell, had an article in 2011 titled “A second look at the second law” accepted by Applied Mathematical Letters, also owned by Elsevier. When the editor realized that the work was pseudoscientific, it was retracted. Sewell sued the journal, and the dispute ended with the publisher being forced to pay $10,000 and to publish an apology. They probably don’t want to do this again.

But how did Thorvaldsen and Hössjer’s article even get through the review process? One possibility is, as I said, ignorance and carelessness on a level that is unforgivable for a scientific journal. Another could be that the authors may have taken advantage of the opportunity that some journals offer, to suggest suitable reviewers themselves. If they then suggested ID-friendly people, and the editor didn’t bother to read the work, the article may have gone under the radar. Then the editor may have been ID-friendly.

Whatever the reason for this handling may be, it is sad that such a highly ranked journal as the Journal of Theoretical Biology is unable to live up to basic requirements of scientific integrity.

Update for Panda’s Thumb

After the publication of this post in 2020, new information about the review procedure has surfaced. In the article “Creation-based research advances the positions” (Skapelsebaserad forskning flyttar fram positionerna), published on the website of the Swedish creationist association Genesis on the 9th of July 2021, we can read this:

During the review process, the journal’s editors and reviewer advised the authors to tone down the references to Intelligent Design (ID) and replace it with the term “fine-tuning”, including in the title of the article, which was done. On the other hand, they had no objection to a discussion of ID, as well as criticism of neo-Darwinism, provided that Thorvaldsen and Hössjer also referred to sources critical of ID. For this reason, the authors judged in connection with the final proofreading that it would be relevant to have “intelligent design” as one of the key words for the article. The word “intelligent” was then deleted by the responsible editor (see below); still the word “intelligent” is considered too sensitive in contexts like this

Further, in the talk “Creation-based research in a secular research world” (Skapelsebaserad forskning i en sekulär forskarvärld) given at the annual meeting of the Swedish creationist association Genesis in 2021, Ola Hössjer confirms this picture at 27:37:

When we first submitted the article, we included “Intelligent Design” in the title as well. The editor and reviewers were positive but they said replace ID with fine tuning in the title and abstract but you can keep evolution criticism later in the article and mention ID, and the article was, to my own surprise, published, but there were many people who contacted and wanted the article retracted. The editors were under a lot of pressure, so they were forced to write a disclaimer saying we disavow all research in ID, and it has come to our attention that the researchers are associated with creationist groups. But they did not remove the article and that was the most important thing for me, so it remains.

It seems that the editors and the reviewers were complicit in smuggling the article through the review process.

But there is more. A post titled “Editors say they won’t retract intelligent design paper despite subject being ‘not in any way a suitable topic’ for their journal” (here) at the website Retraction Watch points out that Steinar Thorvaldsen failed to disclose a conflict of interest when he did not disclose that he was the chairman of the board in the ID-promoting foundation BioCosmos. A foundation that had recently received a $1.6 million grant. According to the guidelines of J. Theor. Biol., this would have been a cause for retraction.

End of update

Finally, what will be the answer to the question if Thorvaldsen and Hössjer’s article is a breakthrough for Intelligent Design? It depends on who you ask. For the Discovery Institute and the ID movement, it is a success to have an ID-friendly article published in a high-ranking scientific journal. The publication makes it easier to present ID as a scientifically legitimate theory, something that is valuable in public opinion work. At the same time, the journal’s disclaimer provides an opportunity to present the ID movement as a victim and to complain that they are being discriminated against by the “Darwinists”. They go so far as to compare the journal’s treatment of the article to the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews. The Swedish association Genesis sees the critique as a serious attack on academic freedom and illustrates their article with a photo that appears to come from a concentration camp.

From a scientific point of view, the article does not represent any scientific breakthrough for the simple reason that it contains no results. Just a useless statistical model. And that makes perfect sense; ID is not a scientific project, and it cannot produce any scientific knowledge.

Comment by Ola Hössjer June 29, 2021 4:12 am

Part 7: Why was the fine-tuning article published?

In the last and concluding part of his series of articles, Erkell asks himself how our article could be accepted by a reputable journal. I find no reason to comment on Erkell's speculations about the reasons why TH2020 was published. I am content with the fact that the article was evaluated according to the usual peer review procedure.

After pondering the reasons why TH2020 was published, Erkell arrives at the following conclusion:

“Whatever the reason for this handling may be, it is sad that such a highly ranked journal as the Journal of Theoretical Biology is unable to live up to basic requirements for scientific integrity.”

In this context one may ask – which are the basic requirements for scientific integrity are? Based on Erkell’s first six articles, it is not difficult to guess that scientific integrity for him means that science must follow the principle of methodological naturalism. In other words, Erkell demands that all science should be conducted on a secular basis. On the contrary, for my part I believe that the editors showed a great deal of integrity when, despite a storm of criticism from evolutionary biologists, they held on to their decision to publish the article. This, as I see it, is a healthy sign that gives good hope for the future of science.

Conclusions from parts 1-7

In summary, I welcome examination and scrutiny of the research articles I wrote, both constructive criticism and appreciation. In this context, I would like to take the opportunity to mention that not all scientists seem to have the same attitude as Erkell towards the article that I wrote with Thorvaldsen. After TH2020 was published, I co-authored a follow-up article on the time it would take for evolution to bring about major genetic changes. This paper has recently been published and I have been invited to give a talk on its findings at an international conference with many well-known participants.

As I wrote in the introduction, I want to thank Lars Johan Erkell for actually taking the time to read, not only the article on fine-tuning that I coauthored with Steinar, but also several of the articles we refer to. If time permits, I am happy to continue this exchange of ideas, through articles or debates. However, I believe that much of Erkell’s criticism misses the point. First, Erkell has misunderstood what Intelligent Design or creationism means by assuming that such research is governed by non-falsifiable criteria. Secondly, Erkell makes a feather out of a chicken when he criticizes us for using the word "non-physical information", because he did not understand what we meant by this term. Third, Erkell does not seem to realize that his methodological naturalism is not an objective and agnostic point of view, but on the contrary it is based on a materialist starting point. By using methodological naturalism, Erkell thus wants to force all research to be guided by secular assumptions. For my part, I advocate a scientific environment where secular, design-based, creationist and other hypotheses are allowed to participate and be tested on equal terms. I leave it to the reader to judge whether my approach or Erkell's is the more democratic one and the one that best matches the purpose of science to seek the truth.

Reply by Lars Johan Erkell September 8, 2021 7:24 am

Finally, to the question of how TH2020 came to be published in J. Theor. Biol. I, and many with me, have been surprised by the matter. You write above that the article has been reviewed "according to the usual peer review procedure". The picture you get of the process in the article "Creation-based research moves the positions forward", which the association Genesis published on its website on July 9, is a completely different one:

During the review process, the journal’s editors and reviewer advised the authors to tone down the references to Intelligent Design (ID) and replace it with the term ‘fine-tuning’, including in the title of the article, which was done. On the other hand, there were no objections to a discussion of ID, as well as criticism of neo-Darwinism, on the condition that Thorvaldsen and Hössjer also referred to ID-critical sources. For that reason, the authors judged in connection with the final revision that it would be relevant to have “intelligent design” as one of the keywords for the article. The word “Intelligent” was then deleted by the responsible editor (see below); the word ‘intelligent’ is still considered too sensitive in contexts like this.

Here we have the explanation why the article could be published: ID- friendly editors. That the journal's editors and reviewers advise the authors to avoid sensitive phrases in order to go under the radar and thus be able to violate the journal's policy is not a "customary" procedure. It is also confirmed by the disclaimer that was published. Your claim that this was a "customary peer review procedure" is therefore not true, if the article on the website of the association Genesis is to be believed. I am inclined to do so.

So to my regret that the journal does not live up to basic requirements for scientific integrity. You write “Based on Erkell’s first six articles, it is not difficult to guess that for him scientific integrity means that science must follow methodological naturalism as a principle”. No, this has nothing to do with naturalism. It is about the fact that a scientific journal should not publish material that does not meet reasonable requirements for scientific rigor, thereby giving it legitimacy. For me, this means in this case that you don’t publish material where you:

• claim that you have shown something when you have not actually done it. The reader who is not attentive (or knowledgeable enough) is deceived.
• present an unusable method as if it were useful. Again, you can fool the reader.
• give the impression that concepts that are not established and well defined, such as “specificity” and “non-physical information” would actually be solid and defined. This means that the reasoning can give the impression of being rigorous when in fact the concepts are so blurred that they do not make sense.
• do not discuss weaknesses in your own model. The most glaring weakness in this case is the enormous (and by all accounts insurmountable) difficulties in calculating the probability that a structure would be designed by a non-material designer, something that is not mentioned.
• have manipulated quotations in the text.

In conclusion, you suggest that much of my criticism misses the mark for three reasons:

Firstly, Erkell has misunderstood what Intelligent Design or creationism means, in that he assumes that such research is governed by non-falsifiable criteria”. To that I answer both yes and no. I make an attempt to clarify the problem in the post “Science, hypotheses and Intelligent design”.

Secondly, Erkell makes a chicken out of a feather when he criticizes us for using the word “non-physical information”, because he did not understand what we mean by this concept”. It is quite true that I do not understand what you mean by “non-physical information”. And that is because you yourselves do not seem to understand what you mean - you do not even attempt a definition. The only thing you come up with is a vague reference to “semantic information”.

Thirdly, Erkell does not seem to realize that his methodological naturalism is not an objective and agnostic point of view, but on the contrary is based on a materialist belief. By using methodological naturalism, Erkell wants to force all research to be guided by secular assumptions”.

This is an echo of Phillip Johnson’s argument that methodological naturalism is in fact philosophical naturalism in disguise. It’s not. Methodological naturalism is literally methodological, it is about how to work in a practical way to obtain reliable research results. But ID research (to the extent that it exists at all) has not produced a single concrete result in more than 20 years (please correct me if I’m wrong). This is because there are no practically working methods for “design detection” - all there is, is reasoning about how one might do it. TH2020 is another example of thais. And because ID research does not work in practice, it is not seen as scientifically interesting.

So to democracy. You and Steinar Thorvaldsen have published an article here that openly argues for ID in J. Theor. Biol., an established scientific journal. You obviously have full freedom to devote yourself to ID within the framework of your professorships. The same goes for your fellow professors Michael Behe, Stuart Burgess and Scott Minnich, to mention three names that come to mind at the moment. So obviously you are allowed to work with ID, and you can publish in the scientific press. But of course you have difficulty getting research grants, and that's not so strange - a completely ordinary, secular, research program that hasn't produced any results for more than 20 years wouldn't get a penny either.

You write that you are happy to continue our exchange of ideas through articles or debates. That was nice, I do too, but I’m not particularly interested in debates. A written exchange with judicious arguments, like the one we have now, gives much more. And these are important questions we have to address: what is legitimate science, and where are the limits of science?