Following my earlier post, some readers have e-mailed in arguing that

David’s Opinion Journal piece demonstrates that there is

a determination on the part of learned scientific journals to keep I.D.

proponents out of their pages.

Well, I should certainly hope so! I hope they will also keep out of their

pages proponents of the Flat Earth theory, the Hollow Earth theory, the phlogiston theory of

combustion, the theory of the Four Body Humours, and the tooth fairy theory.

Not everything that anyone can think up is worthy of inclusion in a

scientific journal. Speaking personally, if I were to open my copy of, say,

The Astronomical Journal (supposing I

were a subscriber, which I am not) and found myself looking at an article

that took UFO abductions seriously, I would cancel my subscription at once.

Lay people don’t realize how many pseudoscientific cranks there are out

there. The world is swarming with them! A couple of years ago I published

a book about an unsolved math problem. You wouldn’t believe some of the

mail I got — weird, weird stuff, written in all earnestness, claiming to

have solved that problem by dint of techniques from bibliomancy to yoga.

Let me tell you, the world is teeming with lunatics armed with iron

conviction and reams of theoretical justification for their crackpot

notions. Scientists see themselves as working to expand a little clearing

of light, of reason, in a vast chittering black jungle of superstition and

madness. Is it any wonder they are defensive?

Science, and its peer-reviewed journals, need solid defenses, constantly

manned. I would rather scientists were over-scrupulous about what they

let in than otherwise. After all, as numerous examples (e.g. continental

drift) have shown, a sound theory will eventually get recognition, however

wacky it might seem at first sight.

Nobody knows all this better than working scientists — which is why (see my

current NRODT piece) scientifically-trained I.D.-ers like Michael Behe know

better than to submit I.D. pieces to respectable journals of real science.