Ben Stein's Expelled - Part III

Ben Stein has a new pro-creationist movie coming out in which he posits that Intelligent Design theory is marginalized, not because it is scientifically vacuous, but rather because of some sort of atheist conspiracy.

On the film's website, you will see newspaper headlines flashing across the upper right -hand corner. One of those newspapers reads:

"The Branding of a Heretic"

Stein appears to be referring to this Wall Street Journal Op-Ed of the same name, which was written by David Klinghoffer, an Intelligent Design advocate and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. Incidentally, Klinghoffer is the same man who wrote the overwrought story I discussed in Ben Stein's Expelled - Part I.

The article begins:

The question of whether Intelligent Design (ID) may be presented to public-school students alongside neo-Darwinian evolution has roiled parents and teachers in various communities lately. Whether ID may be presented to adult scientific professionals is another question altogether but also controversial. It is now roiling the government-supported Smithsonian Institution, where one scientist has had his career all but ruined over it.

This is the main theme of the article (which also happens to be the theme of Stein's film): scientists are being persecuted and repressed by a bunch of uppity establishment scientists (Stein actually refers to them as "Big Science"). So who is this scientist whose career has been "all but ruined"?

Mr. Sternberg, who isn't himself an advocate of Intelligent Design

Wait. That doesn't seem right. Sternberg (1) joined the editorial board of the young-earth creationist Baraminology Study Group in 2001,* (2) lectured in 2002 on Intelligent Design at the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (this is an Intelligent Design advocacy group, in case you couldn't tell from the name), and (3) signed the Discovery Institute's Dissent From Darwin petition. He now serves as a fellow for ISCID.

Apparently, Klinghoffer is trying to paint Sternberg as an objective scientist who published a pro-ID paper, not because he was previously involved in the ID movement, but rather because of the paper's scientific persuasiveness. At the very least, this background should be disclosed.

So what did Sternberg do that "all but ruined" his career?

Mr. Sternberg was until recently the managing editor of a nominally independent journal published at the museum [the Smithsonian], Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, where he exercised final editorial authority. The August issue included typical articles on taxonomical topics--e.g., on a new species of hermit crab. It also included an atypical article, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories." Here was trouble.

The piece happened to be the first peer-reviewed article to appear in a technical biology journal laying out the evidential case for Intelligent Design. According to ID theory, certain features of living organisms--such as the miniature machines and complex circuits within cells--are better explained by an unspecified designing intelligence than by an undirected natural process like random mutation and natural selection.

Wow, Klinghoffer left a lot of details out here. Perhaps the most significant detail is this, as recounted by the Council of the Biological Society of Washington when they finally repudiated the paper Sternberg let slip through:

Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process.

Some peer editorial review. It's also worth pointing out that Sternberg was a visiting editor of the Proceedings, and this was predetermined to be his last issue before stepping down from that position. In addition to skirting the normal editorial process on that last issue, Sternberg also chose to stray from the journal's normal subject matter. According to the Biological Society of Washington, "The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history.... Accordingly, the Meyer paper does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings."

[CORRECTION: Commenter kevinwparker points out: "Sternberg has stated that "three qualified scientists" provided a standard peer review, a statement not disputed by the CBSW, who are complaining about the editorial process, not the peer review process. (Of course, the three "qualified" scientists were probably on the lines of DI fellows Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, and William Dembski, but that's another issue.)"]

So what kinds of harms has Sternberg suffered for breaking the rules (note: Klinghoffer portrays Sternberg as having suffered for his religious beliefs instead)?

Mr. Sternberg's editorship has since expired, as it was scheduled to anyway, but his future as a researcher is in jeopardy--and that he had not planned on at all. He has been penalized by the museum's Department of Zoology, his religious and political beliefs questioned. He now rests his hope for vindication on his complaint filed with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) that he was subjected to discrimination on the basis of perceived religious beliefs. A museum spokesman confirms that the OSC is investigating. Says Mr. Sternberg: "I'm spending my time trying to figure out how to salvage a scientific career."

The Office of Special Counsel ultimately dismissed his complaint for lack of merit, by the way.
[CORRECTION: kevinwparker points out that the OSC decision never reached the merits: "The letter explaining the situation is here. The OSC could not deal with the complaint because Sternberg is not employed by the Smithsonian but was just a guest researcher there. Panda's Thumb notes this as well."]

So let's take a look at what happened that put Sternberg's future "in jeopardy," and how exactly he had been "penalized."

In October, as the OSC complaint recounts, Mr. Coddington told Mr. Sternberg to give up his office and turn in his keys to the departmental floor, thus denying him access to the specimen collections he needs.

Although the Discovery Institute's David Klingoffer charged that Sternberg's keys had been taken away and his access revoked, it turns out that this wasn't quite true. His keys were only temporarily taken away while the Smithsonian reorganized the vertebrate and invertebrate zoology departments. His access was never changed.

Nor was Sternberg fired or suspended. Instead, the bulk of the persecution appears to be in the form of angry emails that his colleagues sent to each other (not even to him personally) about how awful they thought it was for Sternberg to step in and publish a substandard paper that goes against the past 200 years of biology, paleontology, etc. Some persecution.

Soon after the article appeared, Hans Sues--the museum's No. 2 senior scientist--denounced it to colleagues and then sent a widely forwarded e-mail calling it "unscientific garbage."

Not all criticism is persecution. Maybe he's just right.

Here's the punchline, which seems to be the theme of Stein's movie as well:

Intelligent Design, in any event, is hardly a made-to-order prop for any particular religion... Darwinism, by contrast, is an essential ingredient in secularism, that aggressive, quasi-religious faith without a deity. The Sternberg case seems, in many ways, an instance of one religion persecuting a rival, demanding loyalty from anyone who enters one of its churches--like the National Museum of Natural History.

It seems like a common tactic of cranks to accuse the mainstream scientific ideas of simply being an intolerant form of dogmatic religious faith.

* Although Sternberg joined the editorial board, he did not subscribe to young-earth creationist beliefs such as the whole young-earth thing.