ID research still in the not happening stage

After reading this post at Evolution Blog about how Intelligent Design advocates are claiming that scientific publications containing the words "design principles" support them, I decided to check the PubMed database for papers containing the words Intelligent Design.

Amazingly, 513 publications popped up. Do the IDers know of this rich trove of potential publications, all of which contain the words "Intelligent" and "Design"? Probably. Unfortunately for them the few I scanned had nothing to do with their brand of ID.

Then I placed Intelligent Design in quotes; the total dropped to 49.

Looking through those 49, I searched for any remotely supportive of ID. Some titles (especially this one: "Evolution through intelligent design") looked promising. So I went through each abstract.

Result: a big fat goose egg. Zippo, nada. Nothing.

The only papers touching on the subject were those that either blasted ID or explained why it was important for scientists to confront ID doctrine. Sorry, fellas.

ID supporters will simply have to lower their standards of evidence once again if they are to keep up their fight. My suggestion: use "evolution" as a search term; then read the articles.

Granted, they did manage to slip a peer-reviewed paper supportive of ID into the decidedly low-impact journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (impact factor: 0.424; ranked tied for 4690 out of 5968 journals listed for 2004). But that paper didn't pop up in the PubMed search; nor does the journal itself appear in PubMed. The editor who approved the paper at the time was also a member of a group devoted to reconciling biology and the Bible. This remains the high water mark of ID research.

Saw it first on The Panda's Thumb.