But is it a serious attempt, or is it just more cargo cult science?
Time will make is blazingly clear. Give it time.
I don’t see how any of the topics covered in the article could be construed as having a role for a designer. The apparent goal of the article is to cast doubt on the theory of evolution, or whatever strawman version of the theory that ENV chooses to attack. Ultimately, it was the scientists who did the research that are increasing our understanding of nature, not ENV.
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I don’t pretend to know what lies in a person’s heart, so I will leave that question to others. What I do know is that Ewert’s paper recognizes what evidence is important, and at least tries to tackle it in a way that is more scientific than other pieces of ID work. It’s a step in the right direction, and I think we should be both encouraging and critical. @Winston_Ewert was also kind enough to engage the community here, and his attitude was quite refreshing.
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Does it? As far as I know, all it covers is some presence/absence data derived from annotations of some sequenced genomes. Is that what evidence is important?
You’ve already told me that and I responded:
Therefore, I’m not sure why you are bringing up your tremor, as having access to a lab is in no way equivalent to having to do the experiments with your own hands.
Why aren’t there young acolytes lined up to do the work under your supervision as interns?
The important evidence in this case is the existence of a phylogenetic signal. ID needs to explain this, and Ewert has recognized this fact.
Seriously, it doesn’t. It only makes sense in the context of you having no real faith in ID.
So maybe you can answer my question:
You don’t even have to do the experiment or plan to do it, Paul. Just take one of these riffs from ENV and show how it leads to an ID hypothesis that makes empirical predictions that would allow ANYONE to take the next steps.
It’s what real scientists tend to do at the end of the Discussion section.
Doesn’t matter. Francis Crick was once asked why his office was so messy, with huge piles of offprints, book chapters, etc. He replied that biology was a science of millions of tiny details, all of which mattered in some way to the Big Picture, and “there might be a clue somewhere.” Crick read, read, read, all the time, all through the biological literature.
And anyway, to be brutally mercenary about it 
T aquaticus – you go the ENV site regularly to see what’s up. That’s what the writers posting at ENV want: curious readers, whatever their ideological or philosophical perspectives. I haven’t run the numbers myself, but I’m told by DI staffers that the traffic at ENV has risen steadily over the past few years.
In the case of ENV, that makes a lot of sense.
If we zoom back a bit, epigenetics and the other topics discussed in the ENV article is echoed in other arguments I have heard from ID supporters. I am still scratching my head as to why ID supporters seem attracted to these topics. What is it about epigenetics that has them so excited? Why do ID supporters keep going on and on about the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis when all of the proposed mechanisms within EES are natural and spontaneous?
Oh, you got me. I have faith in Swiss banks, the IRS, and the New England Patriots. In particular, in the supernatural ability of Tom Brady to put points on the board in the last 90 seconds of play.
And yet he deals (and in a fatally flawed way) with only a minor feature of the phylogenetic signal. This seems a very feeble recognition. I respect Todd Wood’s position much more.
Yes, Tom Brady is exceptional. @Agauger
I know.
Since you refuse to explain this failure, I don’t see any other explanation other than that you don’t have enough faith in ID.
Why spend so much time advocating online instead of doing actual science?
Do you not realize that disproving a hypothesis is useful too?
But I think the point is that it’s more than the rest of the ID movement has done in decades.
That’s the problem. If you’re doing science, you’re supposed to be trying to falsify your own hypothesis.
I know virtually nothing about this history. Would it be possible to give some non-sensitive details about why it has been such a bad experience? I can only think of two ways in which talking about a line of experimentation prior to completion would be problematic:
- The final data don’t meet the expectations for the hypothesis
- Someone “scoops” you - I would think this would be very welcome for ID researchers
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“Would it be possible to give some non-sensitive details about why it has been such a bad experience?”
Google “Paul Nelson ontogenetic depth.” Nuff said.
“Since you refuse to explain this failure, I don’t see any other explanation other than that you don’t have enough faith in ID.”
Oh come on – just having some fun. Too many frowny faces around here. My “lack of faith” in ID, as you put it, explains why I continue to pursue ID research after 22 years as a Senior Fellow at DI, and 35+ years as an ID theorist.
“Why spend so much time advocating online instead of doing actual science?”
This project is ongoing – getting some really interesting results.
So you aren’t doing anything and Doug Axe isn’t doing anything. But the Biologic Institute “Research” page says:
“To address these questions, we are measuring the functional information in proteins by examining their ability to withstand sequence alterations.”
So that’s just completely false and misleading to potential and current donors, correct? Or is there someone else working at the bench?
And how is/was going backwards from a selected sequence better for estimating the prevalence of function in random sequence space than the forward approach of catalytic antibodies? How is it less intelligently designed? You’ve never addressed that.
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