Peer No More

Judy Warner (and several others) sent us a link to an article that has been making the rounds today from the Wall Street Journal.

David Klinghoffer relates the story of a scientist at the Smithsonian who was kicked out of his job and shunned by his colleagues for the crime of allowing a peer-reviewed article favorable to intelligent design into a magazine he edited. Klinghoffer points out the irony of ID being criticized on the grounds that it does not appear in peer-reviewed journals, and then when it does, all hell breaks loose.

The article gives a startling view of political correctness in the scientific establishment. (And they still wail about how Galileo was treated.) One thing that I don’t think is made absolutely clear in the article is that Richard Sternberg, the scientist in hot water, sent the ID article to other scientists for review before publishing it (they approved it). It was, and remains, peer-reviewed.