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Department of Cell Biology, Ethics in Science and Medicine Program, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, Texas, USA
1Correspondence: Department of Cell Biology, Ethics in Science and Medicine Program, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, TX 75390-9039, USA. E-mail: frederick.grinnell{at}utsouthwestern.edu
Given that every public poll reports that more than 50% of Americans do not believe in evolution, representatives of the scientific and education communities are in denial when they advise "just say no" and expect that intelligent design will disappear.
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Intelligent design is frequently criticized by scientists and educators as a close cousin of creationism and viewed with skepticism as a thinly veiled attempt to bypass previously failed efforts to teach creationism along with evolution as part of science education in the United States. Rather than focusing on creationism, the scientific community should respond to intelligent design as a sequel to now-discarded, 17th- and 18th-century ideas of developmental biology. In the 17th century, unable to explain how novel structures such as organs and tissues could possibly have arisen from a single cell during development, biologists advanced a hypothesis called preformationism, according to which, development simply reflected an unfolding and increase in size of organisms that pre-existed within germ cells. Perhaps the most famous example of this idea was the 1694 drawing by the Dutch inventor Nicolas Hartsoeker, showing a miniature human within sperm (i.e., an homunculus; see figure).
In the next century, German physiologist Friedrich Wolff demonstrated that development did indeed give rise to new tissues and organs, but he still found it necessary to invoke a hypothetical organizational force—the vis essentialis—to account for his observations. The contemporary account of development that effectively has replaced the vis essentialis required another 200 years of cell biology, biochemistry, and genetics.
Similar to 17th- and 18th-century biologists, for whom development of the individual organism could be accounted for only by an unexplained organizing force, the proponents of intelligent design invoke it as the hypothetical organizing force to explain the intricacy, diversity, and organization of life forms and functions found in the world. Moreover, they base their conclusions on an empirical claim called irreducible complexity. Introduced initially as a statistical analysis of protein structure and function, irreducible complexity supposedly demonstrates the impossibility of common ancestry of life forms, structures, and functions as described by modern evolutionary biology; and thus gives rise to the need for a hypothetical force outside the known laws of nature.
The dialectic of science occurs through discovery and credibility. Discovery means learning new things about the world; credibility means trying to convince others that the new findings are correct. Discovery claims usually put forth testable hypotheses, and subsequent analyses of these hypotheses by the discoverers themselves as well as by the scientific community are central to the credibility process. In this way, credibility happens to a discovery claim over time. According to this way of thinking, irreducible complexity is a discovery claim whose credibility has yet to be established. No clear experimental program has been proposed, however, by which the credibility of irreducible complexity might be tested.
Much has been made of the absence of an experimental program to test and potentially falsify irreducible complexity. The possibility of experimental falsification often is taken as a line of demarcation between matters of science and faith. In practice, however, the possibility of experimental falsification is not clear cut. For instance, while many physicists believed the famous Michelson-Morley experiment to be a refutation of the invisible ether described by 19th century physics, those who were committed to the ether argued that the experiment was flawed, and the debate went on well into the 20th century. In practice, therefore, falsifiability should be understood above all as an intellectual commitment. In this regard, the striking feature of irreducible complexity is not the absence of an experimental program so far, but rather the appearance that the discoverers seem to be satisfied they have arrived at the truth of the matter without the need to seek such a program. Because scientific discoveries always remain open to change through confirmation and refutation of testable hypotheses, science gives up truth for credibility, and this exchange is the cash value of the intellectual commitment to falsifiability. The supporters of intelligent design, on the other hand, appear to have abandoned credibility in favor of their version of truth and, in this sense, have moved out of the domain of science.
Controversial discovery claims are part of science. Famous examples that were subsequently discredited include N-rays and polywater; another is cold fusion, which has been mostly discredited, but continues to attract interest from the U.S. Department of Energy. Other famous examples include the chemiosmotic model of oxidative phosphorylation, ribozymes, and prions, all of which are associated with scientists who went on to win Nobel prizes. Yet other controversial claims of discovery have become superfluous including the 18th century’s vis essentialis and 19th century’s ether mentioned above. Such invisible forces can be of enormous value to scientific discovery, because they point precisely toward the frontiers of human scientific knowledge and understanding.
When the supporters of intelligent design say that we should "teach the controversy," the scientific community should respond by introducing irreducible complexity into the science curriculum. Rather than an alternative to evolutionary biology, irreducible complexity could be taught as a controversial discovery claim, analysis of which will deepen students’ understanding of those aspects of evolutionary biology that are well understood and those that remain at the frontiers of knowledge.
Science education and public understanding of science are frequently criticized. One way to improve understanding would be by going beyond just the facts and teaching explicitly about scientific controversy and the process by which claims of discoveries become credible, discredited, or superfluous. A good place to start might be with the belief by 6th century BCE astronomers and their predecessors that the world was flat and stationary.
FOOTNOTES
The opinions expressed in editorials, essays, letters to the editor, and other articles comprising the Up Front section are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of FASEB or its constituent societies. The FASEB Journal welcomes all points of view and many voices. We look forward to hearing these in the form of op-ed pieces and/or letters from its readers addressed to journals@faseb.org.
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