More DI dishonesty and obfuscation
[Bruce Chapman of the DI has a letter in the New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/opinion/l10design.html):
At home, recent articles in The Wall Street Journal and Knight Ridder papers have described intelligent-design scientists at major universities (including Iowa State, the University of Minnesota and the University of Georgia). One National Public Radio story alone featured 18 intelligent-design scientists, though most "would not speak on the record for fear of losing their jobs." There is far more support, indeed, than appears on the surface.
If there is more support than appears, how come they keep recycling the same old creationist hacks? We've been all over the so-called scientists at these universities who support Intelligent Design creationism.
- Tara Smith is the Iowan science blogger. She’s critiqued Guillermo Gonzalez, the DI’s man in Iowa, and will tell you that Iowa universities are unanimous in their support of evolution.
- Reed Cartwright is the Georgian science blogger. Chapman is referring to Henry Schaeffer, a chemist who knows little biology. Reed can also tell you all about Georgians working hard to defeat ID.
- I’ve got the Minnesota beat. Chapman is talking about Chris Macosko, a chemical engineer who offers a bad freshman seminar course outside the biology department that misleads our students.
Notice that all of the best examples the DI can dig up are matched by that tiny, minute subset of scientists in their respective states who are active bloggers. The number of scientists supporting ID is miniscule, and support is actually much, much more limp and negligible than you would expect from all the effort the Discovery Institute dedicates to fluffing them.
Chapman's piece also mentions a "European conference on design"—[Right Wing Professor](http://homepage.mac.com/gerardharbison/blog/RWP_blog.html#ofa156008361) makes this comment about that "conference":
We have no way of independently verifying who or how many attended, but the[ conference schedule is on line](http://www.darwinanddesign.org/), and it featured a measly five speakers - four of them old antievolution hacks of long standing - over one day. The conference registration was a little over $20 -- too much to pay for rubbish, you might say, but it included coffee and lunch. The web page looks like it was put together by a computer science student on a wet Saturday morning. There was a booth where they sold the standard antievolution tracts translated into Czech, and that's it. If this is an international conference, my group meeting is an international conference.
Man, these DI flacks sure can puff up a bit of hot air, can't they?