...For example, the ACLU claimed:
He [Behe] was confronted with the fifty-eight peer-reviewed publications, nine books and several immunology text-book chapters about the evolution of the immune system, P256, 280, 281, 283, 747, 748, 755 and 743, and he insisted that this was still not sufficient evidence of evolution — it was “not good enough.”
Judge Jones’s ruling contained a nearly identical statement,
He [Behe] was presented with fifty-eight peer-reviewed publications, nine books, and several immunology textbook chapters about the evolution of the immune system; however, he simply insisted that this was still not sufficient evidence of evolution, and that it was not “good enough.”
But the transcript of Behe’s cross-examination shows that the ACLU and Judge Jones misquoted Behe:
Q. ….Now, these articles rebut your assertion that scientific literature has no answers on the origin of the vertebrate immune system?
A. No, they certainly do not. My answer, or my argument is that the literature has no detailed rigorous explanations for how complex biochemical systems could arise by a random mutation and natural selection and these articles do not address that.
Q. So these are not good enough?
A. They’re wonderful articles. They’re very interesting. They simply just don’t address the question that I pose.
And in another exchange:
Q. Is that your position today that these articles aren’t good enough, you need to see a step-by-step description?
A. These articles are excellent articles I assume. However, they do not address the question that I am posing. So it’s not that they aren’t good enough. It’s simply that they are addressed to a different subject. [Emphasis added.]
What Behe said was, “It’s not that they aren’t good enough,” yet the ACLU, and Judge Jones, claimed that he said that they are “not good enough.”
Behe meant that these papers look at DNA sequence similarity and infer common ancestry based upon that evidence. But his argument wasn’t against common ancestry. It was against the mutation-selection mechanism as a source of evolutionary creativity — a very different question. Judge Jones, guided by the ACLU, missed the point.
Similarly, on the issue of ID research, the plaintiff’s brief claimed, “Intelligent design is not supported by any peer-reviewed research, data or publications.” Likewise, Judge Jones in his ruling said, “The evidence presented in this case demonstrates that ID is not supported by any peer-reviewed research, data or publications.”
Yet,
as John West and David DeWolf note:
Expert witness Scott Minnich testified at trial that there were between “seven and ten” peer-reviewed papers supporting ID, and he discussed a pro-intelligent design article in the peer-reviewed biology journal, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. Additional peer-reviewed publications were listed in an annotated bibliography submitted in an amicus brief accepted as part of the official court record by Judge Jones.
As Casey Luskin wrote yesterday (“
Ten Myths About Dover: #3, ‘Intelligent Design Has No Peer-Reviewed Research or Publications’“), quite a few peer-reviewed publications were documented to Judge Jones, and the ID movement has now published over eighty peer-reviewed publications reporting much ID research. But Judge Jones got this wrong, too — again, because he apparently copied false claims from an ACLU brief.
Judicial opinions are supposed to be carefully thought out and based upon solid evidence brought up in trial. Was Jones’s ruling on ID really the meticulous work of an impartial jurist? Hardly. His extensive copying and the errors this introduced should undermine confidence in his ruling. Any fair critic who wants to show that ID is something other than science needs to turn, for confirmation, to other arguments and other sources.