The Discovery Institute gives advice on scientific integrity.

Thanks to S. Joshua Swamidass at Peaceful Science, I’ve been made aware of a recent post by David Klinghoffer on the Discovery Institute’s website “Evolution News” (which generally has very little news about evolution) discussing some recent shake ups at the BioLogos Foundation. Those who are already familiar with the history of these two organizations can skip to the next paragraph, but for the benefit of those who are not: Both the DI and BioLogos were created to promote particular ideas regarding the relationship between religion and science (particularly the theory of evolution). While the DI promotes creationism in the guise of “Intelligent Design”, members of BioLogos accept the scientific consensus regarding the theory of evolution, and argue that this is compatible with belief in God. Not surprisingly, there has been a generally antagonistic attitude between the two groups, and the DI, which had previously focused mostly on atheism and secularism, has increasingly been taking shots at the theistic evolutionism that is endorsed by BioLogos.

Klinghoffer’s post describes the current changes at BioLogos, discussing some claims pertaining to the existence of Adam and Eve that have apparently been deleted from the BioLogos website. I have no opinion on whether Klinghoffer is being fair or accurate in his description of BioLogos’s actions. Rather, my attention was drawn to the following statements from Klinghoffer:

Usually if a scholar discovers he or she has made a serious error (especially when attacking someone else), one expects an open acknowledgment of the error on the record. Certainly, contributors to Evolution News have had to correct figures, for example concerning estimates of the percentage difference in DNA sequence between chimpanzees and humans. It’s never pleasant to admit your mistakes publicly, and we don’t claim to be perfect in our own corrections. Nevertheless, simply deleting a serious error without specifically acknowledging and addressing what was in error is not helpful to the pursuit of truth. This is all the more the case when the error was used as the basis to attack another scholar….

Some errors uncorrected are relatively harmless. But others are significant and have a large impact. The Venema/Falk article was a big influence on the Christianity Today article on Adam and Eve, that in turn influenced many Christians. Is it right to just remove the offending article, now that it is clear that its science was wrong? Or should the article have been updated to acknowledge the errors?

For serious errors like these, it’s hard to see the record as truly fixed until things that were claimed that were untrue are openly acknowledged as wrong.

These are fine sentiments which I can endorse wholeheartedly. And, in their spirit, I would like to take the opportunity to remind David Klinghoffer and his fellow members of the Discovery Institute of just some of the scientific claims they have made over the years which have turned out to be false:

“Irreducibly complex” systems like the bacterial flagellum cannot be produced by unguided evolutionary processes.

“Complex Specified Information” (CSI) is a rigorously defined mathematical measure that can determine whether something has been designed.

During the Cambrian Explosion, new organisms appear suddenly in the fossil record, fully formed and without transitional precursors.

The Cambrian Explosion required vast amounts of new genetic “information” that could not be produced by unguided evolutionary processes in the time allowed.

Junk DNA does not exist.

Functional sequences are too rare in sequence space to be found by random mutations.

These are just a few of the ID Creationist claims that come immediately to mind. I am sure there are many others. Every one of them has been clearly refuted (in at least one case several decades before the claim was even made.) To my knowledge, the Discovery Institute has yet to retract a single one of them.

So I am hopeful that Klinghoffer’s article will herald a new era of honesty and integrity for the Discovery Institute, in which they finally at least take the first step of acknowledging their errors, and ceasing to promote these claims as if they are viable arguments against the theory of evolution. After all, they surely cannot hold BioLogos to a standard that they are not, themselves, prepared to meet.

Right?