| Darwinism, Design and Public Education | |
| Editors: | John Angus Campbell Stephen C. Meyer |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Series: | Rhetoric & Public Affairs |
| Subject: | Intelligent design |
| Publisher: | Michigan State University Press |
| Pub Date: | December 2003 |
| Media Type: | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages: | 544 |
| Isbn: | 0-87013-670-4 |
| Dewey: | 576.8/071 22 |
| Congress: | QH362 .D37 2003 |
| Oclc: | 53145654 |
Darwinism, Design and Public Education is a 2003 anthology, consisting largely of rewritten versions of essays from a 1998 issue of Michigan State University Press's journal, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, edited by intelligent design activists John Angus Campbell (who serves on the journal's editorial board) and Stephen C. Meyer.[1] The book was promoted as being a "peer-reviewed science book".[2] It is written by advocates of intelligent design, and consists of pro-evolution essays.[1]
The book purports to address the question of "[s]hould public school science teachers be free to teach the controversies over biological origins" and promotes the Discovery Institute's "teach the controversy" political action plan, whilst claiming "not to advocate the theory of ID."[3] This denial is later undercut by claiming that an understanding of ID is needed "to understand Darwin's argument, to say nothing of the contemporary controversy that it continues to generate".[1]
In his introduction, Campbell states:[3]
Forrest rebuts these three assertions by pointing out that:[1]
The Discovery Institute lists five chapters as "Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design,[4] although Mark Isaak of the talk.origins Archive notes that "Anthologies and conference proceedings do not have well-defined peer review standards" and that "reviewers are themselves ardent supporters of intelligent design. The purpose of peer review is to expose errors, weaknesses, and significant omissions in fact and argument. That purpose is not served if the reviewers are uncritical".[5] The five papers are:
The first three are actually listed twice including once as "featured articles". Meyer's paper on the Cambrian explosion also contains much of the same material which went into another of the claimed peer-reviewed papers which was at the center of the Sternberg peer review controversy.[6]