Daniel Morgan has written a very thorough review of the entire Richard Sternberg situation and it's well worth reading. Sternberg, you may recall, was the editor of a journal who went outside the normal peer review process to insure that a very badly written paper by DI fellow Stephen Meyer would get published. Morgan debunks the whole Sternberg-as-martyr myth that has grown up around it. There is one bit of information, though, that I'm not certain is true. He writes:
Sternberg admitting on O'Reilly that Todd Wodd, of Bryan College, of the Baraminology Study Group, as in Young Earth Creationism...was one of the three people he sent out Meyer's Helpless Monster to in order to qualify it for peer review. Who else? Paul Nelson, also involved with Baraminology Conferences as far back as 1999. And the third reviewer? Why, none other than Jonathan Wells, of course.
Is this true? I wasn't aware that the identities of the reviewers had ever been revealed. If it's true, this is very useful information. Neither Nelson (a philosopher) nor Wells (a developmental biologist) is any more qualified to review a paper on Cambrian fossils than Stephen Meyer (also a philosopher) was to write it. No journal editor who was interested in genuine peer review would have sent that paper out to people with no expertise in the field, much less to people who are close friends and fellows at the center that the paper's author directs. This would seem to be very damaging to admit, and I've never heard that Sternberg has ever revealed who he sent the paper to for peer review. That makes me skeptical of the claim. Anyone know?
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Is this true? I wasn't aware that the identities of the reviewers had ever been revealed.
Neither was I. Although I don't doubt the reviewers were sympathetic to the cause, I had no idea it was these three individuals.
There was no link to a source, and I too am suspicious of the provenance of this info.
Better to with-hold a response here until we get some serious verification.
See his correction at the bottom:
**I earlier posted fact 10 after misreading Stranger Fruit's article, believing that Sternberg had admitted the identities of the three persons who reviewed Meyer's Helpless Monster, in fact it was the identities of the three persons who reviewed Sternberg's own article he admitted to. Wouldn't we all love to know the former identities? In Sternberg's "Acknowledgements" section:
I warmly thank Drs. Lien (Linda) Van Speybroeck, Gertrudis Van de Vijver, and Dani De Waele for their patience, encouragement, and comments and suggestions that greatly improved the manuscript. I also thank Drs. Paul Nelson, Stanley Salthe, Jonathan Wells, and Todd Wood (alphabetical order) for their very helpful criticisms of the manuscript.
***UPDATE***
He was actually referring to Steinberg sending out one of his own papers to those three gentleman, not the Meyer paper.
See the website.
Ended italics tag too early. The last paragraph was also pasted from Morgan's blog (and he got it from Sternberg's acknowledgements).
Geez, I must have been posted that update just as you all were leaving comments about it.
His name is of course Sternberg and not Steinberg.
My apologies.
Thank God somebody checked it out, before I steeled myse3lf to watch the O'Reilly clip!
Let us play guess the reviewers:
"one at an Ivy League university, one at a major U.S. public university, and another at a major overseas research institute."
My guess for the overseas institute is
Siegfried Scherer. Since he is a fellow of the
Discovery Institute (I did not know this until
I went to Scherer's home page), it got me thinking: could the other two also be Discovery Institute fellows? Off to the list...
Scott Minnich looks like a good candidate for
the public US university.
Ivy League, nothing obvious on the list. But doesn't Cornell have some ID kind of guy in
Nutrition or such - Ah, found it! John Sanford,
horticulture.
What do you think?
ID and horticulture make a pretty bad combination. Sanford would accidentally create a new species of plant and would never know it.
I'm working on finding out who reviewed Meyer's paper for Sternberg. So far so good, I've contacted all of the following from Sternberg's acknowledgments section of his paper but Paul Nelson and Jon Wells, neither of whom I doubt was a reviewer:
Drs. Lien (Linda) Van Speybroeck, Gertrudis Van de Vijver, Dani De Waele, Drs. Paul Nelson, Stanley Salthe, Jonathan Wells, and Todd Wood
I'm also going to get in contact with some people still involved with PBWS. I really want to know who reviewed Meyer's helpless monster.
Daniel Morgan wrote:
So would a lot of other people, myself included. Please let us know if you find out. Obviously, we all suspect that Sternberg cherry picked the reviewers and sent it specifically to sympathetic ones who would provide cover for his decision. It's not normal, however, for the names of reviewers to be revealed in such circumstances. Sternberg certainly isn't telling, and that is precisely why we're all suspcious in this regard.
I posted an update to the original post.
I'm excited, now...I know I've finally moved up in the world [snicker]: Witt responds to my Sternberg pieces via an "idthefuture" blog.
My response to Witt (of the DI) is now posted.