Another clueless Christianity Today book reviewer

Christianity Today has published a review of Behe’s The Edge of Evolution. The reviewer is Stephen Webb, a professor of religion and philosophy at Wabash College, and Jason Rosenhouse wonders:

Why would a serious magazine like Christianity Today ask someone so obviously unqualified to review so technical a book? Could it be that they had no serious interest in assessing the book’s arguments, but instead just wanted an opportunity to stick a thumb in the eye of establishment science?

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Christianity Today has had a book reviewed by someone who knows nothing about fields germane to a book being reviewed. Remember Edward Oakes’ review of Weikart’s From Darwin to Hitler? The review that not only got the relationship between Darwin & Marx horribly wrong but also featured "possibly the longest ellipsis known to scholarship."

Read the rest of Jason’s post on the review.

More like this

Over at the Nature blogs, they're soliciting comments and opinions about open peer review:
One of the much-hyped benefits of social networking is that it provides a way to get personalized recommendations about businesses from a wider network. If I want to tell the world that the coffee place in my neighborhood has the best cappuccino this side of Seattle, I can do that (and it does)!
A long time ago, in a blog far far away, I ran a small poll about paper refereeing. The poll asked "What is your ratio of reviewed to submitted manuscripts?". The results were
I came across this Science letter to the editor about a "gradual peer review process" by the associate editor for Plant Signalling and Behavior, Co