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The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID) is a self-styled professional society that promotes the controversial idea of intelligent design — that there is scientific evidence for design in life.
Overview
The Society was launced by on 6 December 2001. It was co-founded by William Dembski, Micah Sparacio and John Bracht. Dembski, mathematician, philosopher, theologian, and intelligent-design advocate is its Executive Director. Its fellows include leaders of the ID movement, including Michael Behe and Jonathan Wells.
ICSID says that it is "a cross-disciplinary professional society that investigates complex systems apart from external programmatic constraints like materialism, naturalism, or reductionism. The society provides a forum for formulating, testing, and disseminating research on complex systems through critique, peer review, and publication. Its aim is to pursue the theoretical development, empirical application, and philosophical implications of information- and design-theoretic concepts for complex systems." Its tagline is "retraining the scientific imagination to see purpose in nature".
ICSID maintains an online journal entitled Progress in Complexity, Information and Design. Articles are submitted through its website and may appear in the journal if they have been approved by one of the fellows. This they argue is a form of peer review, though critics argue that such articles could not pass critical peer review in the rest of the scientific literature, that the journal by excluding the preponderance of mainstream research being conducted that contradicts intelligent design is displaying an institutional bias and lacks scholarly rigour, and that the journal has failed to appear several times, showing a lack of ideas and research for the intelligent design concept.
ISCID maintains a copyrighted online user-written Internet encyclopedia called the ISCID Encyclopedia of Science and Philosophy.
The society features online chats largely with intelligent design proponents and others sympathetic to the movement or interested in debating proponents of it. Past chats have included people such as David Chalmers, Stuart Kauffman and Dembski.
PCID peer review controversy
One of the primary criticisms of the intelligent design movement and hinderances to intelligent design claims being considered legitimate science is that intelligent design proponents have failed to produce research papers that appear in peer reviewed scientific journals that support their position.
Critics in the scientific community say that intelligent design proponents have set up their own journals with "peer review" which lack impartiality and rigor, and point to ISCID's journal Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design as such an example, since reviewers in the PCID journal consist entirely of intelligent design supporters.
Notes and references
- Ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District 4: whether ID is science
- "With some of the claims for peer review, notably Campbell and Meyer (2003) and the e-journal PCID, the 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." Index to Creationist Claims Mark Isaak, TalkOrigins archive 2006
- "ID leaders know the benefits of submitting their work to independent review and have established at least two purportedly "peer-reviewed" journals for ID articles. However, one has languished for want of material and quietly ceased publication, while the other has a more overtly philosophical orientation. Both journals employ a weak standard of "peer review" that amounts to no more than vetting by the editorial board or society fellows. Is It Science Yet?: Intelligent Design Creationism and the Constitution Matthew J. Brauer, Barbara Forrest, and Steven G. Gey (PDF file)