Deconstructing design: a strategy for defending science

Despite its legal and scientific failings, the "intelligent design" (ID) movement has been a public relations success story in the United States. By first creating doubts about the adequacy of evolution to account for the complexity of life, the ID movement has invoked the values of "fairness" and "openness" to argue for inclusion in the classroom and curriculum. In this way, it has attempted to lay claim to the very principles of critical analysis and open discussion at the heart of the scientific enterprise, leaving many researchers in doubt as to how to respond to these challenges. Specific case studies, including the blood-clotting cascade and data from the human genome, show how scientists can have a leading role in deconstructing the arguments advanced in favor of ID. The key to this strategy is remarkably simple and was at the heart of the landmark 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover trial on ID. It is for researchers to take the claims made by ID proponents seriously, and then to follow them to their logical scientific conclusions. When this is done effectively, the hypothesis of "design" can be publicly falsified in ways that are understandable to laypeople and decision makers in education.