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The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID) is a non-profit professional society that promotes intelligent design, the controversial idea that there is scientific evidence for design in life.
Overview
The Society was launched 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, and other notable figures including William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, Henry F. Schaefer, and Frank Tipler.
ISCID 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, Dembski rejects peer review as typically practiced by journals saying it "too often degenerates into a vehicle for censoring novel ideas that break with existing frameworks"
ISCID also hosts an online forum called Brainstorms. It also maintains a copyrighted online user-written Internet encyclopedia called the ISCID Encyclopedia of Science and Philosophy.
The society features online chats with intelligent design proponents and others sympathetic to the movement or interested in aspects of complex systems. Past chats have included people such as Ray Kurzweil, David Chalmers, Stuart Kauffman and Robert Wright.
PCID peer review controversy
One of the primary criticisms of the intelligent design movement and hindrances 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
- William Dembski. "Peer Review or Peer Censorship?" Dembski cites as justification for PCID's peer review policy Frank Tipler's paper Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy? Frank Tipler. "Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy?"
- John E. Jones III. 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)