So Much for Intellectual Honesty

So now, courtesy of NRO, we find out that after publishing a scientific article on Intelligent Design (ID) in The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, the publisher finds himself the subject of a Hostile Work Environment.

A lengthy and detailed letter from OSC attorney James McVay, dated August 5, 2005, and addressed to Sternberg, summarizes the government's findings, based largely on e-mail traffic among top Smithsonian scientists. A particularly damning passage in the OSC letter reads:

Our preliminary investigation indicates that retaliation [against Sternberg by his colleagues] came in many forms. It came in the form of attempts to change your working conditions...During the process you were personally investigated and your professional competence was attacked. Misinformation was disseminated throughout the SI [Smithsonian Institution] and to outside sources. The allegations against you were later determined to be false. It is also clear that a hostile work environment was created with the ultimate goal of forcing you out of the SI.

One of the high ironies of the scientific community is how religious scientists become wedded to their own “strongly held beliefs”. All the while expressing their own disdain for those they believe to hold similarly strong beliefs. The objection to Intelligent Design has so far only been the technical equivalent of “yo mama.” I hope and believe that it will at some point change, but if I held my breath I might die long before those arguments surfaced.

Scientists, even Nobel laureates, are not immune from the human condition. It does no one any good to think that they could be. So don’t give them any power you would extend to your neighbor; you know, the neighbor you wish you didn’t have.

This general rule should be extended to all other human beings. Vesting power and authority to people in general is a bad idea. No one before or since Christ has proven themselves worthy of ruling anyone else. Best to remember that “fearful servant and harsh master” thing again…