Intelligent Design nearly down the drain

The Discovery Institute wrote a document to outline the future proliferation of intelligent design. You can see the leak here. They have missed their temporal goals if you read it. The document has goals for twenty years after it was written. Five years have passed since they hit their twenty-year mark, and nothing has changed. It's mine, bolding is mine.

Five Year Goals

• To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory
• To see the beginning of the influence of design theory in spheres other than natural science.
• To see major new debates in education, life issues, legal and personal responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda.

Twenty Year Goals

• To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science
• To see design theory application in specific fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences, psychology, ethics, politics, theology and philosophy in the humanities; to see its influence in the fine arts.
• To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.

Ooops, I made a mistake. They haven't reached their five-year goals since we're 25 years old. The 2005 Kitzmiller decision in Pennsylvania banned the teaching of ID in public schools because it was deemed to be not science. The law states that banning ID from public schools is the law. There is hope that the new Supreme Court doesn't change that. It isn't the dominant perspective in science.

I wonder if ID's proponents, like Wells, Behe, Dembski, and Meyer, still act as if they won, even though they failed. This is science and the truth will come out. Even though they have been disconnected from the water mill, they are still at it.

Nathan Lents is a biology professor and opponent of ID at The Panda's Thumb. If you follow the DI, you will know that they founded a Biologic Institute to do research on ID, but to get their work publicized, they had to find their own journal, BIO-Complexity. Editors wrote most of the articles.

The Biologic Institute was more or less a nothingburger, and has finally closed down, according to Lents and Matt Young. There will be no more ID research. How will they make it the main paradigm in science?

They published a total of three articles in the journal.

A paper in the journal about how the human ankle is so complex that it must have been designed is described by Lents. The points I left out are in Lents's words.

1). This is just the third and final article published in in the journal in all of 2022. Their original ambitious goal was one article per month (lol), but they have yet to exceed four articles in any calendar year. In 2017, they published just one manuscript in the “research article” category and one “critical review.” This year, the three published articles are in the “critical focus” category, meaning they did not publish a single “research article” in 2022.

2). The article above was written by someone who is also on the editorial board of the journal. In fact, nearly all of the contributing authors in the history of the journal are also editors and most are also Discovery Institute fellows or contributors. In 2010-2011, the journal published a total of seven articles across all article types, four of them co-authored by editor-in-chief Douglas Axe. Of course, it is not unheard of that a journal occasionally publishes original work by someone on the editorial board, but this practice is usually kept to a minimum for obvious reasons.

3). 2022 was exceptional, however, because the three articles published in BIO-Complexity [sic] are all by different authors! In most years, to reach the impressive feat of 3 or 4 articles, they publish multiple articles from the same author or team of authors, essentially by cutting articles into pieces. For example, the entire published work of the journal in 2021 is three articles, all by the same author, with titles ending in “part 1,” “part 2,” and “part 3.” In the year before that, two of the four published articles were by the same trio of authors and cover the same topic. The exact same was true for 2016.

4.)  The article above was written by someone who is also on the editorial board of the journal. In fact, nearly all of the contributing authors in the history of the journal are also editors and most are also Discovery Institute fellows or contributors. In 2010-2011, the journal published a total of seven articles across all article types, four of them co-authored by editor-in-chief Douglas Axe. Of course, it is not unheard of that a journal occasionally publishes original work by someone on the editorial board, but this practice is usually kept to a minimum for obvious reasons.

There were seven articles in 2020-2011, four of which were berated by the editor of the "journal's", who was hilarious. The majority of the other articles were written by journal editors, which shows that ID research is limited to a small group of people.

The closing of the Biologic Institute is announced in the second post by Matt Young. The piece is from Young.

The blogger known as the Sensuous Curmudgeon reported yesterday that the Biologic Institute, supposedly the research arm of the Discovery Institute, is closing:

Appears the Biologic Institute [An enterprise of the Discovery Institute] is history, green screen and all. On their 2019 990, Director Axe will no longer draw a salary, but will be a prof at Biola “Univ.” Office space is for rent. Location is listed as “permanently closed.” Their final 990 showed a loss of $133,000. [Emendation in original.]

I checked Guidestar for their latest IRS Form 990-EZ, which is dated 2019 and covers the fiscal year 2018 (Charity Navigator is a year behind). Sure enough, it contains the following statement on line 28:

DR. AXE ENTERED INTO AN AGREEMENT WITH BIOLA UNIVERSITY TO SERVE AS THE MAXWELL VISITING PROFESSOR OF MOLECULAR BIOLOGY DURING THE 2018/2019 ACADEMIC YEAR, WITH REGULAR VISITS TO CAMPUS. IN AUGUST 2019, DR. AXE BECAME THE MAXWELL PROFESSOR OF MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AT BIOLA, WORKING FULL TIME ON TEACHING AND WORKING TO HELP BUILD A COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT AT BIOLA THAT INCLUDES ADVANCED UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS. ALTHOUGH HE NO LONGER DRAWS A SALARY FROM BIOLOGIC INSTITUTE, DR. AXE CONTINUES TO SERVE AS THE DIRECTOR AND IS EXPLORING WAYS IN WHICH BIOLOGIC CAN PARTNER WITH BIOLA.

The “Dr. Axe” in question is Douglas Axe, the president of the Biologic Institute. His salary of $133,333 in 2018 was the bulk of the total expenses of $201,873. Revenue was $68,600, leaving a deficit almost exactly equal to Dr. Axe’s salary. Inasmuch as Dr. Axe “no longer draws a salary from Biologic Institute,” it seems safe to say that they are effectively out of business, even though he “is exploring ways in which Biologic can partner with Biola.”

The school used to be called the Bible Institute of Los Angeles and is an evangelical Christian school. Eric Hedin left Ball State after they wouldn't let him teach religious ID in his science class.

The Discovery Institute no longer produces research, Intelligent Design's influence in the scientific community has shrunk to a nearly invisible nubbin, and the wedge strategy has failed.