The ID Job Market Sucks
In his latest entry at Uncommon Descent, Dembski laments the state of the job market for ID supporters, as well as the fact that people who criticize ID can get promoted:
It’s gratifying to see that ID is helping people make careers and bring home the bacon. Robert Pennock is happily ensconced at Michigan State University for criticizing ID. Barbara Forrest was promoted to full professor at South Eastern Louisiana State University for her work debunking ID. And most recently Niall Shanks moved from East Tennessee State University to an endowed chair at Wichita State University so that he can provide a counterblast to ID in Kansas (go here for the announcement of Shanks’s appointment — I understand that this appointment involved a hefty pay increase). Meanwhile, ID supporters are not just having a hard time getting academic jobs but even getting their PhDs (e.g., the case of Bryan Leonard).
From the article, and from the comments that haven’t been deleted, we learn that this is because the scientific establishment feels threatened by ID; the good old boy network rewards those who criticize ID.
It has nothing — nothing! — to do with the fact that ID isn’t a theory or even a coherent hypothesis, makes no testable predictions, is based on misinformation, obfuscation, and the notion that “somewhere, somehow, there’s something wrong with evolution”, or that ID proponents aren’t submitting ID-related papers to peer-reviewed journals.
That obviously couldn’t be it. Obviously it’s that they’re being persecuted.