In 1996, Physics professor, Alan Sokal tried to see if “a leading journal of cultural studies would publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions?” It did.
Here is a challenge – I think it would be fairly easy for a life-science professor to write a deliberately nonsensical hoax article in defense of Intelligent Design and get it published in the Sunday Times (UK or US!) – then publish a dissection of it elsewhere, in the manner of Sokal.
Every time I come back to the UK and pick up the Sunday Times (UK) it gets worse but this week’s Bryan Appleyard piece was an absolute classic.
The setup is now common – place Intelligent Design as a balance to Darwinism and assume that by being somewhere in the middle you are being balanced and reasonable, then lecture about the subject using half understood metaphors and buzzwords.
This is what Appleyard has to say about evolution:
“The co-decipherer of DNA, Francis Crick, for example, once defined the