Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns
The Discovery Institute has conducted a series of related public relations campaigns which seek to promote intelligent design while attempting to discredit evolutionary biology, which the Institute terms "Darwinism". The Discovery Institute promotes the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement and is represented by Creative Response Concepts, a public relations firm.
Prominent Institute campaigns have been to 'Teach the Controversy' and to allow 'Critical Analysis of Evolution'. Other campaigns have claimed that intelligent design advocates have been discriminated against, and thus that Academic Freedom bills are needed to protect academics' and teachers' ability to criticise evolution, and that the development of evolutionary theory was historically linked to ideologies such as Nazism and eugenics, claims based on misrepresentation which have been ridiculed by topic experts. These three claims are all publicized in the pro-ID movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed; the Anti-Defamation League said the film's attempt to blame science for the Nazi Holocaust was outrageous. Other campaigns have included petitions, most notably A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism.
The theory of evolution is accepted by overwhelming scientific consensus. Intelligent design has been rejected, both by the vast majority of scientists and by court findings, such as Kitzmiller v. Dover, as being a religious view and not science.
Goal of the campaigns
The overarching goal of the Institute in conducting the intelligent design campaigns is religious; to replace science with "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." To accomplish this the Institute has conducted a number of public relations campaigns. The governing strategy of these various campaigns is called the Wedge strategy and was first made public when the Institute's "Wedge Document" was leaked on the World Wide Web in 1999. The Discovery Institute argues that science, due to its reliance on naturalism, is an inherently materialistic and atheistic enterprise and thus the source of many of society's ills, and that "Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview."None of the campaigns are aimed at directly influencing the scientific community, which the Institute considers dogmatic and hidebound, but rather are focused on swaying the opinions of the public and public policy makers, which, if effective, it is hoped will respond by forcing the academic institutions supporting the scientific community to accept the Discovery Institute's redefinition of science. Public high school science curricula has been the most common and visible target of the campaigns, with the Institute publishing its own model lesson plan, the Critical Analysis of Evolution.
In a Seattle Weekly article, Nina Shapiro quoted Institute founder and president Bruce Chapman when she wrote that behind all Discovery Institute programs there is an underlying hidden religious agenda:
The Institute's approach has been to position itself as opposed to any required teaching intelligent design, while campaigns such as Teach the Controversy and Critical Analysis of Evolution introduce high school students to design arguments through the Discovery Institute-drafted lesson plans. Teach the Controversy and Free Speech on Evolution both require that "competing" or "alternative" "theories" to evolution to be presented while the Critical Analysis of Evolution model lesson plan fills that requirement by listing intelligent design books by Institute Fellows as such alternatives for students.
Campaign to "teach the controversy"
Previously, attempts to introduce creationism into public high school science curricula had been derailed when this was found to have violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In an attempt to avoid repeating this violation, the Institute today avoids directly advocating for intelligent design in high school curricula. Instead, it advocates teaching methods that introduce intelligent design ideas indirectly through a campaign to "Teach the Controversy" by portraying evolution as "a theory in crisis" and "presenting all the evidence, both for and against, evolution" and teaching "Critical Analysis of Evolution". The Discovery Institute describes their approach as:Gordy Slack of Salon interpreted this tactic as: "the 'more' they want to teach, of course, is what they see as evolution's shortcomings, leaving an ecological niche that will then be filled by intelligent design."
In 2001 Robert T. Pennock wrote that intelligent design proponents are "manufacturing dissent" in order to explain the absence of scientific debate of their claims: "The 'scientific' claims of such neo-creationists as Johnson, Denton, and Behe rely, in part, on the notion that these issues are the subject of suppressed debate among biologists. ... according to neo-creationists, the apparent absence of this discussion and the nearly universal rejection of neo-creationist claims must be due to the conspiracy among professional biologists instead of a lack of scientific merit."
These teaching methods were promoted by the Institute at the Kansas evolution hearings in 2005, but were the subject of judicial criticism later in that year in the decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District:
"ID's backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID." The slogan "teach the controversy" has been increasingly superseded by the more oblique "Critical Analysis of Evolution".
Campaigns claiming discrimination
The claim that "scientists, teachers, and students are under attack for questioning evolution" and have been discriminated against, is the centerpiece of a number of campaigns conducted by the Institute. Notable among these campaigns is the Sternberg peer review controversy and in the more recent case of Guillermo Gonzalez's denial of tenure. As part of a long term strategy the Institute actively promotes an image of intelligent design proponents suffering professional setbacks or failing to advance as victims of "Darwinist inquisitions" conducted by "Thought Police". Critics of intelligent design and the Institute such as PZ Myers, Eugenie Scott and Barbara Forrest frequently find themselves the subjects of unflattering articles on the Institute's blog which ignores or downplays the responses of large scientific and academic organizations rejecting intelligent design while portraying opponents as members of an academic and scientific fringe and minority. Other methods employed by the Institute include what they term "Public Education"; described as exposing 'bigotry and intolerance' to 'public disapproval' often through the Institute's blog Evolutionnews.org, "Personal Assistance"; described as "providing assistance in locating free legal representation from a network of concerned lawyers across the nation" and "investigations" and lobbying of officials by the Institute, "Legal Defense" and "Grassroots Action".Other purported instances of discrimination publicised by the Discovery Institute include:
- philosopher Francis J. Beckwith's initial failure to gain tenure from Baylor University;
- biology teacher Roger DeHart's reassignment at, and later resignation from, Burlington-Edison High School for teaching intelligent design;
- Mississippi University for Women chemist Nancy Bryson, who was removed as head of the science and mathematics division, purportedly for giving a presentation entitled "Critical Thinking on Evolution", which claimed evidence for intelligent design in nature. After protests, the university decided Bryson could keep the job and insisted her removal had nothing to do with the lecture.
- biologist Caroline Crocker, who was barred by George Mason University from teaching a Cell Biology class over her introduction of intelligent design into it, and whose contract at that university was not renewed;
- The closure of the short-lived Evolutionary Informatics Lab formed by Baylor University engineering professor Robert J. Marks II, which included Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary research professor in philosophy William Dembski as a postdoctoral researcher. The lab was shut down and its website was deleted because Baylor's administration considered that it violated university policy forbidding professors from creating the impression that their personal views represent Baylor as an institution. Baylor however permitted Marks to resume work in the informatics lab on his own time and maintain his website, provided a disclaimer accompany any intelligent design-advancing research makes clear that the work does not represent the university's position.
In August 2007, an upcoming movie publicising a number of these incidents was announced, entitled Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and starring Ben Stein.
Free Speech on Evolution campaign
The primary message of the campaign was:The term gained exposure when the Institute was widely quoted in the press in 2005 after president Bush publicly spoke in favor of teaching intelligent design alongside evolution as a competing theory and Institute fellow John G. West responded with a statement framing the issue as a matter of free speech: "President Bush is to be commended for defending free speech on evolution, and supporting the right of students to hear about different scientific views about evolution."
A notable characteristic of this campaign is the Institute's framing of the issues as a confluence of free speech, academic freedom and discrimination.
The campaign has found traction with the Discovery Institute's constituency, conservative Christians, but has failed to produce gains with a wider audience. Critics of the Institute and intelligent design have alleged that the campaign is founded on intellectual dishonesty. PZ Myers describes the "free speech on evolution campaign" as promoting intolerance, lies and distortions, while Wesley R. Elsberry says 'Free Speech on Evolution' is a "catchphrase" describing false compromises offered by Institute Fellows that introduce intelligent design into science classes indirectly by having teachers "teach the controversy."