Through a little detective work, I found out where some of the Discovery Institute’s research funding has gone. It was an obscure comment in a paper that clued me in. The funding was for an exploration into the fundamental Speed Limits of Naturalistic Evolution. What was the plight of this exploration?
Here is what the principal researcher, Walter ReMine, had this to say regarding the ordeal his work endured (from a post at ARN):
this is about the evolutionist’s rejection of an entire field (Cost Theory), as well as their rejection of a central problem in evolutionary genetics — Haldane’s Dilemma. And it goes to additional issues, such as the evolutionist’s frequent claim that creationists/ID-ists “never publish in peer-reviewed science journals”. It also goes to the issue of negligence, because evolutionary leaders (apparently knowingly, according to their testimony) allowed the existing state of confusion to prevail for decades, and they rejected clarifications which they knew to be correct.
…
I wrote a paper clarifying the fundamentals of Haldane’s Dilemma, and submitted it to three mainstream science journals, where it was reviewed by evolutionary geneticists. At the first two journals, it was rejected as incorrect. At the third journal, it was acknowledged as “correct” by evolutionists Warren Ewens and James Crow. Nonetheless, they rejected it from publication on the astonishing grounds that my paper is unnecessary because they and their associates already “knew” my material “in the 1970s”.Being that my paper is acknowledged as correct, yet rejected at three evolutionary journals (three strikes they’re out!), it is now published in the creationist journal, TJ, and available for free here.
The purpose of this present thread is to challenge evolutionists (or anyone else) to justify Ewens & Crow’s stated reason for rejecting my paper. They already acknowledge my paper as correct, so that’s not the issue here. In other words, I challenge evolutionists (or anyone else) to show: (1) that the clarifications given in my paper are already clearly and coherently given in the evolutionary literature, and (2) that no such clarification of the evolutionists’ cost-literature is needed or necessary.
I finally started looking through the papers again. There are two papers so far that I’ve found:
Cost theory and the cost of substitutionâ€â€a
clarification
and
More Precise Calculations of the Cost of Substitution
Curiously, I found these statements in the papers:
This work was supported in part by a grant from Discovery Institute. Thanks also to Dr Paul Nelson.
I encourage the readers to take a peak at ReMine’s work. Ask yourself, “Does this work explore important scientific issues? Is this the sort of research that the scientific community should consider? Is his work accurate?”
Here is a footnote from one of the papers:
This paper was submitted previously to the journal Theoretical Population Biology, where renowned evolutionary geneticists Warren J. Ewens and James F. Crow reviewed it, along with Alexey Kondrashov and John Sanford. They all acknowledged this paper is essentially correct in all matters of substance. However, Ewens and Crow rejected it from publication on the grounds that it is not sufficiently new or different from what was known by themselves and some of their colleagues in the 1970s. However, they never communicated this knowledge to the greater scientific community, nor to the public at large. There were rare correct insights scattered sparsely in the literature, but those were incomplete, overwhelmed by confusion, and never communicated together in a coherent manner. This has all been very unfortunate, as there continues to be widespread misunderstanding within the scientific community regarding these important matters, even among those who have studied the cost literature for years. It is hoped that the clarifications presented in this paper, which are sound, will eventually reach the greater scientific community.
â€â€Walter J. ReMine.
So the Discovery Institute has parceled out money to researchers in relevant fields. We also know about the Biologic Institute. I expect there is research going on elsewhere, and if not sponsored by the Discovery Institute, it will be pursued by individuals eager to discover Design in nature.