Douglas Axe

Douglas Axe is the director of the Discovery Institute-run Biologic Institute.[1] co-author of Science and Human Origins Axe is also a signatory to the Discovery Institute petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism.

The divine comedy
Creationism
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v - t - e

Axe’s work has been hailed by the Discovery Institute as evidence supporting their views. Interestingly, even Axe himself has admitted that this is not the case.[2]

Credentials

Axe is a molecular biologist, and is, as such, one of the relatively few people affiliated with the intelligent design movement with credentials the least bit relevant to the issue at hand — not counting the numerous supporters who rely entirely on fake or trumped-up credentials, as opposed to "merely" out-of-context credentials.

Drawing on his knowledge of biology, Axe has authored a few relatively mundane papers, at least some of which have been published in low-tier, although genuine, journals.

Although none of these papers contain – or even attempts to mount – any refutation of evolution, much less evidence for intelligent design. He has published extensively in the Biologic Institute’s house journal BIO-Complexity, but that obviously does not count towards anything meaningful.

Fallacies and ignorance

Axe is on the record arguing that problems with evolution are evidence for intelligent design,[3] insofar as if the theory of evolution cannot explain some data it means that there can somehow be no naturalistic explanation at all. In other words, Axe seems to think that if evolution were false, then Intelligent Design would have to be correct — which is, of course, false insofar as Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory to begin with, and is thus not even in the running.

His actual expertise in the fields relevant to assessing evolutionary explanations has also been questioned.[4]

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gollark: Well, they're only accessible within potatOS.
gollark: ↑
gollark: Yes.
gollark: Superglobals can be accessed from any potatOS computer.

See also

References
  1. http://www.biologicinstitute.org/people/
  2. Panda’s Thumb, Axe (2004) and the evolution of enzyme function
  3. Sandwalk, False Dichotomy, post from January 18, 2012.
  4. Pharyngula, Who Needs an IQ-Test When You’ve Got Coalescence.
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