Intelligent design: it's not even wrong.

First, a confession. I lifted this zinger of a title from a refreshingly mindful statement by a US Representative (that'd be Rush Holt of the 12th Congressional district of New Jersey), and also from Peter Woit's excellent physics blog Not Even Wrong.

Plagiaristic tendencies aside, the title does get right to the point. For while it may be true that intelligent design isn't right, more catastrophically for its pretensions as a scientific alternative to evolution, intelligent design is not even wrong. After all, science is about 1) standing on the shoulders of giants and using their foundational theories to make predictions about the outcomes of future experiments, then 2) doing the experiments, and then 3) forcing the scientific community to eat a big fat slice of humble pie if your results suggest the theories were wrong. What happens next usually involves the front cover of Science or Nature.

In short, valid scientific theories are falsifiable (spectacularly so) and intelligent design is not.

So why all this flurry about intelligent design on the Beagle Project blog? Well, it turns out that Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus might be coming to a big screen near you, all proceeds to the Beagle Project. And how appropriate, too, since the Beagle will be a vehicle for science outreach, the improvement of which is what this film is all about. All we need is a venue. Any suggestions? Better yet, any offers?