I'm trying to remember who all was on my Ph.D. dissertation committee way, way back in the day. There was a developmental biologist and neuroscientist, a geneticist, a physiologist, and a molecular biologist, and they were all very well known in their fields—one is even routinely mentioned in undergrad cell biology texts. They made me bleed for some time, but the vetting was thorough, I can promise you that. Anyone who has suffered through a grad program in biology will tell you that it is a long process full of caprice and torment that does little for your self-esteem, and doesn't even guarantee you a job let alone a financially rewarding career at the end of it, but you do get slammed with a mountain of biology. Unless, that is, you game the system and arrange an advisor and dissertation committee with competence outside the bounds of your thesis, especially if they've got an ideological bias to accept your conclusion, no matter what the evidence might be.

That seems to be the way Intelligent Design creationism is going to get their sycophants some "prestigious" degrees, by working to shortchange the educational process.

That behavior is of a piece with the IDC strategy of the last couple of years: fix the jury and you don’t have to worry about the merits of your position. Sternberg publishing Meyer, Sermonti publishing Wells, the Kansas Creationist Kangaroo Court, and now the Leonard affair, all demonstrate the same pattern of behavior: game the system so the fix is in, and science (and education) be damned.

This is corruption, plain and simple. While our primary education system is being gutted by anti-intellectual school boards, now these amoral know-nothings have turned their sights to our graduate programs, and aim to diminish their credibility as well. Our research universities have been among the envies of the world; once again, creationists work to debase something of value.