Nature has just published a couple of opinion pieces on Intelligent Design creationism, and has even put the subject on the cover. One article is also open access: Who has designs on your students' minds?. Unfortunately, it's a terrible article. How the hell could this thing have been published? It's like they didn't bounce it past a single biologist before dumping it on the prestigious pages of Nature.

For one thing, the article is centered on, of all people, Salvador Cordova. Cordova has no background in biology at all, and has been a tedious pest on various online bulletin boards. He's dogmatic, ignorant, and completely oblivious to how science in general works, and is even more obtuse when the subject rolls around to biology. It is true that he is an excellent representative of the the broad cluelessness of ID creationism proponents, but the article says nothing about the inanity of his contributions. Reading it, you'd think he was a competent and thoughtful thinker, rather than the kneejerk twit we've all come to know on Access Research Network.

This quote encapsulates Cordova neatly:

Since high school, Cordova had been a devout Christian, but as he studied science and engineering at George Mason, he found his faith was being eroded. "The critical thinking and precision of science began to really affect my ability to just believe something without any tangible evidence," he says.

After taking the ghastly Cordova seriously, there's another substantial flaw: the author, Geoff Brumfiel, keeps referring to biologists as "Darwinists", dear god. Eugenie Scott is "the nation's most high-profile Darwinist"? "Darwinists are divided in their response"? Brumfiel apparently has an undergrad degree in physics; do you think he'd have no objection if I referred to him and all physicists generically as Newtonists?

I'm disappointed with this article. If this is the kind of help you want to offer US scientists, Nature, forget it—we don't need any more journalists fawning over the pseudoscientists of the ID movement.