Study to measure 'popularization of Intelligent Design' refused funds

nature ^ | 4 April 2006 | Hannah Hoag

[S0122017]

Nature Published online: 4 April 2006; | doi:10.1038/440720b Doubts over evolution block funding by Canadian agency Study to measure 'popularization of Intelligent Design' refused funds. Hannah Hoag

A Canadian federal agency has denied funding to a science-education researcher partly because of its doubts about the theory of evolution.

Brian Alters, director of the Evolution Education Research Centre at McGill University in Montreal, had proposed a study of the effects of the popularization of intelligent design — the idea that an intelligent creator shaped life — on Canadian students, teachers, parents, administrators and policy-makers.

At a public lecture on 29 March, Alters revealed excerpts from the rejection letter he received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). The letter stated that, among its reasons for rejection, the committee felt there was inadequate "justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of evolution, and not intelligent-design theory, was correct."

"It illustrates how the misunderstanding of evolution and intelligent design can go to all levels of Canadian society," says Alters. David Green, director of McGill University's Redpath natural-history museum, adds: "I was quite surprised that such an opinion could be tendered by a highpowered granting agency."

The SSHRC is the top socialsciences funding agency in Canada. Spokeswoman Eva Schacherl says its funding decisions are based on the comments submitted by a committee of peer reviewers, and that the council cannot comment on the sentence in question. "We rely on the expertise of our committees to make recommendations," she says.

Susan Bennett, an English professor at the University of Calgary in Alberta and chair of the SSHRC committee, could not be reached for comment by the time Nature went to press.

The maximum value of Alters's requested grant was Can$40,000 (US$34,000). He has received funding from the SSHRC before; for instance, his centre was awarded a Can$175,000-grant to study the understanding of biological evolution in Islamic societies.

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Jennifer Robinson, associate viceprincipal for communications at McGill, says the university will ask the council to review its decision. "In our view it is a factual error," she says. "The theory of evolution is a well-established science, and intelligent design is a religious belief."

Philip Sadler, a board member of the centre and director of science education at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is more philosophical. "If he was trying to answer the question as to whether all this popularization had had an impact, he just saved the government $40,000," says Sadler. "He found the evidence without doing the study."

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[S0122017]

Sounds like a neutral study. Aren't ID'ers trusted to perform scientific research? His personal views shouldn't negate value of a scientific research.

[MedicalMess]

Intelligent design is an oxymoron.

[S0122017]

In what way? You can't design unless you're intelligent.
I think evolution occured, but your statement is incorrect.

[DiatribalLeader]

i think you mean intelligent design is a pleonasm