Biologic Institute - New Scientist Investigation

New Scientist Investigation

New Scientist magazine sent a reporter to the Biologic Institute facilities in late 2006 to investigate. The reporter, Celeste Biever, was given a fairly chilly reception and found few willing to speak to her about their research. Although the New Scientist article was somewhat negative, the Discovery Institute touted it as unequivocal evidence that the Biologic Institute is engaging in scientific research.

The only one of the four Biologic Institute directors willing to speak to New Scientist reporter Biever was George Weber, a retired member of the business faculty at Whitworth University, a private Christian college associated with the Presbyterian Church (USA) in Spokane, Washington. Weber belongs to the Spokane chapter of Reasons To Believe, a fundamentalist evangelical Christian creationist organization. Weber stated that, "We are the first ones doing what we might call lab science in intelligent design" and "The objective is to challenge the scientific community on naturalism." After speaking to New Scientist, Weber left the board of the Biologic Institute. Axe explained in an email to Biever that this was because Weber "was found to have seriously misunderstood the purpose of Biologic and to have misrepresented it."

The Discovery Institute stated in October 2006 that intelligent design research is being conducted by the institute in secret to avoid the scrutiny of the scientific community. Nevertheless, Biever was able to discover that The Biologic Institute is working on "examining the origin of metabolic pathways in bacteria, the evolution of gene order in bacteria, and the evolution of protein folds" and computational biology.

New Scientist also wrote an editorial in the same issue as its 2006 report of the Biologic Institute activities, titled "It's still all about religion". The editorial expressed concern about the interpretations and spin that might be given to any research results that might come out of research funded by the Discovery Institute, and suggested that the research efforts will not benefit science. Axe, Dixon and Gauger responded to the New Scientist article and editorial in a letter published January 13, 2007.