Peer Reviewed Creationism

[Skwim]

Strolling through the Answers in Genesis website I came across their page on creation science. It's very first announcement was:

"Creation Science Is Real Science

Evolutionists and some old-earth creationists frequently charge that scientists who believe in a young earth don't have real degrees and don't do real scientific research that can be published in peer-reviewed secular scientific journals."
​

Interesting. So I scrolled down the page a bit and found

"TECHNICAL: RESEARCH PAPER
Toward a Practical Theology of Peer Review:
The irony of the conflict over peer review is that peer review is poorly understood and criticized even in conventional journals.​

which, upon clicking on the title links one to a page where we read about AiG's understanding of the peer review process.

"Presently lacking within creationism is a justification and explanation of peer review from a Christian standpoint. What are the aims of peer review? Is peer review biblical? How should it be done given Christian morals, values, and ethics?"


"Our objective in this paper is to open a Christian examination of peer reviewing by developing the beginnings of a biblical and Christian perspective on scholarly publication."


"We find that peer review and criticism embody important biblical principles related to reflecting Christ to the world, being truthful, attaining wisdom, submitting to others, displaying Christian love and mercy, being accountable, and correcting error."


"Each individual involved in the process [of peer review] has specific responsibilities to ensure that the process is conducted in accordance with biblical principles."


"The progress that the creationist community makes toward advancing sound science ultimately depends on the resolve of publishers to uphold high standards, reflecting God’s character."​

Just as one should expect, creationist papers are peer reviewed by creationists with the goal of substantiating creationism, which, of course, requires looking at the scientific evidence with an admitted creationist bias.

​

And why not? How else could they substantiate their claims? They couldn't. So when they say

"Creation Science Is Real Science"
​

All they mean is that creation science is creation "science."


As for why I even bother with the OP, it's so we'll all be aware that when creationists claim their supporting literature is peer reviewed we can be assured of just how worthless a claim is.

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[Subduction Zone]

Creationist peer review. Army intelligence. Political science. And almost as bad. . . diet ice cream.

 

[sun rise]

I have not kept count of the number of times Humpty Dumpty's statement about the meaning of words is adopted by many people.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

 

[Twilight Hue]

Strolling through the Answers in Genesis website I came across their page on creation science. It's very first announcement was:

"Creation Science Is Real Science

Evolutionists and some old-earth creationists frequently charge that scientists who believe in a young earth don't have real degrees and don't do real scientific research that can be published in peer-reviewed secular scientific journals."
​

Interesting. So I scrolled down the page a bit and found

"TECHNICAL: RESEARCH PAPER
Toward a Practical Theology of Peer Review:
The irony of the conflict over peer review is that peer review is poorly understood and criticized even in conventional journals.​

which, upon clicking on the title links one to a page where we read about AiG's understanding of the peer review process.

"Presently lacking within creationism is a justification and explanation of peer review from a Christian standpoint. What are the aims of peer review? Is peer review biblical? How should it be done given Christian morals, values, and ethics?"


"Our objective in this paper is to open a Christian examination of peer reviewing by developing the beginnings of a biblical and Christian perspective on scholarly publication."


"We find that peer review and criticism embody important biblical principles related to reflecting Christ to the world, being truthful, attaining wisdom, submitting to others, displaying Christian love and mercy, being accountable, and correcting error."


"Each individual involved in the process [of peer review] has specific responsibilities to ensure that the process is conducted in accordance with biblical principles."


"The progress that the creationist community makes toward advancing sound science ultimately depends on the resolve of publishers to uphold high standards, reflecting God’s character."​

Just as one should expect, creationist papers are peer reviewed by creationists with the goal of substantiating creationism, which, of course, requires looking at the scientific evidence with an admitted bias.

​

And why not? How else could they substantiate their claims? They couldn't. So when they say

"Creation Science Is Real Science"
​

All they mean is that creation science is creation science.


As for why I even bother with the OP, it's so we'll all be aware that when creationists claim their supporting literature is peer reviewed we can be assured of just how worthless a claim is.

.

.

Isn't peer review a way to approach opposition by presenting facts that can be determined and tested critically by said opposition, resulting hopefully in a consensus, and henceforth the results of the peer-review process becomes published in a recognized journal?

It's amazing and laughable how creationist "peer review" is somehow only their side doing the so called "peer reviewing" and making up so called conclusions as if critical examination and thought doesn't play a part in the process of peer review.

 

[Kapalika]

Is peer review biblical?

This made me do a double take.

"We find that peer review and criticism embody important biblical principles related to reflecting Christ to the world, being truthful, attaining wisdom, submitting to others, displaying Christian love and mercy, being accountable, and correcting error."

The irony is that they say they want to apply this but then turn around and scorn sources that are well researched and peer reviewed all the time whenever it disagrees with their worldview.

I'm actually curious now what a peer reviewed YEC would look like... lots of citing and arguing over what the Bible says in? That seems more like theology than science to me.

That all said... on some basic level I could see using that in relation to observed phenomena or actual scientific experiment but at that point it's not just theology and you must use science to infer how you understand, perhaps even change your theology to adapt to the most likely case of reality. I doubt AIG would do that though, as that would mean that their theology would be subject to revision and change.

 

[Jumi]

"Hard" creationism, especially YEC is a dead end. Theistic evolution and other ways to make sense of how we got here are sure to pick up even in the US as more people get a good science education.

 

[David T]

Isn't peer review a way to approach opposition by presenting facts that can be determined and tested critically by said opposition, resulting hopefully in a consensus, and henceforth the results of the peer-review process becomes published in a recognized journal?

It's amazing and laughable how creationist "peer review" is somehow only their side doing the so called "peer reviewing" and making up so called conclusions as if critical examination and thought doesn't play a part in the process of peer review.

You bring up a whole thing that's raging right now in science.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

Isn't peer review a way to approach opposition by presenting facts that can be determined and tested critically by said opposition, resulting hopefully in a consensus, and henceforth the results of the peer-review process becomes published in a recognized journal?

That isn't how peer review works. Instead, peer review is narrowly focused on a very specific set of experiments. What happens is that a scientist or group of scientists run some very specific experiments, and then draw some conclusions based on the data from those experiments. They write all of this up and submit it to a journal. The editor of the journal sends the paper out to experts in that very specific field. Those reviewers do several things:

1. Is the work original and relevant to the journal. In order to be original it has to be experiments that have not been done before.

2. Were the experiments properly done. Were the right controls used. Did the experiments overlook any potentially confounding variables that would give a false positive or false negative.

3. Are the conclusions supported by the data. Were the proper statistical tests used. Were there enough replicates to lend confidence in any statistically significant findings. How did the authors acknowledge any contradictory findings in other peer reviewed papers.

This is how real peer review is done, and it isn't anything like what AiG describes. The problem is that they don't have any hypotheses or experiments to write up, so they have to make it about metaphysics or some other philosophical nonsense. AiG doesn't have any science that could be peer reviewed, so it seems that they put the cart in front of the horse.

 

[Twilight Hue]

That isn't how peer review works. Instead, peer review is narrowly focused on a very specific set of experiments. What happens is that a scientist or group of scientists run some very specific experiments, and then draw some conclusions based on the data from those experiments. They write all of this up and submit it to a journal. The editor of the journal sends the paper out to experts in that very specific field. Those reviewers do several things:

1. Is the work original and relevant to the journal. In order to be original it has to be experiments that have not been done before.

2. Were the experiments properly done. Were the right controls used. Did the experiments overlook any potentially confounding variables that would give a false positive or false negative.

3. Are the conclusions supported by the data. Were the proper statistical tests used. Were the enough replicates to lend confidence in any statistically significant findings. How did the authors acknowledge any contradictory findings in other peer reviewed papers.

This is how real peer review is done, and it isn't anything like what AiG describes. The problem is that they don't have any hypotheses or experiments to write up, so they have to make it about metaphysics or some other philosophical nonsense. AiG doesn't have any science that could be peer reviewed, so it seems that they put the cart in front of the horse.

That was helpful. Thanks.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

That was helpful. Thanks.

Just a few more things . . .

Peer review is just the first step towards building a consensus. A peer review paper is equivalent to a scientist saying, "Here are my findings, what are yours?". Peer review is simply the way that scientists convey their work to the larger scientific community. A consensus is built by scientists arguing over the totality of peer review papers in a specific field and arriving at a majority position. Even then, a consensus can change as new papers come out. Scientists usually don't vote on what the consensus is, but you can usually get a good picture of what most scientists think by looking at what they are basing their own research on, and if that research based on previous work is successful.

For example, the current consensus is that H. pylori is a common causative agent of stomach ulcers. This wasn't always the consensus, but it is now. Current research focuses on ridding the stomach of the H. pylori infection, and those treatments have been shown to effectively reduce stomach ulcers. When you build on previous work and it still checks out this is considered evidence in favor of the consensus.

 

[tayla]

Just as one should expect, creationist papers are peer reviewed by creationists with the goal of substantiating creationism, which, of course, requires looking at the scientific evidence with an admitted creationist bias.

Yes, this is why I reject revealed religions and revealed spiritual paths. There is no way to verify any of it and they all contradict with each other and with science, archaeology, and history. I prefer to think of them as collections of stories.