December 20, 2025, less than two months ago, marked the 20th anniversary of the Kitzmiller v. Dover verdict, in which Judge John E. Jones III ruled against intelligent design, disallowing its teaching — or even favorable mention — in the Dover school district while at the same time ruling that ID is non-scientific.
I was intimately involved with this case. I was for a time an expert witness, until the Thomas More Law Center, which defended the school board but not me, refused to let me have my own attorney at my deposition, whereupon it discontinued my services. Even more significantly, I was the the academic editor of the Dallas publisher, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, whose book, Of Pandas and People, was the basis of the trial.
A “Staggering Defeat”?
This last December 20 happened without my remembering it as the anniversary of the trial’s verdict — it just slipped past me. But in January 2026 a colleague mentioned to me a recently published history of intelligent design, namely, C. W. Howell’s Designer Science (published in September 2025 by NYU Press). That book made a big deal out of the trial, treating its verdict as a “staggering defeat” for intelligent design. I read the book, which was not as negative about ID as this assessment of the trial’s verdict suggests. Yet what I found intriguing about the book was its main thesis.
Specifically, Howell argued that even though ID has failed as a scientific program, it has been deeply influential in the wider public for helping to foster a “hyper-skeptical mindset” about science. In particular, Howell credits intelligent design with widespread doubts about the seriousness of climate change and hesitancy about the effectiveness vaccines (among other controversial scientific topics).
This is an interesting, as well as a self-serving, thesis. It is interesting because it makes a connection that’s not immediately obvious (whether true or false) between ID and the wider public perceptions of science. It is also self-serving because Howell needs some justification for writing a full-scale history of ID if indeed ID is the colossal scientific failure as he suggests and, more so, if that failure has been widely recognized now for two decades.
Indeed, what would be the point of writing a full-scale book about intelligent design 20 years after it had been roundly defeated? By analogy, even though dial-up internet was still a thing 20 years ago, nobody writes full-length treatments of it today. Its limitations are clearly understood. It has been surpassed with newer technology. There’s no point to revisiting it except for the amusement of remembering something that has passed into oblivion.
So why does Howell feel the need to devote an entire book to ID even though it has suffered a “staggering defeat” and that defeat happened so long ago? Unless he can find some way to justify ID as still exercising significant influence (leaving aside that its influence might be based on its scientific merits), there would be no justification for writing a history of it in 2025.
Uneven Scholarship
The endorsements of Howell’s book praise him for extraordinary scholarship. Although I learned a few new things from the book, as an expert in and key contributor to ID and also as having experienced the history that he recounts first-hand, I found his scholarship uneven. Some things he got right, clearly demonstrating a grasp of the appropriate literature. But other things he missed, whether by not reading with sufficient depth and care, or by using imperfect sources.
I, for instance, am widely quoted in the book (from my public writings), but often Howell misses the mark about me and my work even when an email to me, or a closer examination of my writings, could have cleared up his confusion.
As an example, I was hired by Baylor University in 1999 to found an intelligent design center, the Michael Polanyi Center. By 2000, the Baylor administration shut the center down. To understand my role in the center’s demise, Howell looked to a current Baylor faculty member who wasn’t on faculty at Baylor when the center was started or shut down (a faculty member who used to support ID but no longer does).
This faculty member ascribed the center’s demise to my not knowing when to keep my mouth shut. In fact, the problem was that the Baylor administration couldn’t take the pressure of having an ID center in its midst. I explain what really happened with the center’s demise in an extensive interview I gave (search on “review committee”). All this information was readily available to Howell, and yet he didn’t put it together.
A Vice, Not a Virtue
For Howell, the hyper-skepticism that flows from ID is a vice, not a virtue. We see similar moves here against “hyper-skepticism” from good-old-fashioned skeptics who know how far to take skepticism but no further. Michael Shermer, who publishes Skeptic Magazine, is a case in point, as evident in his book Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational (2022). So too is Duke behavioral economist Dan Ariely, as in his book Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things (2023).
Good-old-fashioned skepticism knows where to draw the line. It uses skepticism as a cudgel to beat into submission people who deviate from the politically correct mainstream positions. When it comes to those positions, it embraces them wholeheartedly — such as touting the peril of anthropogenic climate change or pledging the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Note in both Shermer’s and Ariely’s titles the word “irrational.” For their brand of skepticism, the irrational is a bridge too far. But who’s to say what is rational and irrational? For them, irrationality is a term of abuse as well as a limit on their skepticism.
Howell follows in their train. Intelligent design, according to Howell’s main thesis, has sensitized the wider public to be (hyper)skeptical of scientific claims. So, even though intelligent design has, according to Howell, failed as a scientific program, it is now undermining public acceptance of other areas of science that, to his mind, deserve credence. But on what basis does Howell, or for that matter Shermer and Ariely, decide where we may legitimately exercise skepticism and where we need to rein it in?
As it is, neither Howell nor Shermer nor Ariely is an expert in climate or vaccines. So why take their word for it? Oh, because the science is settled: those who know better — the really smart people — have shown definitively what the final word is in these matters. Nonsense. When it comes to climate or vaccines or a host of other scientific matters, controversy exists among well-informed scientists who come down on different sides of these questions. So too, the experts with political clout whose policies have been enacted often prove themselves to be buffoons. The handling of Covid by our medical experts, for instance, was a farce.
Healthy Versus Selective Skepticism
When looked at with a healthy skepticism — rather than a selective skepticism — intelligent design looks much more convincing compared to Howell’s representation of it. Without making too much of credentialing (a lack of credentials doesn’t invalidate the case someone is making), it still needs to be noted that Howell is not a scientist. He holds a doctorate in religion from Duke. His assessment of intelligent design’s scientific legitimacy may therefore be questioned and at best hinges on his acceptance of the judgments of certain scientists rather than of others.
As it is, Howell’s scientific assessment of intelligent design is unconvincing. Does he really want to say that because Judge John E. Jones ruled that ID is non-scientific in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, therefore it is in fact non-scientific? That seems crazy. There are plenty of court cases from the past where the court has ruled one way (e.g., Dred Scott) that subsequently has been completely repudiated.
Howell at places in his book betrays some awareness that he has overstated the case against intelligent design. For instance, he tracked down an old post by me on the blog UncommonDescent.com dated September 30, 2005, just as the Kitzmiller trial was beginning and well before its verdict was to be rendered (it being rendered, as already noted, on December 20, 2005).
“Life After Dover”
I gave that post the title “Life After Dover.” I made this post very deliberately because I wanted to get on record that this case would not decide ID’s actual scientific status. I open the post by indicating that the case would likely result in one of three possible outcomes:
- The Dover policy, in which students are informed that the ID textbook Of Pandas and People is in their library, is upheld.
- The Dover policy is overturned but the scientific status of ID is left unchallenged.
- The Dover policy is not only overturned but ID is ruled as nonscientific.
I elaborate on these points at some length in the post, but I then close it as follows (prophetically, if I may add):
[U]nlike outcome 1., which would be a Waterloo for the other side, I don’t see outcome 3. as anything like a Waterloo for our side. It would make life in the short-term more difficult, and it certainly would not be pleasant to have to endure the gloating by the other side, but the work of ID would continue. In fact, it might continue more effectively than under outcome 1., which might convince people that ID has already won the day when in fact ID still has a long way to go in developing its scientific and intellectual program.
To sum up, we might say that outcome 1. would be a recipe for complacency, outcome 2. would encourage us to take greater care and try again, and option 3. would inspire us to work that much harder for ID’s ultimate success. I trust that Providence will bring about the outcome that will best foster ID’s ultimate success. The important thing is ID’s intellectual vitality. Whether favor or adversity is, at least for now, the best tonic for ID’s intellectual vitality remains to be seen.
I can thank Howell for reminding me that I posted this. What this post makes clear is that the ID research community was not about to let the outcome of this trial determine ID’s scientific trajectory. That trajectory has continued, and that trajectory has been all the stronger, in my view, precisely because Kitzmiller went against us. The Kitzmiller verdict caused the ID community to draw a much sharper line between ID as public policy and ID as scientific research.
One of the Weakest Parts
In particular, Kitzmiller has, in my view, led the ID community to greatly ramp up the vigor with which it has conducted ID research. One of the weakest parts of Howell’s book is his persistent refrain that after Kitzmiller, the ID community has had to resign itself to simply repeating its old arguments, as though all its original insights predated the trial.
But consider:
- Nowhere does Howell mention the increasing amount and diversity of ID research that the ID community has been doing and publishing in the peer-reviewed literature, as can we seen on the Discovery Institute webpage titled “Peer-Reviewed Articles Supporting Intelligent Design.”
- Nor does Howell seem aware of the Discovery Summer Seminars in which every summer bright undergraduate and graduate students learn the latest results in intelligent design, which they then fold into their own research. These seminars have been happening now for more than fifteen years, and among past seminar students are now professors doing ID research.
- Nor does Howell show any awareness of research conferences on ID bringing together engineers and life scientists to flesh out the ID paradigm (such as the CELS conferences — CELS = Conference on Engineering and Living Systems).
- And finally, Howell, despite extensively citing me, gives no indication of research I’ve done post 2005. In the span of 2009 to 2013, I published a number of peer-reviewed papers (principally with collaborators Bob Marks and Winston Ewert) on evolutionary informatics — see the publications page at EvoInfo.org. These were in the engineering literature (such as IEEE). Just last year, I published a peer-reviewed monograph on conservation of information.
Howell’s dismissal of intelligent design as non-science or failed science therefore rings hollow.
An Enjoyable Read, Nevertheless
Despite all these criticisms of mine, I should add that I enjoyed reading Howell’s book. It was for me a bitter-sweet trip down memory lane. Also, I had the sense when Howell was being particularly negative about ID, he typically went on to soften the blow, as though he wasn’t quite convinced that the harsh criticism he initially offered was fully justified. Unlike some ID critics, he does not come across as mean-spirited.
Howell’s analysis of some of the key interactions on the stand in the Kitzmiller case struck me as insightful. One of the key charges against ID in Kitzmiller was that ID really is just creationism relabeled. But creationism is a slippery term. Often it is identified with young-earth creationism, but at its most basic, it simply refers to the view that the world was created by a higher power.
In that sense, Ken Miller, a key witness against ID in Kitzmiller and a Roman Catholic, was a creationist. Howell perceptively notes how defense counsel (the Thomas More Law Center) could have scored big here if they had simply underscored this point with Miller and others for the plaintiffs (with a tu quoque — you say ID people are creationists but so are you).
In writing his history of ID, Howell takes as his model the well known historian of science Ron Numbers (1942–2023), especially in his writing of The Creationists, which first appeared in 1992, and then was significantly revised post Kitzmiller in 2006. I would be interested in reading a revised and updated version of Designer Science.
Cross-posted at Bill Dembski on Substack.