Doug Theobald managed to correct the problems in a couple of the testimony transcripts we've had difficulties with and it showed some previously mangled text that is quite fascinating. There is this fascinating bit from the Day 12 PM transcript of Behe's cross-examination. The plaintiff's attorney questioned Behe about the testability of his claims about irreducibly complex systems. Behe has claimed that his IC claims are testable, all one has to do is show a step-by-step explanation of the development of those systems he deems to be IC. The attorney wondered why, if his ideas are testable, he hadn't gone about trying to test them:
Q: And you haven't undertaken to try and figure those out?
A: I am not confident that the immune system arose through Darwinian processes, and so I do not think that such a study would be fruitful.
Q: It would be a waste of time?
A: It would not be fruitful.
So here he is arguing that he knows how to test his claims, but it's up to other people to do it for him. And a few minutes later in his testimony:
Q: And you also propose tests such as the one we say in "Reply to My Critics" about how those Darwinians could test your proposition?
A: Yes.
Q: But you don't do those tests?
A: Well, I think someone who thought an idea was incorrect such as intelligent design would be motivated to try to falsify that, and certainly there have been several people who have tried to do exactly that, and I myself would prefer to spend time in what I would consider to be more fruitful endeavors.
Apparently, Dr. Behe's definition of "fruitful" means proposing more ideas for others to test rather than testing his own ideas, as scientists generally do. He himself is motivated to falsify evolution, at least as a thoroughly naturalistic theory, so he makes claims about. He says those claims are testable, but he refuses to actually test them. So if you think an idea is wrong, you don't have to test it. And if you think an idea is correct, it's up to others to test it. I think I'm losing track of which shell the pea is under in this little game.
There's also a hilarious bit of sidebar testimony at the end of this transcript, starting on page 105, where the judge and the attorneys fo both sides discuss the Discovery Institute brief that the judge struck out of the case. Both the judge and the attorneys for both sides absolutely hammered the DI for their filiing of that brief. At one point the judge said that the DI's attorney would "have his head handed to him" in court over it, and when discussing the fact that the DI's attorneys kept asking the judge's assistant how to do things (and still ended up filing it incorrectly) the judge said, "We're not running a law school here." Ouch. That's gonna leave a mark.
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Please do not surmise that these attorneys for DI represent the quality of the legal minds out here in Washington. Although we do have some history of very strange briefs being filed in "politicized cases" (the gubenatorial challenge alone was fairly mind-boggling) many of our legal minds are of the highest quality.
Well, I'd give Behe a benefit of the doubt on this one. Einstein in his 1915 paper on General Relativity proposed several tests for the theory. He did not carry them out himself--they were carried out by others.
The odd thing regarding Behe's IC is that nobody seems to be interested in carrying out his tests. I wonder why.
/sarcasm
Thing is, a lot of Einstein's proposed tests weren't tests HE could practically carry out - but others could.
IIRC, the big one was that he said "If you watch the next solar eclipse, you should see this star." - when it was going to be "behind" the sun.
That's a test that's EASY to carry out ... if you're in the right location.
Michael "Sotek" Ralston at November 1, 2005 09:51
That was one of the tests that Einstein proposed but did not himself carry out.
The odd thing about Behe is that he apparently has not actually proposed any tests. I would acknowedge that, as he is a biochemist (or something like that) he should be in a position to carry out the tests himself. I doubt that, for any such tests, he would have to go to any remote locations to gather the data, as was the necessary with the eclipse test of Einstein's theory.
Right, Raj. Einstein's test involving the eclipse was one he proposed, and that for people who were going to be in the right place anyway, was easy to carry out - but for him, it wouldn't've been.
So he didn't carry it out - but the effort he was asking someone ELSE to put in was rather lower than Behe is.
Plus, of course, by then, Einstein already HAD some credibility.
More to the point, Einstein was a patent clerk. His job was to register patents. Behe is a molecular biologist. His job is to make and test predictions.
Ginger, Einstein was a patent clerk when he published the five papers in 1905. He subsequently left the Swiss patent office and by the time he published the paper on general relativity in 1915 he was a professor at the University of Berlin.
You are correct, though. Behe as a biochemist should be in a position to test his theses--whatever they are.
There's a very good reason that Behe does not have to test his hypothesis--it might be wrong. If he doesn't test it, then maybe, if he makes a big, tall wish, it might be true.