On November 13th at 8pm NOVA will be airing a program called Judgment Day, a documentary about the Kitzmiller vs Dover intelligent design trial of 2005. By all accounts it sounds like it is going to be an excellent program, so I recommend watching it (don’t forget to set the TIVO).

I am glad to see that PBS is taking a strong pro-science stance with this program. Their website also provides important resources – such as a discussion of what science is and why ID is not science, and it links to evidence for transitional forms in the fossil record.

Good for the producers of NOVA for not falling into the trap of a misguided attempt at “balance.” In science not all sides are equal – they are not just differences of opinion or values. In science some answers are better than others. In the case of evolution vs all forms of evolution denial (such as creationism/ID), there is an enormous asymmetry. Evolution is a robust rigorous science, and creationism/ID is a pack of distortions of fact, cherry picking of data, logical fallacies, and very sloppy thinking.

That is exactly why ID proponents were soundly spanked in the Dover trial. In a court of law, where there are rules of evidence and professionals who at least understand careful and thorough analysis, ID came up looking exactly like the jumble of nonsense that it is. Even a conservative and religious judge could see that.

The propaganda spin doctors over at the Discover Institute are already trashing the show, so you know it’s going to be good. Robert Crowther (one of the worst over there, and he has a lot of competition) claims that because PBS is anti-ID they are biased. This is like saying that peer-reviewed journals are biased against poor research or bad writing, or that the FDA is biased against unsafe or ineffective drugs.

Being against anti-science or bad science is not a bias – it is a responsible conclusion that any self-respecting scientist should come to. ID is not science, it has no research program, it cannot be tested because its proponents cannot state a falsifiable hypothesis, their arguments are loaded with logical fallacies, and they are not intellectually honest in admitting their mistakes or adjusting to the evidence as it comes in.

ID is intellectually dead – that is why ID proponents are constantly complaining about the social aspects of science and their rejection by the scientific community. Their soon to be released movie, Expelled, is just more whining about their being excluded by legitimate scientific standards (again misrepresenting standards as bias). Their nauseating blog is not about scientific evidence, it’s mostly just complaining about scientists and the culture of science.

The ID community is following the golden rule of crankery – when you have no logic or evidence on your side – go after scientists and the institutions of science.

They are especially galled by Judgment Day, not because of its quality or because it is biased, but because it represents a well-deserved victory lap for the scientists and educators who trounced the ID buffoons in Dover. Fighting the constant fight against anti-science in our culture, it’s nice to have the occasional victory celebration. I would prefer dancing on the grave of ID, but as we all know nonsense and pseudoscience are unsinkable rubber ducks, so I’ll be content with the victory lap, and the intelligent design losers can eat crow.