On August 27, I wrote to Duke’s Office of Counsel, informing them that Howell’s book has been withdrawn by its publisher because of the fabricated quote.
In C. W. Howell’s mind, intelligent design is still recovering from the Dover trial, and if there’s evidence to the contrary, he doesn’t want to see it.
One positive aspect: Howell rightly observes that some other would-be histories of ID, especially those by written by critics, are “polemical” and “activist.”
As author C. W. Howell puts it, various ID proponents have sometimes committed the thought crime of “doubting the science consensus outside evolution.”
I want to be fair to Howell, but I also want to be fair to my colleagues who have worked hard developing and publishing new ID arguments over the past 20 years.
“What happened is deeply ironic. This book was touted by the publisher as showing how ID’s skepticism of Darwinism contributed to a ‘post-truth’ society.”
