The New Phrase for Failure: Intelligent Design(TM)

Posted 21 December 2006 by Wesley R. Elsberry

DMPC Announces the 2006 Winners of the Disease Management Intelligent Design Awards(TM) Hat tip to Glenn Branch on this. Here is an organization that knows how to best put the shoddy reputation of the term "intelligent design" to good use:

The Disease Management Purchasing Consortium (DMPC), the most comprehensive source of information about the disease management industry, announced today the winners of the "2006 Disease Management (DM) Intelligent Design Awards," given annually to those contributions which most set back the evolution of the disease management and wellness fields. Just as engineers say that more is learned from a single bridge which collapses than from 100 which stay up, there are serious lessons to be learned from these often-humorous failures.

Intelligent Design(TM) as a phrase synonymous with failure... seems apt to me.

9 Comments

David B. Benson · 21 December 2006

The IDiots haven't even managed to publish in the Journal of Irreproducible Results...

bjm · 21 December 2006

Or the 'Journal of We Don't Need Your Pathetic Level of Detail!'.

mpd · 24 December 2006

Hey ! Intelligent Design is not turning out to be a failure. It has made unbelievable strides to raise the awareness that Darwinism is on shaky grounds ! Not only so, once the discussion is on even terms, the truth will become clear. That is, Darwinism, or Evolution if you prefer, is as much a religion as any other view of origins. The real 'head to head' on origins is merely side stepped by calling Evolution a "theory" or by even calling it "science". Darwinism is not science - it is religion clothed as science and is as much an exercise in faith in something unobservable as ID is.

bjm · 24 December 2006

Intelligent Design is not turning out to be a failure

You're right - it has ALWAYS been a failure.

Ron Okimoto · 27 December 2006

Maybe the Darwin Awards people could start an "Intelligent Design" category for their "honorable mentions" that didn't quite take themselves out of the gene pool?

It could also be given to guys that had some success through cheating, countering selective pressure and messing it up for the noncheaters. Like Jack Salmon spawning early.

ben · 27 December 2006

Intelligent Design is not turning out to be a failure. It has made unbelievable strides to raise the awareness that Darwinism is on shaky grounds !

Thereby aspiring to enter the lofty membership of those vibrant scientific disciplines that gained acceptance solely through making fallacious and unsupported arguments about the inadequacies of other scientific disciplines, without ever doing a scrap of actual science or even really pretending to. I should be signed to a $5MM contract to be wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, because the one they have, Terrell Owens, dropped 3 passes Monday. What? You say I'm too old, too slow, and too weak to play pro football? But the other guy is hurt and can't get the job done! Why shouldn't I get a chance? What? You say I can't catch the ball? But the other guy is a poor team player! Put me in! You're unfairly excluding me from acceptance as a elite football player when clearly, the one you have isn't perfect! It's an athleticist conspiracy! I'll just have to go play pro football in a secret underground stadium, and put out press releases telling the world I caught 11 passes for 164 yards and three touchdowns and should be therefore named the Super Bowl MVP.

Raging Bee · 27 December 2006

IDers' responses, like mpd's, are getting so lame they're starting to sound like parodies of themselves. Are they even serious anymore? Come to think of it, were they EVER serious?

Popper's Ghost · 27 December 2006

These IDiots always say that once the research is done, they will be proved right. The obvious question is, how do they know? How does the outcome precede the work that produces the outcome? The obvious answer is, ID isn't science and IDiots aren't scientists.

Anton Mates · 27 December 2006

Hey ! Intelligent Design is not turning out to be a failure. It has made unbelievable strides to raise the awareness that Darwinism is on shaky grounds !
— mpd

"Unbelievable" is exactly the word.