That contradicts what you wrote: "Evidence is an interpretation of data." That was the incoherent statement I was correcting.

"In fact, researchers often use data obtained by other researchers and use it to support other hypotheses."

Yes, but real researchers then obtain new data to test those hypotheses. No ID advocate has done (and I predict that none will do) that.

"Publishing may be the first step in getting a hypothesis accepted,…"

Then why did you write, "…publishing is just the last step in a long line of requirements," Krauze? And why is "getting a hypothesis accepted" a goal?

You've really dropped the mask on this one. Real scientists use testing of hypotheses to look for the truth; we have few qualms about publishing data that falsify our hypotheses. The goal of pseudoscientists is to get their notions accepted without making them fit existing data and without publishing new data. Which describes your MO?

"…but to publish something, you first need data."

To publish something in the primary scientific literature, yes.

"Getting that is itself a long process, during which you need the cooperation of others to help you along."

Wrong. Getting data often happens very quickly. You're also glossing over the need to make a hypothesis fit the extant data, a requirement that your buddy Mike Gene ignored in his post about Tetrahymena. He goes on about his hypothesis as a guide to research, when in fact, the database put on the Web by the authors of the paper he cited is a portal to looking at the existing data, which Mike didn't bother with.

"BTW, do you think a scientist who sees intelligent design as dangerous nonsense might let this perception affect his or her evaluation of it?"

My view of ID as nonsense is based on my evaluation of it, so your question is incoherent. ID proponents don't bother to look at extant data before pretending that they have viable hypotheses (and even "theories," a real joke); they don't see hypotheses as tools; their goal is not truth, but getting others to accept their notions (i.e., your clumsy admission here); and they have no interest in working to acquire any new data.

Given those characteristics, how could ID be anything but nonsense?

"Interpretation is separated from data in the most basic template for the primary literature (i.e., a document that has yet to be produced by a single ID advocate): there are separate sections usually titled "Results" and "Discussion.""

Of course data and its interpretation is separated; they aren't the same thing. In fact, researchers often use data obtained by other researchers and use it to support other hypotheses. For example, a lack of transitional fossils used to be taken as evidence of an incomplete fossil record. After Gould and Elredge proposed punctuated equilibrium, the same data became evidence of fast speciation events.

Krauze: "Conversely, someone like Dawkins considers anecdotes sufficient evidence to claim that a Catholic upbringing is a form of child abuse."

Smokey: "Here, you're talking about something totally different: whether a volume of evidence was sufficient to reach a conclusion."

No, I'm talking about the type of evidence. Earlier, Daniel lectured us that evidence needs to be "peer-reviewed, reproducible, and corroborated". A letter with a fan's childhood experiences is neither.

"But publishing new data (not merely publishing) is the FIRST step. You've got it all wrong."

Publishing may be the first step in getting a hypothesis accepted, but to publish something, you first need data. Getting that is itself a long process, during which you need the cooperation of others to help you along.

BTW, do you think a scientist who sees intelligent design as dangerous nonsense might let this perception affect his or her evaluation of it?

KC"“ Just so I'm straight on what you consider data (and, especially, what you consider sufficient data), you'd consider a list such as that"“acknowledging, ofcourse, that it is partial, but assuming it is representitive"“ enough to justify Darwin's claims and thesis in his book?

Of course not, as any survey of the data drawn from the published (and unpublished) work of his own and others in The Origin of Species will reveal.

And why would you want to use Darwin as an analogy, when temporally, Prusiner is much better? Moreover, don't you believe that Darwin was wrong? Why wouldn't you prefer an analogy in which you were convinced that the insurgent was correct?

Bradford asked:
"Why not a gubbermint grant?"

The government (NIH and NSF) has higher standards. They usually require preliminary data.

You see, even for real scientists starting out, their acquisition of the needed preliminary data is funded by the institution's (usually a university) startup package. Even then, an assistant professor's first grant usually comes from a private source. Mine came from the American Heart Association, for example. It then took nearly a year before I got an NIH grant.

Aren't there many Christianist universities that could play this startup role, in addition to the DI? What's preventing the DI from putting up a real physical institute?

Makes me wonder how many data-filled articles Darwin published "long before" he published his book.

A partial list:

Darwin, Charles, The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs. Being the First Part of the Geology of the Voyage of the 'Beagle.' London, Smith, Elder & Co., 1842.

Darwin, Charles, A Monograph of the Fossil Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes of Great Britain. London, Palaeontographical Society, 1851

Darwin, Charles, A Monograph of the Sub-class Cirripedia, with Figures of all the Species. The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes. London, Ray Society, 1851.

Darwin, Charles, A Monograph on the Fossil Balanidæ and Verrucidæ of Great Britain. London, Palaeontographical Society, 1854.

Scientists without an inordinate attachment to Darwinian evolution (and there are many, though this fact is not widely advertised) will be only too happy to shift their allegiance if they think that intelligent design is where the interesting problems in biology lie.

Just like any other idea? I don't agree. For example, I doubt that every new idea is perceived as a subversive plot of the Religious Right.

That is an extra cross any legitimate IDist researchers have to bear, but they can thank the good people at the DI and others who were primarily interested in using ID to advance their political, religious and cultural agendas. That also doesn't change the fact that all radical new scientific hypotheses face an uphill battle to gain acceptance.

What I am doing is pointing out some facts about the scientific community; that the rhetoric about ID critics just waiting to accept intelligent design, if only ID supporters would present some evidence, is just that: Rhetoric.

So what? If you present sufficient evidence, it will eventually be accepted, even if, as you hypothesize, the present generation of scientists never do. Or are you trying to claim there is already substantial evidence of intelligent design that scientists are just too blind to see, even though there isn't even a theory of ID yet?