My comments
1. Frauds are Historically Commonplace.
So are mistakes and errors. But not everything is a mistake or an error, let alone a fraud, which suggests knowing misrepresentation.
2. Peer Pressure is Commonplace and is Extreme.
Yes, especially when one's career is dependent on pleasing others. Think hiring and tenure decisions.
3. Both Fame and Fortune are Core Motivations.
Ok. I'd prefer to be less cynical and think that many scientists are motivated as well by a desire to know.
4. Interpretations of Data are Carefully Controlled and Manipulated.
Sometimes. It doesn't usually rise to the level of a conspiracy though (though that does happen). It's typically more along the lines of group-think.
5. Interpretations are Forced to fit inside Previous Assumptions that were also Previously Forced to fit inside the Previous Assumptions before them.
That's implicit in how human knowledge grows. It's kind of a lift-yourself-by-your-bootstraps deal. Scientists operate within their historical context, in terms of ideas, concepts and methods of inquiry that they inherit and absorb during their educations. That's as true today as it was in the 1700s or before.
6. The interpretations of All Data must be Manipulated to never Counter Neo-Darwinism or Naturalism.
Well, methodological naturalism is part of the definition of science I guess. Seek natural explanations for natural phenomena. We can't be sure that nature (in the sense of what can be observed with the senses and inferred from that) is coextensive with reality in its entirety. I personally suspect that there's good reason to suspect that it isn't. But... if natural phenomena are all we do know and can know at this point, then it's all we have to work with. (See the remarks on raising one's self by one's bootstraps above.)
Humans learn more and more. And that growing knowledge base provides the raw materials for concocting new explanations that hopefully add to our stock of ideas and concepts. Hopefully it starts to snowball. I think that we might have seen that at the Scientific Revolution.
7. All Opposition to Neo-Darwinism and Naturalism must be Ridiculed and Silenced.
Unfortunately there's too much of that. Especially right here on Sciforums. It's probably a good idea to remember that none of our Sciforums participants are scientists themselves.
If opponents of "Neo-Darwinism" (whatever that means) and proponents of Intelligent Design want more recognition within science, perhaps they need to devote less time to sniping at those they disagree with and devote more effort to creating a productive research program of their own. Some place like the Discovery Institute could initially host it. Generate some hypotheses that succeed in explaining things that conventional biology can't explain. Test those hypotheses somehow and show that they are supported by the evidence in ways that conventional biology isn't.
Until that happens, ID isn't going to be accepted as a science. Nor should it be.
Of course even if ID succeeds in doing all that, many atheists will still reject it for ideological reasons. That's to be expected. But if ID is ever better at explaining and predicting things than conventional science, it will become a player and even its opponents will have to produce intelligent scientific responses. But full acceptance will be a long time coming and might take centuries.
I don't really expect that ID will ever rise to the challenge of actually becoming a science. I'm not sure how it can' given the nature of its ontological presuppositions.
8. It is a kind of Anti-Science within Science itself.
I agree that one of the defects of how laypeople are supposed to think about science is the way that they are expected to worship it. There's almost no interest in understanding it, its history or how it works. The philosophy of science is routinely ridiculed. So grand-and-glorious Science turns into a source of authority that's little different than the Bible is to Christian fundies.
This is exactly how a Dangerous Religion within Theism as a Whole operates!
I think that it's more prevalent among non-scientists than it is among scientists themselves. That's starting to change though. If science ever is corrupted and changes from an open minded and open ended search for knowledge into a theological style system of authority, then we might be headed for a new dark age.
Congratulations!!!
It has become the very Same Beast you all hate so much!!!
I profoundly hope that isn't true. But I fear that the day is getting closer.
