Our old pal Kazmer Ujvarosy of the American Chronicle has a long and boring rant against the whole system of peer review. There’s nothing really new in it; we know peer review is flawed, and practically every scientist can give you gripes about cronyism and bad reviewers and yadda yadda yadda, but at the same time, no system is ever going to be perfect, and we work within the bounds of what is effective. Ujvarosy, of course, is peeved because creationism doesn’t get any respect in the science journals. Changes to the policies of review, however, won’t change the fact that Intelligent Design creationism is baloney.

What I find interesting in his cranky essay, though, is that he reveals two things that have emerged before, but that the creationists deny.

In the final analysis if the scientific community is to remain productive intellectually, a protective system must be provided for the creative minority, however erratic or zany their ideas may seem to the incomparably zanier Darwinists. A repressive evolutionist environment, forced upon the community of scientists by a secular and aggressive Darwinist priesthood, stymies creativity and literally fossilizes thought. Science writers contribute to this unhealthy state of affairs by tending to accept wholesale anything these quacks — no matter what credentials they have — spoon-feed them in the name of science.

“a protective system must be provided for the creative minority”…what he’s asking for is a kind of special-case protectionism where non-science is given a slot in the science publication process. Like Behe admitting that one of ID’s goals is to change the very definition of science to allow the supernatural in, that’s what Ujvarosy is also asking for — special treatment. A redefinition of peer-review that will remove the normal (albeit sometimes poorly implemented) quality control. A system that allows authors to replace the usual demand for rigor with his idea of being “creative” (read: “insane”).

Here’s another, uh, revelation:

In any case the theory of creation positing that our universe has a seed origin, which seed is Jesus Christ, is so heretical in scientific circles that no editor conditioned to the doctrine of Darwinian evolution from a simple beginning would touch it.

That’s what we need! A system for evaluating scientific work that gives special privileges to Christians!

Warren Chisum, the Texas legislator who peddled an anti-evolution memo, has, well, ummm, finally read what he was trying to legislate.

On Tuesday, the Pampa Republican distributed a memo written by Georgia GOP Rep. Ben Bridges to Texas House members’ mailboxes. The memo advocated that schools stop teaching evolution and contained links to a Web site that warns of international Jewish conspiracies. It also directed readers to the group that created the Web site – the Atlanta-area Fair Education Foundation.

Mr. Chisum said he hadn’t looked at the Web site and didn’t realize that he was distributing that type of material. He expressed chagrin that he didn’t vet the material more carefully.

He said he believes creation and evolution should both be taught in schools, and he separated himself from what he called "goofy stuff" on the Web site.

There was "non-goofy stuff" at Fixed Earth? He can’t simultaneously separate himself from the "goofy stuff" and be advocating goofy creationism.

It adds another interesting data point to those at Dover and Kansas: the people on the political side who are pushing the various flavors of creationism on schools rarely seem to have actually read the material they say is so important for school kids to know.