Detecting Design in the Natural Sciences

Detecting Design in the Natural Sciences

By William A. Dembski



How a designer gets from thought to thing is, at least in broad strokes, straightforward: (1) A designer conceives a purpose. (2) To accomplish that purpose, the designer forms a plan. (3) To execute the plan, the designer specifies building materials and assembly instructions. (4) Finally, the designer or some surrogate applies the assembly instructions to the building materials.



What emerges is a designed object, and the designer is successful to the degree that the object fulfills the designer's purpose. In the case of human designers, this four-part design process is uncontroversial. Baking a cake, driving a car, embezzling funds, and building a super*computer each presuppose it. Not only do we repeatedly engage in this four-part design process, but we have witnessed other people engage in it countless times. Given a sufficiently detailed causal history, we are able to trace this process from start to finish.



But suppose a detailed causal history is lacking and we are not able to trace the design process. Suppose instead that all we have is an object, and we must decide whether it emerged from such a design process. In that case, how do we decide whether the object is in fact designed? If the object in question is sufficiently like other objects that we know were designed, then there may be no difficulty inferring design. For instance, if we find a scrap of paper with writing on it, we infer a human author even if we know nothing about the paper's causal history. We are all familiar with humans writing on scraps of paper, and there is no reason to suppose that this scrap of paper requires a different type of causal story.



Nevertheless, when it comes to living things, the biological community holds that a very different type of causal story is required. To be sure, the biological community admits that biological systems appear to be designed. For instance, Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins writes, "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." Likewise, Nobel laureate Francis Crick writes, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved."



The term "design" is everywhere in the biological literature. Even so, its use is carefully regulated. According to the biological community, the appearance of design in biology is misleading. This is not to deny that biology is filled with marvelous contrivances. Biologists readily admit as much. Yet as far as the biological community is concerned, living things are not the result of the four-part design process described here.



But how does the biological community know that living things are only apparently and not actually designed? The exclusion of design from biology certainly contrasts with ordinary life where we require three primary modes of explanation: necessity, chance, and design. Nevertheless, in the natural sciences one of these modes of explanation is considered superfluous, namely, design. From the perspective of the natural sciences, design, as the action of an intelligent agent, is not a fundamental creative force in nature. Rather, blind natural causes, characterized by chance and necessity and ruled by unbroken laws, are thought sufficient to do all nature's creating.



Darwin's theory is a case in point. According to Darwinist Francisco Ayala, "The functional design of organisms and their features would therefore seem to argue for the existence of a designer. It was Darwin's greatest accomplishment to show that the directive organization of living beings can be explained as the result of a natural process, natural selection, without any need to resort to a Creator or other external agent. The origin and adaptation of organisms in their profusion and wondrous variations were thus brought into the realm of science."



Is it really the case, however, that the directive organization of living beings can be explained without recourse to a designer? And would employing a designer in biological explanations necessarily take us out of the realm of science? The answer to both questions is No.



What has kept design outside the natural sciences since Darwin published his Origin of Species 140 years ago is the absence of precise methods for distinguishing intelligently caused objects from unintelligently caused ones. For design to be a fruitful scientific concept, scientists have to be sure that they can reliably determine whether something is designed. Johannes Kepler thought the craters on the moon were intelligently designed by moon dwellers. We now know that the craters were formed by blind natural forces.



It is this fear of falsely attributing something to design only to have it overturned later that has prevented design from entering the natural sciences. With precise methods for discriminating intelligently from unintelligently caused objects, it is now possible to formulate a theory of intelligent design that successfully avoids Kepler's mistake and reliably locates design in biological systems.



The theory of intelligent design is a theory of biological origins and development. Its fundamental claim is that intelligent causes are indispensable for explaining the complex, information-rich structures of biology, and that these causes are empirically detectable. To say intelligent causes are empirically detectable is to say there exist well-defined methods that, on the basis of observational features of the world, are capable of reliably distinguishing intelligent causes from undirected natural causes.



Many special sciences have already developed such methods for drawing this distinction -- notably forensic science, cryptography, archeology, random number generation, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Whenever these methods detect intelligent causation, the underlying entity they uncover is a type of information known alternately as specified complexity or complex specified information.



For instance, how did the radio astronomers in the movie Contact (a movie starring Jodie Foster and based on a novel by Carl Sagan) infer the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence in the radio signals they monitored from space? The researchers ran signals through computers that were programmed to recognize many preset patterns. These patterns act as a sieve. Signals that do not match any of the patterns pass through the sieve and are classified as random.



After years of receiving apparently meaningless random signals, the Contact researchers discover a pattern of beats and pauses that corresponds to the sequence of all the prime numbers between 2 and 101. (Prime numbers are numbers divisible only by themselves and by one.) When a sequence begins with two beats, then a pause, three beats, then a pause ... and continues all the way to 101 beats, researchers must infer the presence of an extraterrestrial intelligence.



Why? There is nothing in the laws of physics that requires radio signals to take one form or another. The sequence is therefore contingent rather than necessary. Also, it is a long sequence and therefore complex. Note that if the sequence lacked complexity, it could easily have happened by chance. Finally, it was not just complex but also exhibited an independently given pattern or specification (it was not just any old sequence of numbers but a mathematically significant one -- the prime numbers).



To summarize, an event exhibits specified complexity if it is contingent and therefore not necessary; if it is complex and therefore not easily repeatable by chance; and if it is specified in the sense of exhibiting an independently given pattern. Note that complexity in the sense of improbability is not sufficient to eliminate chance -- flip a coin long enough and you will witness a highly complex or improbable event. Even so, you will have no reason not to attribute it to chance.



The important thing about specifications is that they be objectively given and not just imposed on events after the fact. For instance, if an archer fires arrows into a wall and then paints bull's-eyes around the arrows, the archer impose a pattern after the fact. On the other hand, if the targets are set up in advance (specified), and then the archer hits them accurately, we know it was by design.



The combination of complexity and specification convincingly pointed the radio astronomers in the movie Contact to an extraterrestrial intelligence. Specified complexity is the characteristic trademark or signature of intelligence. Specified complexity is a reliable empirical marker of intelligence in the same way that fingerprints are a reliable empirical marker of a person's presence (for the theoretical justification see my book No Free Lunch, 2002).



Only intelligent causation gives rise to specified complexity. It follows that specified complexity lies beyond the capacity of blind natural causes to generate it. This is not to say that naturally occurring systems cannot exhibit specified complexity or that natural processes cannot serve as a conduit for specified complexity. Naturally occurring systems can exhibit specified complexity and nature operating without intelligent direction can take preexisting specified complexity and shuffle it around. But that is not the point. The point is whether nature (conceived as a closed system of blind, unbroken natural causes) can generate specified complexity in the sense of originating it when previously there was none.



To see what is at stake, consider a Dürer woodcut. It arose by mechanically impressing an inked woodblock on paper. The Dürer woodcut exhibits specified complexity. But the mechanical application of ink to paper via a woodblock does not account for that specified complexity in the woodcut. The specified complexity in the woodcut must be referred back to the specified complexity in the woodblock which in turn must be referred back to the designing activity of Dürer himself (in this case deliberately chiseling the woodblock). Specified complexity's causal chains end not with nature but with a designing intelligence.



When properly formulated, the theory of intelligent design is a theory of information. Within such a theory, complex specified information (or specified complexity) becomes a reliable indicator of intelligent causation as well as a proper object for scientific investigation. The theory of intelligent design thereby becomes a theory for detecting and measuring information, explaining its origin, and tracing its flow. The theory of intelligent design therefore does not study intelligent causes per se but the informational pathways induced by intelligent causes. As a result, the theory of intelligent design presupposes neither a creator nor miracles. The theory of intelligent design is theologically minimalist. It detects intelligence without speculating about the nature of the intelligence.



Biochemist Michael Behe (Darwin's Black Box, 1996) connects specified complexity to biological design. Behe defines a system as irreducibly complex if it consists of several interrelated parts so that removing even one part completely destroys the system's function. For Behe, irreducible complexity is a sure indicator of design. One irreducibly complex biochemical system that Behe considers is the bacterial flagellum. The flagellum is an acid-powered rotary motor with a whip-like tail that spins at 20,000 rpm and whose rotating motion enables a bacterium to navigate through its watery environment.



Behe shows that the intricate machinery in this molecular motor -- including a rotor, a stator, O-rings, bushings, and a drive shaft -- requires the coordinated interaction of at least thirty complex proteins and that the absence of any one of these proteins would result in the complete loss of motor function. Behe argues that the Darwinian mechanism is in principle incapable of generating such irreducibly complex systems. It can be shown that Behe's notion of irreducible complexity is a special case of specified complexity and that systems like the bacterial flagellum exhibit specified complexity and are therefore designed.



In applying the test of specified complexity to biological organisms, design theorists focus on identifiable systems -- such as individual enzymes, molecular machines, and the like -- that exhibit a clear function and for which complexity can be reasonably assessed. Of course, once specified complexity is exhibited by some part of an organism, then any design attributable to that part carries over to the whole organism. It is not necessary to demonstrate that every aspect of the whole organism is the result of design. Some aspects will be the result of chance or necessity.



Design has had a turbulent intellectual history. The chief difficulty with design to date has consisted in discovering a conceptually powerful formulation of it that will fruitfully advance science. It is the empirical detectability of intelligent causes that promises to make the theory of intelligent design a full-fledged scientific theory and distinguishes it from the design arguments of philosophers and theologians, or what has traditionally been called "natural theology."



The world contains events, objects, and structures that exhaust the explanatory resources of undirected natural causes and that can be adequately explained only by recourse to intelligent causes. The theory of intelligent design demonstrates this rigorously. It thus takes a long-standing philosophical intuition and transforms it into a scientific research program.

This is the best argument for ID I have seen yet, though I'm sure there are better.

Your source here is clearly a wordsmith. However, his entire essay and rebuttal neglects facts for pure conjecture.


The process breaks down as it attempts to summarize the point in, "Bam! It happened." It completely neglects the fact, and indeed thesis, that competitive forces and ecosystems lead to more advanced structures and, by that, more advanced organisms.


I am starting to get annoyed at all of this, as it shows a gross lack of understanding for the issue at play. Is it not crystal clear that the process is hierarchial, building from the ground up in an additive way that is both clever and contrived, not by myopic "design," but instead by competition? That the forces at play you keep railing against and the ones you preach and attempt to attribute to God are one and the same?


Okay. So this debate never ends, and lo be I to even try. But why, for the sake of all things you find holy, must you continue showing us such ignorance? Intelligent design is not a scientific theory. It does not belong anywhere near science, in fact.

No, a paper on philosophy will not convince anyone science is flawed. The only merit it holds is in filling the cracks of what observation has told us. It will not convince anyone observation is wrong. The paper may as well posit the sky is not blue, but instead a deep pink, yet we are all too naive to see it.

And thus, it is irrelevant, because once again, intelligent design is not a science! It is a philosophy. Science and philosophy need not be mutually exclusive.


So why does this even continue? What are you even trying to prove? Or can I just pass that off as an "interesting link" and move on?



Actually, bed sounds about right... hence the weird rant on my part.

The author never referred to God or suggested it just happened. He made excellent points that show there are ways to detect design. Feel free to show how his reasoning is flawed. But try to avoid the emotional input, because it's not conducive to the discussion.

I can head off just about any "intelligent design" argument with the simple rebuttal of pointing out the human pain system, the human eyeball compared to that of the octopus... for that matter, the male scrotum...

If there's a designer, it's not so intelligent.

I had hoped I would never see the name 'Behe' again.

One compelling argument against intelligent design are the fairly serious design flaws in organisms, which relate to the way they have developed over the aeons of prehistory.

Someone pointed out the absurdity of having the bronchii branching from the oesophagus. This kills some people, and sometimes gives others a very nasty time. There is the strange pit near the coccyx which some people have, which gives rise to pilonoidal cysts. There is no reason for it, unless you suppose it is the remnant of a tail once possessed by our ancestors. There is the appendix, which again kills many, and apparently has no real function.

There is the issue of the nerve connections to the retina, which take place at the *front* rather than the back. Therefore we have a blind spot, and the brain has to compensate for this.

I am pretty ignorant about human biology, but someone who was not would I am sure be able to provide a substantial list of design flaws that, were we a product of intelligent design, could be relatively easily corrected.

Pain is a good thing, it warns us of danger. Imagine no pain, you could be burned to death before noticing you are on fire. The eye works perfectly for the application. Excellent engineering. The male reproductive system is placed perfectly to line up with the female. It's protected from excess heat, as the sperm must be kept cooler than the body.

Amazing body we have, as does all life.

That argument is flawed. If we find a designed object that isn't perfect in design, does that mean it wasn't designed?

Argument: Object has design flaws, hence it couldn't have been designed.

Your trying to suggest the designer must either be God, and therefore be perfect, or there can be no designer at all. That's a flawed logic in this discussion.

However, if you would like to list the flaws in design, I'd be happy to see how tiny it is, if one flaw could even be found.

This is, in fact, the hub of the question - how can one know for sure if there was intelligence involved in a process?


The only trouble with irreducible complexity is that highly complex, irreducible systems can come to exist readily in a process called 'emergent behaviour'.

A simple example of emergent behaviour is demonstrated by the computer experiment called 'life': http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Life.html

Add the pressure of natural selection, and subsequent generations of emergent systems evolve.

This is why 'irreducibly complex' bacteria don't immediately win biologists over to ID. With billions of bacteria in just one petri dish able to self-replicate in hours, highly complex, successful accidents are almost assured over millions of years on an earth chock full of bacteria.

So how do we distinguish between intelligent design and emergent systems which came about naturally?



One thing that would sell me on it, would be finding the entire Torah encrypted as text in our DNA (or other text, you pick - I just hope it wouldn't be Joseph Heller's 'Catch 22').

Or merely find some proof that the universe was only, say, 10,000 years old, over which time, natural evolution obviously wouldn't have a chance to produce the complexity we see.



But I would say that yes, looking for evidence of intelligence can be scientific, much like forensics can be a scientific pursuit. At some level of proof, even Chip and Ulrika would buy in. Though it might take seeing the entire works of Kurt Vonnegut codified into our DNA to do it.

It comes down to: what would we accept as undeniable proof of design? Right now, however, there seems to be a lot of evidence for 'bad design' or merely natural evolution over a long time, so the proof would have to be quite convincing.

I won't go into detail, but I think that both males and females might mildly disagree about the 'perfection' of certain kinds of access.

Except... for the vast majority of human existance, that pain was largely things we could do nothing about; is it intelligent to disable a person over a toothache, or an ulcer, or any one of a number of internal pains we couldn't even suppress until asprin?




Except an octopus eye is "designed" in a fashion that works equally well but less stupidly. So did humanity get a sloppy prototype from the "intelligent" designer?



Why must the sperm be kept cooler than the body? Why must the scrotum be a point that can so easily disable a male?

Quit trying for Chewbacca defense, Kevn. I don't rely on the designer being a perfect God - some of these are things that a six year old can pick up on.

From wikipedia I post this on emergence, and how it should be applied. And the fact it's very controversal, and not universally accepted even by those who accept macro-evolution.

"For a phenomenon to be termed emergent it should generally be unpredictable from a lower level description. At the very lowest level, the phenomenon usually does not exist at all or exists only in trace amounts: it is irreducible. Thus, a straightforward phenomenon such as the probability of finding a raisin in a slice of cake growing with the portion-size does not generally require a theory of emergence to explain. It may, however, be profitable to consider the "emergence" of the texture of the cake as a relatively complex result of the baking process and the mixture of ingredients.

Like intelligence in AI, or agents in DAI, it is a central concept in complex systems yet is hard to define and very controversial. There is no scientific concensus about what weak and strong forms of emergence are, or about how much emergence should be relied upon as an explanation in general. It seems impossible to unambiguously decide whether a phenomenon should be considered emergent.

Further, "emergent" is not always a deeply explanatory label even when it is agreed on: the more complex the phenomenon is, the more intricated are the underlying processes, and the less effective the word emergence is alone. In fact, calling a phenomenon emergent is sometimes used in lieu of a more meaningful explanation. "

Yes - absolutely agree - it is not formal science. It kind of relies on the 'disbelief of an observer' - i.e. you need someone sufficiently unable to see that the emergent behaviour is, in fact, obvious if you understood the process well enough.

Like the texture of a cake after baking - if you really understood the molecular transformations, it would be obvious and not emergent behaviour 'to you'.

The point is that highly complex, 'non-obvious to humans' systems arise all the time in nature - and thus being able to identify them is rather important. Like craters on the moon, for instance. No theory of ID will be able to work, unless it can identify what is not ID and make the distinction.

Intelligent design is very real, the only problem is that the untrained, mystified minds who tend to back it often connote it with imaginary aliens or antropomorphic deities, and fail to realize what they propose is already part of evolutionary theory.
The universe as a whole is an intelligent process. Evolution is an intelligent process. The laws of physics, chemistry and biology constitute an intelligence simultaneously natural and artificial. Simple logic rules can beget extraordinarily complex processes. The four fundamental forces of nature (weak, strong, electromagnetic and gravitational) dictate how matter behaves and interacts, and are indeed responsible for much of the world as we see it.
A planet is designed with perfect sphericity insofar as you are willing to accept that "design" means gravity attracts blocks of matter to each other, and entropy guides it to the most energy-efficient shape, which is that of a sphere.
If we accept that an intelligent entity or process is something that can generate complexity from randomness, there is no real difference from the random neural interactions in our brain and random matter interactions in the universe. Randomness IS intelligence, for a perfectly deterministic process is incapable of generating anything new.

A tooth ache can be deadly without treatment. Pain is a warning to the brain that there is danger, and immediate action is required.

The human eye works perfectly. The fact our brain changes the image without our effort is evidence of design.

Sperm must be cooler to survive. If the sperm was kept in the body it would die and humanity would not continue.

"The testes lie outside the abdominal cavity of the male within the scrotum. They begin their development in the abdominal cavity but descent into the scrotal sacs during the last 2 months of fetal development. This is required for the production of sperm because internal body temperatures are too high to produce viable sperm." Wikipedia

after reading through (most) of this thread, i sat here pondering what evidences have i not yet thought of.. for either case.

so, i came up with this.. if evolution were the only responsible party for our development and by definition it adapts life to better standards through mutations that would benefit any organism in question, then would this not call evolution into question?

for example, the whole "our eyes are of poor design" thing, or ""men's scrotums have developed into something more vulnerable than need be", or "we have unnecessary pieces that are problematic to our health".. in any of these cases, wouldn't evolution, as per its' arguumented case, then mutate these things into more successful versions?

since the dawn of homo sapien we have seen no change, nothing has evolved from these flawed genetics into better eyes, scrotums, or extra bits. from this point of view, does it not call into question the validity of evolution as sole proprieter of genetic development?

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granted, we need to keep in mind that we have archealogical evidence of evolutionary processes at work throughout the history of the Earth. we've seen the development of hooves on animals that previously had none.

there is more recent proof that is observable in fairly short amounts of time, of moths changing color to suit their environment.. of the ability of some amphibians to change sex when faced with a single sex environment. did some intelligent designer come down and say "BAM! have a sex change, why don't you?"? nope.. it just.. happened.

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as has been argued before, perhaps both are responsible. perhaps the ingredients for life already existed here, or maybe they were planted. maybe some sort of "designer" came along and gave things a push in the right direction and perhaps has done so periodically throughout our history.

it seems to me the most plausible explanation of our world, biologically speaking, is that life on Earth has been the product of a slightly haphazard combination of the two.

Yup, and William Paley made some splendid insights too given that he had the deep understanding of the natural sciences that the well educated did in 1800. Put another way: nice post of really tired, false arguments that have not improved with age.

As we've understood just a little bit more about the natural world in the last couple hundred years, you may wish to check out what we've learned since then so that you aren't two centuries behind. Interestingly, Dawkins is quite respectful of Paley for doing the best with what he had to work with.

Oh wait, you prefer ignorance. May I call you Jacob Amman? That guy decided, for religious reasons, that things had progressed as far as they should somewhere around 1700. Unfortunately for Jacob, many of his modern descendants are beginning to think that maybe that idea doesn't work so well in the 21st century. I don't know if the Amish are taking applications, but you might want to look into it.

That's the point, Kevn - THERE WAS NO TREATMENT.



The glasses I wear say otherwise.



You missed the point, again. If you're going to the trouble of "designing" an organism, why design it in such a stupid fashion?

Well, it certainly wasn't designed by an omnipotent being.

I must admit, I have difficulty with separating Intelligent Design from the concept of the Christian God. Surely the person who created the universe is either God, Allah or one of the other manifestations of the divine.

If you are, on the other hand, ascribing intelligence to the forces and laws that govern our universe, then you are getting closer to the position of the atheist. Because such an intelligence would be such a gapingly far distance from anything we can understand that the word 'intelligence' - applying as it does to our own concepts of thought and sentience, which would be further from this Being than we are from viruses - would itself become meaningless. If this is the case, you are getting closer to the position of the atheist. Congratulations - glad to see the light of reason is dawning.

I thought I had listed some of the flaws. If you argue that they are not flaws, it's like a software manufacturer claiming that crashing every five minutes was a feature.

I didn't start this thread to rehash the arguments already discussed. I posted an article of a scientist who tries to define a way to detect design in the creation in hopes we could discuss his points. If I don't answer a point, it may be that it's not concerning the reason for the thread. Or it may be I don't find it persuasive enough to entertain in this debate. However, someone else may choose to argue the counterpoint if they so desire.

So please don't feel I'm ignoring any posts, I read them all. Thanks for participating.

The bronchii and oesophagus thing would only be a pressure for evolutionary change if choking was a significant cause of death for people before they reached breeding age. Evolutionary change only happens as a result of pressure from the environment, and it is safe to assume that the lighter the pressure, the longer it will take to make the requisite changes.

Forgive me, I am speaking from a position of utter ignorance, but the above seems to be true to me. If someone more knowledgeable disagrees, I will tacitly accept what you say.

As for your argument that there have been no significant changes since the emergence of homo sapiens, let me point out that we have only been around for a couple of million years. We were, in the wider scale, born yesterday.



I have never understood this argument. All it does is to push the cause of life one stage further back. If you accept the 'God' argument, then you don't have to justify it, because God is omnipotent, has always existed, and can do anything. But if you are visualising some non-supernatural designer, then the question 'Who designed the designer' really begins to bite.

This is a really prevalent view based on some pretty popular misconceptions about the mechanism of natural selection.

I'll take a more extreme example than the scrota or eyes, but the same holds for those. Selection selects for reproductive sucess - indeed, that is all that it can select for. Selection is an "optimizing function" which does not mean that it will produce optimal results, but that among the available variation it will tend to select the best adapted where "best" means highest reproductive success. Please note that "highest success" does not mean "greatest reproduction" as it does a creature no good to have a zillion offspring if none of them survive to reproduce themselves.

Humans hit an interesting set of constraints on our trajectory from our ancestors. Upright posture was a useful mutation so it spread through the gene pool. Big brains were also rather favored. However, these two successful adaptations exacted a cost: those upright posture required changes in the shape of the pelvis which narrowed the bony birth canal. Worse still, that big brain formed best inside mom.

Some obstericians call the first three post-natal months the "fourth trimester" because humans aren't born when they are ready, but because if they grew any more prior to birth, they'd never get out. Almost no other mammal has much incidence of maternal death during childbirth, we do because of these contrary selective pressures. Further evidence for this view is that neonates are almost all head (relative to adults) and that babies become very abruptly more "human" about three months after birth.

So we've got hellaciously difficult (and sometimes fatal) childbirth, how could that possibly have been favored by selection? There are two reasons 1) the advantages of upright posture and big brains are - on the whole - more successful than the cost of possible death , and 2) the mutations that could make this "safer" haven't arisen so selection can't select them. There have been some mutations that made it less costly: a female pelvis is jointed in a way that a male's isn't to allow for slight expansion when needed, baby's skulls are not fused at birth to allow them to squish out better, and so on. If only the uterus opened out through the boneless belly, women could more-or-less cough their offspring out. Unfortunately for any women who ever spent 36 hours in labor, those mutations never arose.

There have been other adaptations that accompany these changes, women's legs are shaped differently in accordance with the pelvic changes which arguably makes them somewhat less efficient at walking. But selection doesn't optimize for efficient walking, it optimizes for reproductive success and if the price is paid in walking efficiency, so it goes.

This post is really a very poor substitute for someone who can really write like Dawkins (cited above). The Blind Watchmaker is extremely well written an was targeted at an audience who is smart and literate but knows very little about natural selection. It may be possible for you to re-invent 150 years of global inquiry on your own, but it is likely a lot harder than the alternative.

Please define "scientist" in a way that isn't laughable. Thanks.

And why does everyone quote the Wikipedia? There's these things called books. They're quite facinating as they require no electricity, no keyboard, no mouse. But- the only problem is they require an effort to do this thing called reading. A 5 yr old can use a computer to copy & paste, but can they retain the knowledge from something like a set of Encyclopedia Britannica? Web sites can be hacked & changed. Never heard of hackers changing books. For crying out loud people! Pick up & read a book!!

"The free online resource Wikipedia is about as accurate on science as the Encyclopedia Britannica, a study shows. The British journal Nature examined a range of scientific entries on both works of reference and found few differences in accuracy.


[snip]

In order to test its reliability, Nature conducted a peer review of scientific entries on Wikipedia and the well-established Encyclopedia Britannica.

The reviewers were asked to check for errors, but were not told about the source of the information.

"Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopedia," reported Nature.

"But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively."

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales welcomed the study.

"We're hoping it will focus people's attention on the overall level of our work, which is pretty good," he said."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4530930.stm