The answer is that it did not need to be peer-reviewed any more than
Sagan's Cosmos or Dawkins' Blind Watchmaker or even Darwin's Origin of
Species. Popular writings are not peer-reviewed. (If authors had to
submit the text of such writings to journals or other associations for
approval or comment, I believe fewer such books would be written. This
would have a chilling effect on the discourse of ideas among scientists
and between them and the public. Many good but unpopular ideas might
never have been published if they had to have been peer-reviewed.)
Peer review is not supposed to be a mechanism for screening the ideas to
be published in the popular press. It is used as a means of validating
the scientific claims that are made by credentialed professionals in the
context of formal work. A popular book might be the result of many
different studies that a scientist might have conducted all or most of
which would have been peer-reviewed. Moreover, a scientist might want
to publish ideas that are unpopular in the scientific community to give
the public an opportunity to be exposed to an alternate interpretation
of the facts. It is always possible that a scientists thesis was
rejected not because of its scientific merit but because of the
political, social, economic, or religious prejudices of his peers. As
unpopular as it may be to say, scientists are also human and they are
subject--individually and collectively--to such prejudices.
Essentially Behe published an alternate interpretation of the facts--an
act which does not normally require peer-review. His opposition
frequently publishes their interpretations in the popular media without
peer-review. They have become very adept at using both books and
periodicals but also press releases and briefings to present their ideas
to an interested and curious public. It is not fair to suggest that
alternate interpretations be subjected to a higher standard of
"validation" than the accepted one. (Could it be that prejudices have
more to do with *some* of the criticism of Behe. I have seen scientists
swallow dubious interpretations on much less *evidence* than Behe
presented in Black Box.)
You might as well drop this argument because it's a red herring. It's
just another form of the fallacious technique of argument to the man.
Behe's thesis stands or falls on other grounds.
Russ
Russell T. Cannon
rcannon@usa.net