[...]
SJ>It is *Orgel* who first used the term "specified
SJ>complexity". And so Dembski is right when he says: "Norm
SJ>[Geisler] got it from Charlie Thaxton (Mystery of Life's
SJ>Origin, 1984, pp. 130-31), and Charlie got it from Leslie
SJ>Orgel (The Origins of Life, 1973, p. 189)".
But Dembski's claim was that Pennock had attributed the phrase
to *Geisler*. Pennock may be wrong further back in the
etymology, but it is clear that he was not wrong in the way
that Dembski originally claimed.
One might compare the level of sloppiness indicated by the two
claims. On the one hand, Pennock's etymology matches
Dembski's in the first two steps, and diverges in that Pennock
apparently confused two adjacent footnote attributions. On
the other hand, Dembski's claim of misattribution of the
phrase ignores the fact that no such attribution occurred in
the paragraph I cited, and also completely overlooks the
footnote in which Pennock explicitly states that Geisler did
*not* originate the phrase. At least Pennock *attempted* to
utilize the information contained in the footnotes at two
levels of indirection back, and did not simply ignore the
footnote at the first step.
Wesley