The Death Knell for ID?

Yes. In fact the above quoted statement says that Dembski is going to increase his efforts to develop a research program, and not that he is simply going to do contribute to current research efforts. I see the statement as an honest assessment that DI does indeed consist of flacks, hacks, and apologists, at least currently.After the big dust up over Dembski's statements about a world wide flood, or lack thereof, nobody should be the least bit surprised that Dembski is involved in new pursuits. The YEC establishment's treatment of Dembski puts the lie to all those fundamentalist efforts at pushing ID in the name of academic freedom.

They have nothing.Putting on a show is exactly the point of ID. There is no substance behind ID; no ideas that cannot be refuted in a few sentences, often with evidence but always with logic; no real research or even any hypotheses testing of any kind. ID is just apologetics wrapped around Genesis to be served to those few creationists who need any kind of psuedo-scientific explanation.Creationists have put more work into baraminology than they have ever put into ID.When it comes to doing any science, at all, ID's response is on par with those "the dog ate my homework" excuses that never worked even in elementary school. I am having a hard time working up my usual testiness on the sham that is ID. Instead I provide a link below to RationalWiki's hilarious article on Dembski.William Dembski - RationalWiki

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The complete disregard for standard procedure, the embarrassing mission of the center and Dembski's incessant prancing and preening led the faculty at Baylor to vote 27-2 to dissolve the center. Sloan refused, continuing his one man campaign to destroy Baylor's reputation. However, he ultimately agreed to allow an outside review. That review pretty much agreed with the faculty and the center was absorbed into existing structures at Baylor and disappeared.

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Dembski, however, took this loss as a victory (as IDers are prone to do) and issued a press release saying that the committee had given an "unqualified affirmation of my own work on intelligent design", that its report "marks the triumph of intelligent design as a legitimate form of academic inquiry" and that "dogmatic opponents of design who demanded that the Center be shut down have met their Waterloo. Baylor University is to be commended for remaining strong in the face of intolerant assaults on freedom of thought and expression.

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Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

My favorite excerpts from the wikipedia article on Biologic Institute (with my comments interspersed):

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The Discovery Institute stated in October 2006 that intelligent design research is being conducted by the institute in secret to avoid the scrutiny of the scientific community.

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In my opinion the only thing that will kill off ID as a concern is a thorough scientific spanking of ID research. This won't really happen as long as ID remains the subject of popular books and hidden research. The creation of the Biologic Institute might well be the beginning of the end for ID as a scientific concern, unless they keep their research secret. Oh wait. That's what they are doing.I don't much care what happens to the rotting carcass of ID once it is proven to be biological numerology, because after such a debacle there will never be any rational reason to include ID in a K-12 curriculum; at least not in a curriculum that doesn't ridicule ID along with alchemy and astrology.

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The scientific community remains skeptical and commentators note that no publications containing results which support intelligent design have yet appeared.[3][26][27] Reason magazine compared the research efforts at the Biologic Institute to those of "Big Tobacco"[28] and the 2006 New Scientist editorial noted that this sort of research is similar to the agenda-driven research of the tobacco and oil industries.

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I have to admit that the above is what I expect when a US based scientific research organization calls itself "Institute." There are actually laws in the UK that govern the use of the term "institute", and restrict its use to organizations conducting scientific research of the highest order. There is little likelihood that any of the US organizations mentioned in the above quote would qualify for their names under UK standards.

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University of Warwick sociologist Steve Fuller, who testified in support of intelligent design at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, opines that research at the Biologic Institute will reduce tensions between scientists and the religious community. Fuller states that "Regardless of whether the science cuts any ice against evolution, one of the virtues is that it could provide a kind of model for how religiously motivated people can go into the lab.

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Right, Steve. As if...As if religiously motivated people currently have no interest in contributing to technology or science. As if 'religious person' means 'creationist'. And finally, as if a true and honorable purpose for true Christian scientist is faux-science apologetics.I suppose I'm ranting again. I haven't had much sleep this week.Edited by NoNukes, : Fix silly grammatical errors, and I'm sure I've missed worse ones.