Another volume on flaws of the intelligent design argument, political setbacks to its advocates.

The Princeton evolutionary biologist John Tyler Bonner writes a review in a recent issue of Nature of the Volume "Intelligent Thought" edited by John Brockman. A series of essays demolish intelligent design theory from a number of directions. The bottom line is that intelligent design is not science because it is not falsifiable.

In some ways it is like shooting fish in a barrel. When giving his decision at the trial in which the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, was challenged for including intelligent design in the biology curriculum (see Nature 439, 6–7;2006), federal judge John Jones described the argument that intelligent design is science as a "breathtaking inanity". His ruling is reprinted in part at the end of the book.

A recent election in Kansas has returned control of the State Board of Education to moderates who plan to reverse the redefinition of science attempted by the previous conservative board. Intelligent design advocates also have recently received setbacks in Ohio and Pennsylvania, but will certainly not give up their crusade.