You just can’t make up stuff like this. Under cross examination in regards to the peer review of his book, Darwin’s Black Box Behe claimed that the peer review was more rigorous since there were more than twice as many reviewers who read the book carefully. One such reviewer was Dr. Atchison, a biochemistry professor at University of Pennsylvania.
So what did, Atchison have to say about Behe’s book and his review of it?
Behe sent his completed manuscript to The Free Press publishers for consideration. The editor was not certain that this manuscript was a good risk for publication. There were clearly theological issues at hand, and he was under the impression that these issues would be poorly received by the scientific community. If the tenets of Darwinian evolution were completely accepted by science, who would be interested in buying the book?
The editor shared his concerns with his wife. His wife was a student in my class. She advised her husband to give me a call. So, unaware of all this, I received a phone call from the publisher in New York. We spent approximately 10 minutes on the phone. After hearing a description of the work, I suggested that the editor should seriously consider publishing the manuscript. I told him that the origin of life issue [which has nothing to do with evolution, -jml] was still up in the air. It sounded like this Behe fellow might have some good ideas, although I could not be certain since I had never seen the manuscript. We hung up and I never thought about it again. At least until two years later.
… In November 1998, I finally met Michael Behe when he visited Penn for a Faculty Outreach talk. He told me that yes, indeed, it was his book that the publisher called me about. In fact, he said my comments were the deciding factor in convincing the publisher to go ahead with the
book. (Source)
So let me see if I got this straight. The idea of rigorous peer review that is twice that of the normal peer review process is a ten minute conversation with the publisher about how important the book might be and never seeing a manuscript and that’s it. Count me really, really, super duper impressed. (Whoops, there I go again, snarking my way past Behe.)
Via Stranger Fruit.
