One of the primary criticisms of the intelligent design movement is that there are no research papers supporting their positions in peer reviewed scientific journals.
[4] The same statement from the Council vowed that proper review procedures would be followed in the future and endorsed a resolution published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which states that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting intelligent design.
Also in 2001, he joined the editorial board of the Baraminology Study Group, a young earth creationist "creation science" attempt to identify and classify the created kinds mentioned in scripture.
[11][14] In October 2003 Sternberg resigned from being editor of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, with a commitment to edit issues over the coming year.
Early in 2004 intelligent design advocate Stephen C. Meyer contacted Sternberg about a manuscript that he was thinking of submitting to the journal.
[3] In a statement issued by 10 October 2004 the journal declared that Sternberg had published the paper at his own discretion without following the usual practice of review by an associate editor.
The Council and associate editors would have considered the subject of the paper inappropriate for publication as it was significantly outside "the nearly purely systematic content" of the journal.
Thus, Sternberg's decision to publish the paper without the normal peer-review process is a flagrant breach of professional ethics that brought disrepute to the Smithsonian.Doubts were raised whether the reviewers were evolutionary biologists.
Sternberg is also a signatory of the Discovery Institute's A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism statement "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.
In a review of Meyer's article The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories, Alan Gishlick, Nick Matzke, and Wesley R. Elsberry claimed it contained poor scholarship, that it failed to cite and specifically rebut the actual data supporting evolution, and "constructed a rhetorical edifice out of omission of relevant facts, selective quoting, bad analogies, knocking down straw men, and tendentious interpretations.
[30] The explicit purpose of the RAPID conference was to "form new collaborations among scientists seeking to do research on the interface between science and faith, particularly within the context of ID".
[33] ISCID is affiliated with the Discovery Institute, hub of the intelligent design movement, where Meyer serves as the Program Director of the Center for Science and Culture.
"[35] Critics describe Sternberg's explanation of events, that a pro-intelligent design paper just happened to find its way to a publication with a sympathetic editor ultimately responsible for ensuring proper peer review and editing of his last issue, and that he decided it was appropriate to deal with the review process in person on a subject in which he has a personal interest, as improbable and that "people who want us to believe that the publication process outlined [by Sternberg and his defenders] was transparent and only had to do with science" are "disingenuous.
In its initial investigation, Office of Special Counsel concluded that there was a strategy by several managers to force Sternberg out of the Smithsonian Institution and that there was a strong religious and political component to the actions taken after the publication of the Meyer article.
[41] Pim Van Meurs and other critics observed that the Office of Special Counsel lacked jurisdiction over the matter and so his claim was unlikely to proceed,[42] and that even though it made no official findings or conclusions, the response from the Office of Special Counsel provided Sternberg and the Discovery Institute putative evidence and talking points supporting their claim that the scientific community discriminates against intelligent design proponents.
[43][44] In a Wall Street Journal op-ed article, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow David Klinghoffer[45] portrayed Sternberg as a martyr and victim of discrimination,[46] a tactic used often by design proponents.
Nick Matzke, Jason Rosenhouse and other critics have commented that the Office of Special Counsel itself appears biased in its initial handling of the matter, given the links between the religious right and the Republican Party, with George W. Bush appointee James McVay authoring its opinion.
[43][47] In a November 2005 National Public Radio report on the affair, Sternberg stated "I'm not an evangelical, I'm not a fundamentalist, I'm not a young earth creationist, I'm not a theistic evolutionist".
Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR's religion reporter, said Sternberg himself believes intelligent design is "fatally flawed.
Contained in the appendix to the Souder report is a letter from the director of the Smithsonian where it is revealed that Sternberg demanded that they give him a $300,000 grant to make up for his allegedly lost research time; he was turned down.