Being Northrup, of course, his silence is funnier than other people's commentary. But Carl Zimmer* was able to maintain his powers of speech:
I predict more such mangling in the future. For some years now, I've read Easterbrook's occasional pronouncements on evolution and have shaken my head. He likes to call evolutionary biologists fundamentalists, and claims that Intelligent Design is a "sophisticated theory now being argued out in the nation's top universities." (I've visited a fair number of the top biology departments, and I can vouch that Easterbrook's wrong.) It's a "rich, absorbing hypothesis," he crows, "the sort of thing that is fascinating to debate, and might get students excited about biology class to boot."[...]In both physics and biology, Easterbrook seems to use his own personal neat-o-meter to decide what is a legitimate scientific question. Wouldn't it be neat if there was a hidden spiritual plane just like the planes of string theory? Wouldn't it be neat if you could prove that life was designed? When anyone brings up the flakiness of his musings, Easterbrook claims that mainstream science is just as flaky. Billions of dimensions? Hah! "Yet which idea sounds more implausible--one unseen dimension or billions of them?" (Actually, Gregg, it's more like 10 dimensions.) Rigorous experiments on possible precursors to DNA and cells? Hey, no one was there, so any theory that's fascinating to debate is worth teaching in the classroom. Besides, the kids get sooo bored when you bring out those real papers from peer-reviewed journals.
*Let me put in a plug here for Zimmer's chewy new - begun in September - blog. You may recognize the name of the science writer and former editor of Discover. He's even got a good post on the Schiavo case. ("There are several separate debates here, but people have been jumping back and forth between them as if they were all one." Yup.)