This interview with Dr. Jonathan Wells was conducted in June 2005 by Daniel Cervera. Dr. Wells is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture . Interview questions are in bold; responses are in standard text. The views expressed below do not necessarily reflect the views of IDURC.

1. Can you offer a brief historical backdrop against which the implications of your writing may be more properly understood? In simple terms, can you offer a summary of what your paper is proposing?

This can perhaps best be answered by referring to something I posted on the ISCID web site after the Biola conference last year:

"Using Intelligent Design Theory to Guide Scientific Research" http://www.iscid.org/papers/Wells_TOPS_051304.pdf

2. In your writing, you offer three testable predictions to establish or disconfirm your hypothesis, the results of which may then “contribute to a better understanding not only of cell division but also of cancer.” Can you elucidate on how these predictions might lend support to an intelligent cause? Lay-Critics who do not find the words “Intelligent Design” in your writing might assume nothing significant is being advanced.  Is this an accurate assessment?

Confirming the predictions would provide no direct support to the idea of an intelligent cause or intelligent design, but by explaining some important things about cell division and cancer it would show indirectly that an ID framework (with or without the words “intelligent design”) can lead to useful scientific discoveries.  Of course, one example is not enough; it could be a lucky break.  I am presently working on another example that, if confirmed by experiment, would lend even more support to the idea that ID can fruitfully guide scientific research.

3. To those who would argue that a Neo-Darwinian approach could offer similar advances in our understanding of cell division and cancer, in what ways would an evolutionary approach to this phenomenon be demonstrated as inferior whereas a telic process would succeed?

Most research guided by neo-Darwinism is a huge waste of time and money. For example, a large number of scientists, and millions of taxpayer dollars every year, are presently devoted to constructing hypotheses (“phylogenetic trees”) about how specific organisms might be related to each other through common ancestry.  The only fruit has been a mish-mash of conflicting speculations that have produced no real benefits.  In other words, fascination with neo-Darwinism has diverted precious public resources down a blind alley.

Another expensive but fruitless line of research promoted by neo-Darwinism has been the study of “speciation.” Although evolutionary theory ultimately stands or falls on the proposition that one species can change into another through mutation and selection, this as never been demonstrated. Yet millions of taxpayer dollars every year continue to be poured down this particular black hole.

Dwarfing the resources wasted on phylogenetic trees and speciation have been the public resources devoted to finding the “gene for” this or that trait or disease.  This approach is encouraged by neo-Darwinism (in which genetic changes are imagined to be the raw materials for evolution), but it has produced no real clinical benefits.  For example, it is now known that the underlying cause of cancer is “chromosomal instability,” or damage to extra-genic structures -- not mutations to individual genes.  Although biologists steeped in neo-Darwinism discovered chromosomal instability, they did so NOT by being guided by neo-Darwinism, which had previously focused their attention on genetic mutations alone.

In these and other respects, the inferiority of the neo-Darwinian approach is becoming more and more obvious.  Whether the ID approach will be more fruitful remains to be seen, but there are presently a number of ID-guided research projects under way that I believe will significantly advance biomedical science.  If they do, neo-Darwinism will quickly fade into oblivion.

Stay tuned.