When I wrote in April about Seattle's Discovery Institute and its efforts to regroup after a federal judge's stinging rebuke of intelligent design, most of the reaction I got was negative, and most of it was from academics. Opponents of ID from the scientific community were angry that I even wrote about Discovery (which didn't like the article either) and its anti-Darwinian theory. They said there was no debate, the theory was fully debunked and I was manufacturing controversy in what some read as The Seattle Times implicit endorsement of intelligent design.

But it turns out it's not just me who still sees a debate churning about this. The Society for the Study of Evolution — which says ID "is not, and can never be, science" — has published "A multi-pronged, multi-year strategy to oppose creationism and intelligent design in the science curriculum of public schools."

The existence of a massive and well-funded network of anti-evolutionary groups has contributed to the persistence of creationism, but at the same time scientists could have been more effective in outreach and education (Pigliucci 2002, 2005). Thus, while scientists certainly cannot hope by themselves to overcome the problem, it seems increasingly clear that inaction is no longer an option. The public already perceives academics as aloof and isolated, lost in a pampered world of irrelevancies, unwilling or unable to come out of the ivory tower even for brief periods to explain why their research is worthwhile (Sagan 1995). We think that professional societies ought to take the lead and generate an internal cultural change within academia, to help scientists rethink their priorities and make outreach and public involvement a matter of normal practice, rather than a suspect activity carried out only by a few individuals.

The goals include defending the teaching of evolution as the "framework for all biological science" and to "preclude the teaching of creationism, intelligent design, and other pseudoscientific 'alternatives' as part of the science curriculum in public schools."

The group calls its manifesto the anti-wedge document. That's a play on the most famous intelligent design document, The Wedge Document, originally published in 1999 by the Discovery Institute. It spelled out a strategy to "defeat scientific materialism" and "replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."

The document was leaked and widely publicized and has been an albatross for the Discovery Institute, which says the document has become a "sort of intellectual urban legend."

The Evolution Society's call to arms is being met with mixed reaction at The Panda's Thumb, a popular Web site among those who "critique the claims of the antievolution movement."