President Claudine Gay is out at Harvard thanks to — a design inference. Well, not only that, of course. But as William Dembski explains in an excellent new podcast interview with Christopher Sernaqué, the claims of plagiarism against her, or anyone, may be evaluated through an application of the design filter. 

Dr. Dembski’s new book is an expanded edition, written with Winston Ewert, of The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities. He doesn’t say whether he accepts the charges against Dr. Gay. What’s interesting is that no one doubts plagiarism can in principle be identified scientifically. And when it is, that is one application for a theory of intelligent design — along with others that no one doubts, either. Of course, a scientific test can always be misapplied and, perhaps, an innocent person found guilty.

Dembski, philosopher and mathematician, recalls that he got into trouble when he started applying ID to biology. Before that, he was on safe ground. So, analyzing a scholar’s writing for plagiarism is valid science — but analyzing, say, the contents of a living cell for design evidence, no, that is forbidden. Interesting. To adapt then-President Gay’s own words, from her disastrous Congressional testimony about genocide and student conduct, I guess it all “depends on the context.”

Editor’s note: Dr. Dembski and Dr. Ewert will discuss their new book, its meaning and significance, in a free webinar on “The Design Inference 2.0,” on Thursday, January 25, at 5 pm Pacific time. Find more information here. Registration highly recommended.