"If a million people say a stupid thing, it is still a stupid thing." - Anatole France.
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Let's begin with a claim often made, that any time a great scientist rejects evolution, he becomes a pariah.
This is absolutely not true. The reason why these guys get laughed at is because they don't even understand the theory they claim to have refuted. INVARIABLY they offer 'evidence' that has already been copiously refuted. But once these fake "data" get in the creationist rumor mill, they get lives of their own. Here's a true story about Einstein. Dirac and Schroedinger were discussing Einstein's rejection of QM. Dirac was an atheist, Schroedinger a mystic. Dirac suggested to Schroedinger that maybe Einstein didn't understand it - after all, it's complicated even for phd physicists. Schroedinger told him (in so many words), "There are fewer than 12 people in the entire world who understand my theory and I'm absolutely sure that Herr Einstein is among them." They respected him even though they disagreed with him and he talked about kookie things at times - because they knew very well that he actually understood the theory he was rejecting. Creationists, IDers, and other vocal evolution critics repeatedly demonstrate that they haven't got any idea what the actual theory is about.
Consider this: This guy named William Dembski, a really famous ID "scientists" comes out with a book called No Free Lunch (NFL). It's named after the No Free Lunch Theorems of Wolpert and Macready. These guys have demonstrated - by developing these theorems - that they are masters of the subject. They have made significant contributions to the field of information theory, are recognized geniuses in the field, and having discovered NFL are, I think, the definitive experts on the subject.
Now Dembski writes this preposterous book in which he declares that the NFL theorems prove intelligent design. He gives a pseudo-mathematical treatment that convinces the casual and uninformed reader that he has actually proved his case, but leaves any informed mathematician incredulous. Dembski *is* a mathematician and a statistician, BUT he is not an expert in NFL and he appears to have written FAR more in the area of religion than in statistics where his contribution has been relatively meager. What does David Wolpert - the co-discoverer of NFL - say about Demski's "mathematical" treatment of NFL? He says it's "written in jell-o". Look here: http://www.talkreason.org/articles/jello.cfm
Recently there was a great furor among IDers who said that string theory actually proves intelligent design. First, there is some legitimate argument over whether we should actually call "string theory" a "theory" at this point, rather than a speculation. Second, the developer of the theory, one Leonard Susskind wrote a book called "The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design." I wrote him email prior to his writing the book and wanted to know if this was meant ironically or if the title (at that time of a lecture) was intended literally. He responded to me that he meant it literally; that is, he suggests that people are misapplying his theory to prove ID.
There are lots of other cases I could bring up:
Jonathon Wells, the moonie who got 2 PhDs so he could then write as an authority, in his book "Icons of Evolution" which completely misrepresents evolution, rehashes junk science that has already been refuted for decades, and basicly makes an ass of himself.
Michael Behe whose idea of "irreducible complexity" is that there are some systems in nature that are just SO VERY complex that no part of them would work in nature and that the system as a whole SO VERY improbable to arise by "at random" that the only logical conclusion is that there must have been an intelligent designer. The first problem with this is that ID is not a theory because it cannot be disproved if it is wrong. It's outside the purview of science. The second problem is his assertions are simply argument from ignorance - he doesn't know how something could work and nobody can give him an answer RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND DAMMIT, so therefore no natural explanation is possible. But more damning is the fact that rather than just throw in the towel to ignorance as Behe insists be done, some scientists have actually tried to investigate (a mysterious activity to Behe) and have found that his assertions in at least one case are wrong: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-04/uoo-eo040406.php . This is just one that they've looked at. It takes time to do actual research as opposed to just making stuff up.
The list goes on. Creationists and IDers point to this 'expert' or that who is or was the chairman of some department somewhere and who is 'acknowledged' in the field - but I don't see any nobel winners or academy of science members in there. Hell, I've known department chairment who were utterly incompetent. Better let them administrate than fill students' heads with crap. But, hey, the guy has a PHD oh boy, i tell you what, and he agrees with what the creationists already KNOW to be true, and so we have to count his opinion equal to that of a noble prize winner. In fact, we have to count it a great deal more. There are more scientists with the single first name of STEVE than there are of all the 'scientist' signatories of ID statement against evolution.
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