A few days ago, Bil­ly Dem­b­s­ki respond­ed neg­a­tive­ly to a review of Michael Behe’s new book by my fel­low Sci­ence­Blog­ger Mark Chu-Car­roll. In par­tic­u­lar, Dem­b­s­ki ques­tioned whether it was real­ly a review, telling his read­ers to “Judge for your­self whether this deserves to be called a review.” (It is, and a damn­ing indict­ment of Behe’s vacuity).

Dems­b­ki pro­ceed­ed to ques­tion whether a com­put­er sci­en­tist has a right to crit­i­cize Behe’s math­e­mat­i­cal argu­ments. Dem­b­ski’s actu­al response to the sub­stance of Chu-Car­rol­l’s review was, sad­ly, lack­ing. I pressed the issue in the com­ments, and Dav­eScot (Dave Springer) respond­ed, “Well, if you want to over­look the fact that Car­roll is not employed as a book review­er, his exper­tise is com­put­er sci­ence not biol­o­gy or evo­lu­tion, and it’s a per­son­al blog post then I guess it qual­i­fies as a ‘review.’ ” Lat­er he request­ed, “Wake me up when some­one cred­i­ble writes a review in a venue more trust­wor­thy than a per­son­al blog.”

Today, ARN (a Behe and Dem­b­s­ki affil­i­at­ed site) linked to a review of Behe’s book by Fritz R. Ward, aka “day­hik­er,” an Amazon.com review­er who explains:

Any­one who reads my reviews knows my num­ber one inter­est: hik­ing. I try to hike a cou­ple dozen new trails a year even as I con­tin­ue to walk old favorites. I think noth­ing beats hik­ing through a red­wood for­est, explor­ing the east­ern escarp­ment of the high Sier­ras, or walk­ing through the diverse ecosys­tems of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia forests. I hope to ulti­mate­ly piece togeth­er all sec­tions of the Pacif­ic Crest Trail. In addi­tion to hik­ing, I enjoy ten­nis, read­ing and play­ing on the computer.

Judge for your­self whether this deserves to be called a review. (It does, it’s just less credible.)