A correspondent tells me that he has notified Dembski and Marks of obvious mathematical errors in Conservation of Information in Search: Measuring the Cost of Success. The errors are identified and explained here.
My opinion, as a senior member of the IEEE, is that it is unethical for Dembski and Marks to continue disseminating the article online without correcting its known errors. Some researchers, including me, emend online versions of their publications by adding footnotes. I do not know why Dembski and Marks would not follow suit. Of course, they must "credit properly" the source of the corrections.
Section III.E of the article begins, "Partitioned search [12] is a 'divide and conquer' procedure. . . ." The combination of emphasis and citation falsely indicates that the term "partitioned search" comes from [12], Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker (TBW). Furthermore, categorical attribution of the procedure itself to Dawkins is unwarranted.
TBW describes a program that models an aspect of biological evolution (pp. 47-48). The program searches for a target phrase by iteratively "'breeding' ... mutant 'progeny'" from a parent phrase. The parent of the next generation is the progeny that "most resembles the target." Partitioned search would require additional information as to where the parent matches the target, along with exemption of matching characters from "mutation" in "breeding." There is no mention in TBW of these necessary elements of partitioned search.
The following now appears on the anonymously authored WeaselWare page of the website for Marks' Evolutionary Informatics Lab:
In an Evolutionary Search such as the one proposed by Dr. Dawkins [in TBW]*....The footnote reads,
* Dr. Dawkins no longer possesses the original source code for his algorithm. Feeback and reflection have led the authors to conclude that an Evolutionary Search is the more likely interpretation for the type of search presented in TBW. Although Partitioned Search was the original interpretation, we have now expanded our analysis to include Evolutionary Strategies, thus covering all reasonable interpretations.I'm calling on Dembski and Marks to acknowledge in the online version of the article that the term partitioned search does not appear in TBW, and that they "probably" interpreted TBW incorrectly.
Dembski and Marks should not dodge responsibility for the misinterpretation. As a computer scientist, I find the phrase "Dawkins no longer possesses the original source code for his algorithm" utterly bizarre. One starts with an algorithm, selects a programming language, and then expresses the algorithm in the particular programming language to obtain "source code." Dawkins need not have source code to tell us his algorithm. Dembski publicized a communication with Dawkins immediately after the publication of the article. Clearly he could have contacted Dawkins to ask about the algorithm while writing the article. If he doubted that the algorithm produced the results shown in TBW, all he had to do was implement the algorithm and check to see if worked as advertised.
Please join me in asking Dembski and Marks (their email addresses are at the bottom of the first page of the article) to fulfill their obligations under the IEEE Code of Ethics. Feel free to link to this text, which appears both at my blog, Bounded Science, and on the Sidewiki here at the website of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab.
