Sir

Your Editorial “Dealing with design” (Nature 434, 1053; 200510.1038/4341053a) is another piece of evidence of the peculiar angst among certain scientists about the ID strategy of a rather robust fraction of the US population. On the basis of some decades of work in this area, I do not believe that your advice to those who feel so threatened is wise, for two reasons.

There are some very skilled experts on the topic of how to deal with different cultures or belief systems. Their advice, from experience, would be: leave well alone. Act like a scientist, confident in your own — always tentative, always open to change — axioms and laws. Read the literature, for God's (or Darwin's) sake. It will prove to you that even graduates of MIT and Harvard do not know simple scientific facts that are irrelevant to their work, such as why the Earth experiences winter and summer, despite having been explicitly taught such facts several times during their education. This amazing ignorance does not affect their performance as scientists. I do not know a single materials scientist or engineer whose technical work would be affected by their beliefs about evolution/ID. My advice: relax. It can do very little harm. Ham-fisted efforts will simply alienate much larger numbers of people from the rest of science.

As to the suggestion that scientists should “offer some constructive thoughts of their own”: beware of the ignorance, nay illiteracy, of many scientists on matters of social and political concern. I recommend Huston Smith's book Why Religion Matters (HarperSanFrancisco, 2002) for advice on how to handle the ID debate.