Google trends for searching on “intelligent design”

_{William Dembski

June 15, 2006

Intelligent Design}

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The following Google graph shows trends for searches on “intelligent design”: http://www.google.com/trends?q=Intelligent+Design&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all. Click on the “regions” tab. It shows that Australia has about half the searches for ID that the US does. Given that Australia’s population is about 20 million, that means that if the US population is 250 million, Australia searches for ID on average 6 times more per person than does the US. And given that Denmark has only a quarter of the population of Australia, Danes must be searching for ID >20 times more than Americans. International interest in ID is growing.

Comments

The way I understand international interest in "Kitzmiller/ Dover" is that they are not going to be bullied by some insignificant US district court issuing a misrepresentative decision, to not question the dogma of evolutionism. IOW they laugh at the notion that the US courts think it can decide what is and isn't science. Especially in the light of was passes for science when considering evolutionism. To any objective person who reads the transcripts of the trial it would make one wonder why the judge choose to believe one side over the other. The plaintiffs offered nothing of substance and I doubt the judge read the immunology evolution documents the plaintiffs provided- so it would appear he had his mind made up before the trial started. There wasn't even anything about teaching ID to begin with yet that is how it ended up. The school board was obviously clue-less to ID reality, at least one member lied and the judge choose to make an example out of some cartoon version of ID (by not listening to Behe & Minnich) to punish that board. In the end the truth will be heard. Not even ACLU lies can prevent that. As for Wm.'s OP- can anyone else say "tongue-n-cheek"?Joseph_{June 20, 2006
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KvD is about American judicial power vs political power. It has little to say to those of us "down under". Interestingly we have a very similar wording in our Australian Constitution but we have a very different interpretation by our ?less activist judges. Our governments give money to religious schools and old people's homes and hospitals. I think the US Congress making it tax deductable to give money to churches establishes religion much more than allowing ID to be mentioned in schools. In the end the courts do not establish the truth. The courts establish what is currently trendy. All Australian States still have laws against abortion yet we have abortion on demand. It is just that the judges have changed the meaning of the laws to fit their values. The work of Dembski and Behe is pre judged in KvD. The judge referred to ID before the case as "ID creationism".idnet.com.au_{June 17, 2006
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Check out the Thumb. :) You repeated the calculation that Google does - they already normalize it for the population. (So your result is divided by their population twice) The >20 times interest in Denmark should have been the clue to that fact. It seems that since KvD, interest has been declining internationally. I just talked to an Australian scientist and author, and they're all pretty aware of the KvD results, and it came as no surprise to them down there.
Inoculated Mind_{June 16, 2006
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I think you may be mistaken, Dr. Dembski: It says the regions are normalized (like the cities): "Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for your term coming from each city divided by total Google searches coming from the same city. The city ranking you see on the page and the bar charts alongside each city name both represent this ratio." So if Australia is half of the US, that means that it has half the US's ratio of ID searches/Google searches, which makes it pretty independent of the size of the country. Am I correct here?ThePolynomial_{June 16, 2006
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Agree. Interest on ID is more and more growing in Europe even in presence of the classical behavior by ND people. For example, now in Italy people can get adequate information about ND weakeness and ID arguments from several internet sites and newspaper articles, mainly by Catholic people who are more and more interested in ID arguments. Kkairos_{June 16, 2006
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Dave, you might want to read the section explaining how Google Trends works:

"When the Cities tab is selected, Google Trends first looks at a sample of all Google searches to determine the cities from which we received the most searches for your first term. Then, for those top cities, Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for your term coming from each city divided by total Google searches coming from the same city. The city ranking you see on the page and the bar charts alongside each city name both represent this ratio. When cities' ratios are fairly close together, the corresponding bar graphs will be roughly the same length, and the exact ranking between these cities is less meaningful."

What you're looking at is not a number of searches for Intelligent Design, but rather a percentage of all searches that are for Intelligent Design.
Why are you telling me this? You might want to read the author's name before replying to him or her. -ds Tiax_{June 16, 2006
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Well, whatever the reality behind the overseas interest, why should all those sophisticates across the sea be offended when ID is associated with American morality, patriotism and antipathy to terrorism? ArenÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t others mature enough to evaluate the logic of things on their own merits? DoesnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t doubting Darwin and determining design have any roots outside Anglo-Saxondom? What about Pierre-Paul Grasse, Marcel-Paul SchÃƒÂ¼tzenberger, Giuseppe Sermonti, and others I forget? Even if the overseas audience peaks when ID looks to be in trouble--at least they're interested!Rude_{June 16, 2006
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Philadelphia tops the list. I think there may be a punchline in there somewhere.tribune7_{June 16, 2006
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My impression, looking at the diagram: public interest in Dover-Trial rised searching for id on google. Now the interest is on the same level as before. Did I get anything wrong?El Schwalmo_{June 15, 2006
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