Scott A. Minnich photo

Scott A. Minnich

Scott Minnich is associate professor of microbiology at the University of Idaho and is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. He is also a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design.

Previously, Dr. Minnich was an assistant professor at Tulane University. In addition, he did postdoctoral research with Austin Newton at Princeton University and with Arthur Aronson at Purdue University. Dr. Minnich's research interests are temperature regulation of Y. enterocolitca gene expression and coordinate reciprocal expression of flagellar and virulence genes.

Biochemist Michael Behe used the flagella to illustrate the concept of irreducible complexity and Minnich takes the argument to the next level crediting the design paradigm to leading to new insights in his lab research at the University of Idaho.

In 2004 Minnich served as part of the United State's Iraq Survey Group (ISG) tasked with reviewing captured mobile weapons laboratories, and determining what role if any they played in microbial weapons production.

Minnich is widely published in technical journals including Journal of Bacteriology, Molecular Microbiology, Journal of Molecular Biology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Microbiological Method, Food Technology, and the Journal of Food Protection.


“Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role in the origin of the system... We find such systems within living organisms.”
Scott A. Minnich
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