Scott Minnich


Scott A. Minnich is an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Idaho, and a fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. Minnich's research interests are temperature regulation of Yersinia enterocolitica gene expression and coordinate reciprocal expression of flagellar and virulence genes.

Biography

Minnich is a proponent of intelligent design, and supports Michael Behe's thesis of "irreducible complexity" in bacterial flagella as evidence of intelligent design. Minnich testified in favor of the defendants in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, a 2005 federal court case regarding the teaching of intelligent design at the high school level. At the trial, Minnich testified that he tested whether the bacterial flagella was irreducibly complex by mutating the genes that built the 35 required components of the structure. He testified that whenever the gene for each of the 35 components were mutated, the bacterium lacked motility. Based on this scientific research, Minnich reasoned that bacterial flagellum was irreducibly complex beyond the 35 essential components.
Minnich earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Bacteriology and Public Health from Washington State University in 1975. He then went on to earn a master's degree in Microbiology from the University of Idaho, and a Ph.D. in Microbiology from Iowa State University in 1981. Minnich's "research dissertation was on the development of a rapid immunoassay for the detection of salmonella."
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, and the Journal of Food Protection. In 2004 he served as a member of the Iraq Survey Group, which looked for evidence of biological warfare preparations by Saddam Hussein's regime.