Hi @jtopp,
I wouldn’t know if ID is unified in a Lakatosian sense, but it does seem to offer a way of exploring the biological world and determining what should be attributed to intelligent design. If I may continue to use the SETI analogy, a scientist may not have a theory on whether there are ETs, but does have a specific criterion for identifying intelligently designed signals (narrow-band radio emissions). That seems to be all that is needed in order to do research, doesn’t it? Likewise, a scientist may not have a theory on whether God or someone else designed living things, nor when or how the designing took place. However, if Michael Behe’s argument in The Edge of Evolution is sound, then they do have a specific criterion for identifying a biological system that has been intelligently designed: any irreducibly complex system that has at least three different proteins. And that seems to be all that is needed in order to do research, doesn’t it?