Does the Explanatory Filter Explain?

I stopped by Uncommon Descent the other day and found scordova talking about Genetic-ID, which he thinks is an application of the so-called explanatory filter. This looked pretty unlikely to me, but I figured that surely someone more intelligent that I am had gotten to the issue first, so I looked around. Seek and ye shall find! Steve Reuland on his Sunbeams from Cucumbers had already dealt with it pretty thoroughly in a post titled How to Really Detect Design. In the process he reviews the explanatory filter. His post is worth a read.

The only thing I have to add is that the explanatory filter, which does not explain and does remarkably little filtering, could actually be reduced a bit. The first two elements are instances of “I know how it happens,” while the final one is “I don’t know.” Thus the EF could easily be summarized by the question, “Do I know?” “Yes” means we exit the filter, no means we assume design.