Of Pulsars, Specified Complexity and the Explanatory Filter

The Explantory Filter is a process that can be used to reach an informed inference about an object or event in question.

In order to get to the third node it "takes considerable background knowledge" (Dembski NFL page 111). He goes on to say "What's more it takes considerable background knowledge to come up with the right pattern (ie, specification) for eliminating all those chance hypotheses and thus inferring design."

In an article about SETI (that misrepresents ID) we have the following:

Consider pulsars – stellar objects that flash light and radio waves into space with impressive regularity. Pulsars were briefly tagged with the moniker LGM (Little Green Men) upon their discovery in 1967. Of course, these little men didn’t have much to say. Regular pulses don’t convey any information—no more than the ticking of a clock. But the real kicker is something else: inefficiency. Pulsars flash over the entire spectrum. No matter where you tune your radio telescope, the pulsar can be heard. That’s bad design, because if the pulses were intended to convey some sort of message, it would be enormously more efficient (in terms of energy costs) to confine the signal to a very narrow band. Even the most efficient natural radio emitters, interstellar clouds of gas known as masers, are profligate. Their steady signals splash over hundreds of times more radio band than the type of transmissions sought by SETI.

A properly applied EF and the researchers who initially inferred design wouldn't have. And with a properly applied EF we would never get to apply the "complexity- specification" criterion to pulsars as the EF would have eliminated them before that node.