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Prof. Thomas Nagel, a self-declared atheist who earned his PhD. in philosophy at Harvard 45 years ago, who has been a professor at U.C. Berkeley, Princeton, and the last 28 years at New York University, and who has published ten books and more than 60 articles, has published an important essay, "Public Education and Intelligent Design," in the Wiley InterScience Journal Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 36, issue 2, on-line at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118493933/home (fee for access US $29.95).
Prof. Nagel's paper is a significant and substantial opening, at America's highest intellectual level, that encourages all intelligent, educated, informed individuals — particularly those whose interest in this issue derives from intellectual curiosity, not the emotional advocacy excitement for any side — that it is legitimate as a matter of data, science, and logic, divorced from all religious texts and doctrines, to consider that intelligent design may be a valid scientific approach to understanding how DNA and the complex chemical systems of life came to attain their present form. Prof. Nagel's article is well worth the price to put it in the library of any inquiring mind.
Continue reading "Prominent Atheist Professor of Law and Philosophy Thomas Nagel Calls Intelligent Design Scientific and Constitutional to "Mention" in Science Classes" »
If you missed "Flies In Danger Escape With Safety Dance," a story by NPR's Joe Palca, give it a listen. And don't forget to check out the videos which show how flies take off from a stationary position.
This kind of story puts a damper on the kind of rhetorical jabs commonly heard from Darwinists, such as, "Do we really want to make God responsible for flies and mosquitoes?" Every time someone takes the time to study one of these creatures — in this instance, scientist Michael Michael Dickinson — they come away awestruck, saying things like: "When you see a fly flitting around your hair, or your potato salad, you might see an annoyance," he [Dickinson] says. "But in my lab you really see a marvelous machine, arguably the most sophisticated flying device on the planet."
In case you missed this gem from The New York Times, you're going to love the logic: Nonetheless, Dowd’s views do bring solace to some, going by reactions from parishioners who claim that a scientific perspective has helped them come to terms with their follies of the past. For some at least, the recognition of genetic and biochemical frailty is a healing act. Last fall, for example, after Bob Miller, an 81-year-old man, heard Dowd’s sermon at a Unitarian church in Pensacola, Fla., he felt his guilt over a string of affairs from four decades ago melting away. “I could never quite understand why I had behaved that way,” says Miller, who was climbing the corporate ladder when his infidelities began, leading to the breakup of his marriage. When Dowd began talking about viewing moral lapses against the backdrop of evolution, “suddenly a light went on inside my head,” Miller says. His rising status at his company, he concluded, had probably contributed to increased testosterone. “I think the physical change in my body was so strong that it completely overpowered any moral teachings and religious beliefs I had,” Miller says. “It was still inexcusable, but it made more sense.”
An Evolution Academic Freedom Bill (HB 6027) was introduced today in Michigan by Rep. John Moolenaar. The bill is similar to academic freedom legislation introduce in several other states earlier this year and, if enacted, will provide public school teachers with academic freedom to present both the scientific evidence for and against Darwinian evolution.
“Often in this debate the issues at hand get misrepresented, and so our goal is to fully and straightforwardly explain that this is about science and helping prepare the best scientists of the future for our state and for our country,” said Rep. Moolenaar. “And a big part of that is enabling them to have the academic freedom to explore and critically examine scientific theories.”
Discovery Institute has long supported academic freedom for teachers and scientists to explore and explain the strengths and weaknesses of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
“In many states public school teachers, students, and even college professors have faced intimidation and retaliation when they attempt to discuss scientific criticisms of Darwinian evolution,” said biologist Jonathan Wells, a research scientist at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture who holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. “In educational institutions that receive taxpayer support, it is entirely appropriate for the government to ensure that teachers and students have the right to discuss freely the evidence and scientific arguments for and against evolutionary theory.”
Orlando Sentinel and Florida Baptist Witness report that the Evolution Academic Freedom Act was passed by the Florida Senate today.
In this week’s National Review (December 3, 2007), theoretical particle physicist Stephen Barr takes on those who claim that the findings of modern science have banished the ideas of mind or soul.
Barr, with whom many of us at Discovery have misgivings regarding his use of the word “random” in neo-Darwinian theory, nonetheless gives an excellent exposition of philosophy of mind’s intersection with contemporary physics in his article “The Soul and Its Enemies” (sorry: password required).
Barr concludes: We see, then, that those who confidently assert that scientific discoveries have banished the soul to the realm of myth offer only a limited view of the evidence. Indeed, the very possibility of scientific discoveries points to man’s openness to truth and his ability to grasp meaning. One does not really need a scientist to confirm that one has a spiritual soul, however. Its powers are daily on display in our lives as rational and free creatures. Of course, there are those who disagree with this. And they are quite free to disagree. But their very freedom to disagree is proof that they are wrong. For further reading in this area, see Part I of Moreland and Rae's Body & Soul and Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary's The Spiritual Brain.
For those of you who missed Dr. John West's lecture at The Heritage Foundation this week in Washington, D.C., it is now available online (look for November 6, 2007).
West had a strained voice that day, yet he spoke eloquently on "The Abolition of Man? How Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science." In this lecture, he covers what he sees as five impacts of scientific materialism on public policy.
If you like what you see, don't forget to check out Darwin Day in America.
Eminent evolutionist James Watson, winner of the Nobel Prize for co-discovering the structure of DNA, is sparking controversy in Great Britain for suggesting that blacks are inferior to whites due to evolution. But there is nothing particularly extraordinary about Watson's views. As I document in chapter 7 of my forthcoming book Darwin Day in America, there is a long history of evolutionists using Darwinism to justify racism—including Darwin himself.
Watson is past director and current Chancellor of the prestigious biological research lab at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. Ironically, that lab has deep connections to Darwinian racism of years gone by. Early in the twentieth century it was the headquarters for one of the most virulent American eugenics groups, the Eugenics Record Office, which promoted forced sterilization and opposed immigration to America by ethnic groups considered lower on the evolutionary scale than Anglo-Saxon whites. Back then the lab was directed by Harvard-trained geneticist Charles Davenport. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Davenport held views about blacks and evolution hauntingly similar to Watson's.
Continue reading "Leading Scientist Stirs Controversy by Invoking Darwin's Theory to Argue for Inferiority of Blacks" »
“Baylor University has proven yet again that academic freedom has been thrown off campus and academic persecution is now the norm,” said Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin in reaction to Baylor University’s deletion of a professor's research website, which focused on evolutionary systems and informatics. “It is simply unconscionable that a major university would so trample a scientist’s right to freedom of scientific inquiry,”
Baylor University has taken offline the Evolutionary Informatics Laboratory website that had been administered by Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor, because the administration claimed there were anonymous complaints linking the lab to intelligent design.
Continue reading "Baylor University Denies Research Scientist's Academic Freedom" »
Expelled is a disturbing new documentary that will shock anyone who thinks all scientists are free to follow the evidence wherever it may lead.
Two years ago when we hosted an event at the National Press Club to raise the alarm about the persecution of pro-ID scientists and educators, I was quoted as saying: “There is a disturbing trend of scientists, teachers, and students coming under attack for expressing support in the theory of intelligent design, or even just questioning evolution. The freedom of scientists, teachers, and students to question Darwin's theory, or to express alternative scientific hypothesis is coming under increasing attack by people that can only be called Darwinian fundamentalists.”  Well, it is nearly two years later and it’s sad to say, but the Darwinist inquisition is spreading. Things have gotten worse, not better. Academic freedom is under intense attack by Darwinists across the country.
Finally someone is fighting back, and that someone is Ben Stein. Stein is perfectly situated to weigh in on this issue, as he is an actor, a pop-culture icon, and at the same time a serious economist who has worked in academia and the government.
Today the website was launched for Stein’s next film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, due out in theaters nationwide next February.
Continue reading "New Ben Stein Flick, Expelled, Blows the Whistle on the Darwinist Inquisition" »
Recently the Boston Globe ran a letter to the editor by Stephen Meyer, responding to Sally Lehrman's ridiculous claim that the Explore Evolution textbook "uses psuedoscience to attack Darwin's theories."
Meyer's response? There's nothing "psuedo" about saying what the evolutionists themselves admit, even citing the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. Perhaps Lehrman judges our book pseudoscience because we also describe current scientific criticisms of evolutionary theory. Perhaps she is unaware that skepticism about the creative power of natural selection and random mutation is common in peer-reviewed scientific literature and in the scientific community. No less an authority than the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences published a recent paper stating: "Natural selection based solely on mutation is probably not an adequate mechanism for evolving complexity."
"Explore Evolution" not only tells students about such skepticism, but offers the evidential basis for it. But it does so alongside a thorough discussion of the strengths of evolutionary theory. That isn't pseudoscience, that's good science education.
Science writer Denyse O’Leary is the latest to weigh in on The Edge of Evolution over at her popular blog, Post-Darwinist. She actually has three insightful posts related to Behe, and of course Behe’s constributions to the overall debate over Darwinism.
She sums up The Edge of Evolution this way: Behe calculates that, based on the available evidence of observed Darwinian mutations, events less likely than ten to the twentieth power are generally beyond the edge of (Darwinian) evolution (145).
There is the main argument in a nutshell, minus the supporting material. Many people, of course, will feel the need to argue for or against the thesis of The Edge of Evolution without bothering to read it. Despite the fact that it is very clearly written - a masterpiece of simple explanation, accessible to anyone who can read National Geographic or Scientific American.
Continue reading "Behe’s Edge of Evolution Continues to Attract Attention" »
Michael Behe's new book, The Edge of Evolution, continues to garner attention. Not surprisingly, Darwinists are not making the same mistake they made with Darwin's Black Box, only now they are working overtime to ensure EoE suffers crib death. They simply can't afford for another Behe book to get any traction. So, Behe is having to work overtime as well, responding to his critics. Today he has the first of two responses to a recent review in Nature magazine by Ken Miller. His full Amazon author's page has all of his responses thus far to Jerry Coyne, Sean Carroll, and Michael Ruse, as well as answers to some common questions about the book.
Pro-intelligent design astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez is appealing his denial of tenure at Iowa State University to the Iowa State Board of Regents. Dr. Gonzalez's first appeal was rejected by ISU President Gregory Geoffroy on May 31. On June 19, Gonzalez filed notice with the ISU President's office that he would make a further appeal to the Board of Regents. Gonzalez's current appeal will play out over the next couple of months as the record in the case is forwarded by the university to the Board of Regents and both Gonzalez and the university file their written arguments in the case. If Gonzalez's denial of tenure is not overturned, he will be out of a job at the end of the 2007-08 academic year.
Continue reading "Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez Appeals Tenure Denial to Iowa Board of Regents" »
 Let the rewriting of history begin. The Chronicle of Higher Education’s blog recently carried a post claiming that Guillermo Gonzalez was denied tenure by Iowa State University (ISU) largely because “Mr. Gonzalez’s publication record has dropped off considerably since he was hired at Iowa State.” But this statement is a gross distortion of Dr. Gonzalez’s real publication record.
A simple decrease in publications is meaningless without reference to expected standards of publication for teaching faculty, departmental publication standards, or the publication rates of similarly situated faculty. A fair assessment would ask how Gonzalez compared to other astronomers in his department since the year he joined ISU (2001), especially compared to those astronomers that have already been granted tenure. And the answer to that question is clear: According to the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System, Gonzalez has published 34 publications since 2001 and his normalized publication score is 2nd among all astronomers in his department. (Click here for the methodology on his absolute publication count.) In fact, he beats out all tenured astronomers in his department in the normalized number of publications since 2001! We’ve already highlighted that Gonzalez has the highest normalized citation count among ISU astronomers over the same time period. Moreover, even if one counts only the refereed articles Gonzalez published after coming to ISU, he significantly exceeded his own department's stated standard of the number of peer-reviewed publications needed for tenure. These significant comparisons show just how unfair (and irrelevant) the claim is that Gonzalez's publication rate “dropped off” compared to his pre-ISU days. The "drop off" claim is additionally unfair for reasons previously outlined by John West:
Continue reading "Chronicle of Higher Education Promotes Misinformation about Guillermo Gonzalez’s Publication Rate" »
 The current issue of the Montana Law Review features a lively exchange of views about the Kitzmiller v. Dover intelligent design decision, and the articles are now available online at the law review’s website. The lead article on the Dover decision (“Intelligent Design Will Survive Kitzmiller v. Dover”) is co-authored by David DeWolf, me, and Casey Luskin. A second article by Peter Irons (“Disaster in Dover”) responds to our article, followed by a short rebuttal by DeWolf, me, and Luskin. There is also an editors’ introduction with a timeline of the Dover case (currently not available online).
Continue reading "Montana Law Review Features Exchange over Kitzmiller Intelligent Design Decision" »
In a weekend essay in the Des Moines Register, Iowa State Physics Professor John Hauptman explains that ISU astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez was denied tenure because Gonzalez argued that a purposive cause is the best explanation for certain features of our cosmic habitat. By this standard, Hauptman will also need to fire many of the most esteemed physicists and astronomers of our day, as well as the founders of modern science. Hauptman and his fellow thought police at Iowa State have their summer work cut out for them.
Continue reading "Guillermo Gonzalez, Nobel Laureates and Founders of Modern Science See Purpose as Best Explanation for Fine-Tuned Cosmic Habitat" »
The Des Moines Register has published two differing views on ISU's denial of tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez.
The first, by Discovery senior fellow David Klinghoffer, looks at the current state of academic freedom at ISU and finds few defenders left there.
The second is by a colleague of Gonzalez's, professor John Hauptman, who admits that intelligent design was the reason he voted against giving Gonzalez tenure, yet somehow doesn't perceive that as a violation of Gonzalez's academic freedom.
Continue reading "ISU Professor Mistakes Prejudice for Academic Freedom" »
Ames, IA – Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, co-author of The Privileged Planet and an advocate of the scientific theory of intelligent design, has lost his first appeal to overturn the decision to deny him tenure at Iowa State University (ISU).
President Gregory L. Geoffroy announced the decision yesterday to deny Dr. Gonzalez's appeal, despite the fact that Dr. Gonzalez published 350% more peer-reviewed journal articles than is "ordinarily" supposed to show research excellence in his department.
“It’s a sad day for science and free inquiry when tenure is denied to a scientist of Guillermo Gonzalez’s caliber,” said Dr. John G. West, associate director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, where Dr. Gonzalez is a senior fellow. “President Geoffroy has clearly demonstrated that academic freedom is not as important to Iowa State University as passing an ideological litmus test.”
Continue reading "University President Denies Appeal in Tenure Case of Intelligent Design Astronomer at Iowa State University" »
The President of Iowa State University, Gregory Geoffroy, has issued a statement defending his denial of the tenure appeal of Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez. In the statement, Geoffroy claims that he concluded that Gonzalez “simply did not show the trajectory of excellence that we expect in a candidate seeking tenure in physics and astronomy.”
Ah, yes, President Geoffroy has such high standards of excellence that only the most outstanding professors are allowed to achieve tenure at ISU.
Geoffroy’s high standards must be why he approved 91% of the tenure applicants at ISU in 2007 (and why the tenure approval rate has gone up each year at ISU for the past five years).
Geoffroy’s high standards are presumably also why he promoted to full professor this year Hector Avalos, the ISU faculty member who argues in his “scholarship” that the Bible is worse than Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Yes, according to President Geoffroy’s exalted standards, only the best and brightest are allowed to stay at ISU!
But there’s more.
Continue reading "ISU President Geoffroy and the Elephant in the Living Room" »
Guillermo Gonzalez has issued a statement about the rejection of his tenure appeal by ISU President Gregory Geoffroy:
I learned on the morning of June 1, 2007 that President Geoffroy has denied my tenure appeal. I understand that this was a very difficult decision for him to make given its far-reaching implications. It is now clear to me that this decision, in effect, had been predetermined by August 2005, when Hector Avalos and other ISU professors began circulating a petition statement condemning Intelligent Design. At the same time several of the same ISU faculty spread misinformation about me and the nature of my Intelligent Design research in the local press. These events poisoned the atmosphere among the faculty and administration on campus towards Intelligent Design, and, ultimately, impacted negatively on my tenure evaluation. It is unfortunate that the personal religious and ideological beliefs of some faculty have been so influential on this issue.
Ultimately, the decision to deny or grant tenure is a subjective one, based not only on published objective academic criteria, but also on such ill-defined criteria as the perceived standing among peers and whether the mission of the university is advanced. My publication record must be balanced against other aspects of my professional research. It is in the way the separate factors are weighted that personal biases and political pressures can influence the final decision. I continue to believe that I have met my department's and the university's criteria for tenure. I have not yet decided whether I will appeal the decision to the Board of Regents.
The Ames Tribune has reported that the tenure appeal of Iowa State University (ISU) astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez has been denied by ISU President Gregory Geoffroy. It's a sad day for academic freedom. A statement by Geoffroy defending his decision can be found here, while a statement by Gonzalez disputing the decision can be found here.
UPDATE (12:45 pm): Within the hour of our posting of this story, we received a communication from ISU's university counsel that states: "We believe we can start sending some material to you early next week, but since we don't have most of the submissions from the departments yet, I don't know how long it will take to complete the process." Well, better late than never. The power of the blogosphere is demonstrated once again! We will be interested to see how many documents we actually do receive next week.
For the past two weeks, Discovery Institute has attempted to obtain data from Iowa State University (ISU) about the record of publications and grants of those considered for tenure by the university over the past several years. Unfortunately, ISU has thus far stonewalled these requests for information, even when submitted pursuant to Iowa's open records act.
Why?
Continue reading "Iowa State University Thwarts Open Records Law in Gonzalez Case: What Does It Have to Hide? (Updated)" »
As evidence has mounted that intelligent design played a role in the denial of tenure to gifted astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University, efforts to distract attention from that fact have also increased. The latest salvo is a one-sided article in today's Des Moines Register that implies that inadequate research funding must have been the key factor. Reading like it was produced by ISU's press office, the article distorts Gonzalez's actual research funding as well as the published standards at Iowa State. The article follows unfounded speculation at various websites and blogs where some people have falsely claimed that Gonzalez had no research funding at the time he was at ISU. Here are the facts:
Continue reading "The Truth about Research Grants, Gonzalez and ISU" »
 Observational Astronomy, a peer-reviewed astronomy textbook by D. Scott Birney, Guillermo Gonzalez, and David Oesper (2nd. ed., Cambridge University Press, 2006). |
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The The Chronicle of Higher Education began its recent article on Guillermo Gonzalez’s tenure case by admitting that Dr. Gonzalez "has amassed a better publication record than almost any other member of the astronomy faculty," and that, "[a]t first glance, it seems like a clear-cut case of discrimination." But the article was desperately looking for a way to attack Gonzalez. They managed to find one astronomer (who admitted he "has not studied Mr. Gonzalez's work in detail and is not an expert on [Gonzalez’s] tenure case") who was willing to make the argument that Dr. Gonzalez’s production has "slowed down considerably" at Iowa State University (ISU), alleging that "[i]t's not clear that he started new things" since joining ISU. What an incredibly false pair of accusations against Dr. Gonzalez.
One of Dr. Gonzalez’s recent accomplishments at ISU that has received less attention is his co-authorship of a prestigiously published astronomy textbook, Observational Astronomy. Published by Cambridge University Press and also peer-reviewed, the textbook is used in Dr. Gonzalez’s own department to teach astronomy. Aside from his own department, universities internationally use Observational Astronomy, including University of Toronto, New Jersey’s Science & Technology University, University of Manitoba, Valparaiso University, and Franklin and Marshall College. Prestigious textbook authorship is a new avenue of scholarship for Dr. Gonzalez since he joined ISU. How can his critics sustain the claim that he has not "started new things" at ISU?
Continue reading "Does Leading Your Department & Co-Authoring a Peer-Reviewed Cambridge University Press Textbook Mean You’ve "Slowed Down"?" »
Not so fast, say disabilities advocates Andrew J. Imparato and Anne C. Sommers of the American Association of People With Disabilities. In their Washington Post article, "Haunting Echoes of Eugenics," the two authors describe, among other things, the terrible campaign to eliminate persons with Down syndrome before they ever arrive.
Continue reading "Eugenics is over...right?" »
Action Item:
Help Guillermo Gonzalez in his fight for academic freedom. Contact ISU President Gregory L. Geoffroy at (515) 294-2042 or email him at president@iastate.edu and let him know that you support academic freedom for Dr. Gonzalez to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Guillermo Gonzalez, the pro-intelligent design astronomer recently denied tenure by Iowa State University (ISU), ranks the highest in his department according to a key measure of the scientific impact of his work calculated using the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS), a widely used database tracking published scientific research in astronomy.
How frequently a scientist’s work is cited by other scientists is an important indicator of the impact the scientist is having on the scientific community. The Smithsonian/NASA data system allows one to compute a "normalized" citation count that corrects for inflated citation rates caused by articles with multiple authors. In the normalized citation count, an article published by a scientist with many co-authors is weighted less than an article authored by the scientist alone.
Continue reading "Pro-Intelligent Design Astronomer Denied Tenure Ranks Top in His Department According to Smithsonian/NASA Database" »
An extremely important measure of a scientist's reputation is the impact his or her research is having upon a field as measured by the number of citations to that scientist’s work in research articles by other scientists. In short, the more times a scientist’s work has been cited by others, the greater the impact of his work on his particular field. By this standard, Iowa State University (ISU) astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez has performed incredibly well, despite his denial of tenure by ISU.
Gonzalez joined ISU in 2001, and for his publications since 2001 he has the highest normalized citation count of all astronomers in his department, including both tenured and untenured faculty! Moreover, despite the fact that he is much younger than many of the tenured faculty members in the department, he has the second highest lifetime normalized citation count among all astronomers in his department.
Normalized citation counts for ISU astronomers are reflected in the graphs below:
Continue reading "Guillermo Gonzalez Has Highest Normalized Citation Count among ISU Astronomers for Publications Since 2001 " »
It’s clear from the ideologically motivated attacks on Dr Guillermo Gonzalez, an assistant professor of astronomy and co-author of The Privileged Planet, that scientists who acknowledge the evidence for design in the universe are not welcome as tenured members of the Iowa State University faculty.
Anti-design scientists and bloggers have admitted publicly that they will continue to exclude intelligent design scientists from academia. Yet in the 20th century many of the advances in the understanding of our universe were accompanied by vigorous open discussion of the design implications of cosmological theories.
Continue reading "Dark Matter: Blacklist at Iowa State" »
Action Item:
Help Guillermo Gonzalez in his fight for academic freedom. Contact ISU President Gregory L. Geoffroy at (515) 294-2042 or email him at president@iastate.edu and let him know that you support academic freedom for Dr. Gonzalez to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Here is a recap of the major developments this week in the Guillermo Gonzalez tenure case:
1. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that Gonzalez ranks first among his astronomer colleagues at ISU according to the "h-index" statistic, which seeks to measure how widely a scientist's articles are cited by other scientists. According to the Chronicle, “Mr. Gonzalez has a normalized h-index of 13, the highest of the 10 astronomers in his department. The next closest was Lee Anne Willson, a university professor who had a normalized h-index of 9.”
2. It was revealed that at same time ISU denied tenure to Gonzalez this past spring, the university promoted to full professor his chief academic persecutor, atheist professor Hector Avalos, who believes that the Bible is worse than Hitler's Mein Kampf.
3. The world's preeminent science journal, Nature, featured the Gonzalez case in an article in its news section. In the article, Gonzalez's former post-doctoral advisor at the University of Texas, Austin, is quoted as saying: "He is one of the best postdocs I have had” and "I would have said he was a serious tenure candidate."
4. U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Sam Brownback issued a statement defending Gonzalez's right to academic freedom, while Darwinist academics vociferously advocated blacklisting pro-intelligent design scientists from academia.
5. ISU spokesman John McCarroll continued to invent facts in his effort to defend the tenure denial, this week claiming that a professor's publications prior to being hired by ISU aren't considered during the tenure process. Asked to provide documentation for this latest claim, McCarroll declined to respond.
If you have just heard about this story, you should check out the key developments from last week, which included the admission by two members of Gonzalez's department that intelligent design played a role in his tenure denial, and the release of tenure statistics showing that ISU approved 91% of its tenure applications this year. In addition, tenure standards for ISU's Department of Physics and Astronomy revealed that outside research funding was not a stated criterion for tenure decisions in the department.
Since Randy Olson’s film “Flock of Dodos” was shown on Showtime this week, we thought it worth re-highlighting material discussing Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings. "Flock of Dodos" and Randy Olson’s statements have tried to rewrite history by claiming that Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings have never been used in modern textbooks to promote evolution in the present day. His argument is that either (1) the drawings were never in textbooks, or, when that argument doesn’t work, he falls back on his old claim that (2) the drawings were in textbooks, but they were used only to provide a historical context of evolutionary thought. Both arguments are easily demonstrated to be false.
Continue reading "The Textbooks Don’t Lie: Haeckel’s Faked Drawings Have Been Used to Promote Evolution: Miller & Levine (1994) (Part I)" »
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