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why did he ask.?; are you guys sinister or just lazy.? lol
Topic Started: May 13 2009, 10:32 PM (178 Views)
the breeze
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the breeze
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Why Did He Ask?

Is Ken sinister, or just lazy?

We received this sentence fragment and question from Ken:

Since your website www.ScienceAgainstEvolution.org is science based. Who are the PhD biologists that support it?



That’s all he wrote. We replied with our standard answer. “We don't provide any information on our members.”

Later, we gave his email more thought, wondering why anyone would ask such a question. We came up with two possibilities.

Perhaps he asked because he wanted a list of people he could persecute. Nothing can get a professor fired faster than doubting evolution. The most recent example 1 is Iowa State University astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, author of The Privileged Planet. That’s why we keep our membership list confidential. If we had given Ken a list of our contributors, he could have gone to their employers and made trouble for them.

But there is wisdom in the saying, “Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity,” so we lean toward the second possibility. Perhaps Ken is simply too dumb or lazy to think for himself. He might be content to let someone else do the thinking, and accept whatever a smart person tells him.

There are people who believe something simply because it is said by a scientist, rabbi, priest, imam, minister, witch doctor, Republican, or Democrat. People who do this are easily led astray. Of all these authorities, the scientist is the easiest to check out. The scientist should have some experimental data upon which he bases his opinion. A wise person examines the data and decides if the scientist’s conclusion is reasonable or not.

What Ken apparently failed to realize is that the name of our corporation is “Science Against Evolution,” not “Biologists Against Evolution.” We never cite personal authority as the reason for believing anything. Instead, we cite published secular scientific research.

Yes, we do tell you who did the research, but our intention is not convince you of its accuracy based on that person’s reputation. We tell you the scientists’ names because we want you to be able to look up the references, and check to make sure we have quoted them accurately. We want you to know that we aren’t making up the foolish things evolutionists say. We want you to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.

Evolutionists know that if you examine the theory of evolution for yourself, you are likely to reject it. That’s why they are so desperate to censor the science curriculum in public schools.

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ngc1514
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Don't you get tired of posting obviously false info, breezy. Posting and being caught doing so?

The Gonzalez case is well-known on both sides of the evolution debate and there is nothing sinister in denying a professor tenure if the circumstances warrant.

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One of Gonzalez's colleagues, physics professor Joerg Schmalian wrote "To deny tenure to a colleague is a very painful experience. It literally causes sleepless nights to those who are forced to make a responsible decision. Faculty candidates who are being hired in our department always come with promising backgrounds and terrific accomplishments. The decision to recommend or deny tenure is then predominantly based on research performance while at Iowa State. As far as I can judge, this was no different in Gonzalez's case. What I know with certainty is that Gonzalez's views on intelligent design, with which I utterly disagree, had no bearing whatsoever on my vote on his tenure case."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_Gonzalez_(astronomer)#Iowa_State_University_tenure_denial

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The Discovery Institute is currently making hay (again) over Iowa State's decision to deny tenure to Discovery Institute Fellow Guillermo Gonzalez. They've held a press conference and issued a press release claiming to have proof that Intelligent Design was "the" issue that resulted in Gonzalez not receiving tenure. I've read the release, and I'm unconvinced.

For starters, their release relies heavily on fragmentary quotes taken from emails that they obtained through an open records inquiry. Given the notorious track record of the entire anti-evolution movement when it comes to quoting scientists, I'm somewhat reluctant to accept the quotes provided at face value, particularly since the DI has not made the full text of the sources available for examination. Even if all of the quotes the DI uses do accurately capture the spirit of the full emails they are taken from (and does anyone want to offer me odds on that), I still don't think they've made their point. At most, they've demonstrated that Intelligent Design was a factor in the decision. Since people who were involved in making the decision have already said as much publicly, that's not exactly a shocking revelation.

But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Intelligent Design was the overriding factor in the tenure decision. Heck, let's assume that it was the only factor that came into play in the tenure process. Let's pretend, in short, that the Discovery Institute has actually provided overwhelming evidence to support their argument. Let's set aside the facts and evidence that the Discovery Institute's using to support their claims, and look instead at the truly strange nature of the claims themselves.

Stripped down to basics, the Discovery Institute argument comes down to this: considering Guillermo Gonzalez's Intelligent Design work when evaluating his application for tenure in an Astronomy department is inappropriate.

Let's think about what that implies, shall we? The Discovery Institute has, repeatedly, trumpeted Gonzalez's Intelligent Design work whenever anyone claims that there's a lack of evidence to support their views. They believe, at least on paper, that the pro-Intelligent Design material that Gonzalez has published is not just science, but good science. How on earth could it be wrong for a science department to take that into consideration when they are evaluating his performance as a scientist as part of a tenure review?

The real answer to that, we all know, is that it's wrong because the members of Gonzalez's department didn't think that his ID material was a factor that favored a decision to grant him tenure. But let's pretend that the reasons that the Discovery Institute offered are actually their primary objections.

Their first "reason" is that judging Gonzalez's Intelligent Design material is a violation of Gonzalez's academic freedom:
Quote:
 
The true reason his colleagues on the faculty wanted to eject Gonzalez is made clear by their private e-mails and other documents from the case. Their visceral intolerance towards intelligent design, and their litmus-test against anyone who supports the theory as unqualified to be a science educator, ensured that Dr. Gonzalez would not be evaluated fairly or impartially. In addition to their own rejection of intelligent design, Gonzalez's colleagues fretted about the impact that his support of intelligent design would have on their department -- their reputations, their ability to attract high quality graduate students, and perhaps to obtain research funding themselves.

These may seem like legitimate concerns. But universities like Iowa State contractually guarantee to protect their professors' academic freedom, and academic freedom has meaning only if it is upheld even in circumstances when guaranteeing the right of free thought costs somebody something. If a scholar like Gonzalez is "free" only to advance popular, uncontroversial ideas, that's no freedom at all.


If one were to accept the Discovery Institute's reasoning (I hesitate to use the word "logic" here), the right to academic freedom would mean that academic departments are not allowed to evaluate the quality of the academic work that members of their own department produce. That's quite simply an absurd claim. Tenure review is not supposed to consist of nothing more than counting articles - although that's apparently the only metric that the Discovery Institute wants used in this case. Tenure review is supposed to include an evaluation of the quality - not merely the quantity - of the work that's been performed.

It is clear from the fragments of email that the Discovery Institute released that Gonzalez's colleagues believed - correctly - that Intelligent Design is not science, and that if Gonzalez believes otherwise it casts doubts on his understanding of science. They were not arguing that his belief in ID should be used against him just because he believes In ID. They were arguing that Gonzalez's belief in Intelligent Design is evidence that he has an incorrect understanding of science.

If a tenure candidate at an astronomy department were to argue that the moon is made of green cheese, it would not be unreasonable for the tenure committee to question the candidate's scientific credentials - and that candidate would be making a scientific argument that could be examined experimentally. Gonzalez doesn't even have that much going for him.

The second argument that the Discovery Institute is making is even less valid than the first:

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Moreover, ISU faculty complained about Dr. Gonzalez's intelligent design work that was conducted completely outside of any relationship to ISU. First Amendment forbids a government entity like ISU from discriminating against an employee like Gonzalez on the basis not of his job performance but on that of ideas expressed outside the work environment. Dr. Gonzalez's public comments and speeches as a citizen are clearly protected not only by academic freedom but by the First Amendment. Indeed, the ISU faculty handbook states that academic freedom "is the foundation of the university." If only that were truly the case.


To demonstrate just how laughable the Discovery Institute claim that Gonzalez's pro-ID work "was conducted completely outside of any relationship with ISU" really is, we need to look no further than the "Q&A on Guillermo Gonzalez Story". This "Q&A" was authored by the Discovery Institute, and is one of the resources that they specifically refer to in their "coverage" of their new "revelations". Right near the top of page 1 of the "Q&A" you will read this:

First, ISU had previously approved and administered a grant to Gonzalez, to help write this very book The Privileged Planet supporting intelligent design from the entirely mainstream and prestigious Templeton Foundation. That demonstrates that the university had already accepted the concept behind the book as the subject for legitimate scholarship.

So in one document we see the DI arguing that Gonzalez's ID work was purely extracurricular, but in another document we have the DI arguing that Gonzalez's ID work was part of his academic work at ISU. Let's hear it for keeping the story straight, folks! Seriously, that should be game over for the "it wasn't on-the-job activity" argument right there, but let's take it a little further anyway. If Gonzalez was conducting his work on ID on his own time, and totally independently of his work at ISU, then why did the Discovery Institute mention Gonzalez's ISU affiliation again, and again, and again, and again, and again on their website, while trumpeting his work as support for their views. They can't have it both ways, particularly at this late date. It is completely unreasonable for them to use Gonzalez's credentials to lend weight to their presentation of his argument when it is convenient for him, then argue that all of that was "extracurricular" activity when the time comes for Gonzalez's colleagues to decide whether he should continue to hold those credentials.

The Discovery Institute's basic argument is clear: Intelligent Design should hold a privileged position among the sciences. Work on Intelligent Design should be considered to be legitimate scientific work, because they say it is. It is not appropriate for people to examine Intelligent Design, decide that it is scientifically vacuous, and say so publicly. Doing so demonstrates ideological bias, which is wrong. That argument is nonsense, of course, but it's clearly what the DI wants to see happen.


http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2007/12/the_discovery_institute_and_th.php

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