I recently wrote about Guillermo Gonzalez, an astronomer denied tenure at Iowa State University, allegedly in part because he is a proponent of Intelligent Design. The Discovery Institute put together a self-serving press conference in Iowa recently to make some hay out of this.
Evil Monkey over at Neurotopia has a dynamite entry about all this. He really nails it. Josh from Thoughts From Kansas also has an excellent summary.
I still stick by my own conclusion too, that by trying to say that Gonzalez’s religious freedom has been curtailed, they are admitting ID is religion and not science, which they vehemently denied with the Dover case. I think if this comes to court, that’ll be a fun issue to grill them about.
December 5th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
I think if this comes to court, that’ll be a fun issue to grill them about
It won’t come to court, or at least they won’t. They’ll duck out the same way they did in Dover.
December 5th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
OH! This is the guy responsible for resurrecting that stupid anthropic principle argument.
*scales fall from eyes*
It all becomes clear. Now I can agree wholeheartedly that this sort of fruitcakiness doesn’t belong anywhere near astronomy.
December 5th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
I’m in a Devil’s Advocate mood.
If the reason for tenure denial was strictly money, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that, either. I guess I had one too many expensive graduate courses that were taught by a teacher’s aide because the professor was doing grant based research, and when I looked into the research, it was quite often really questionable or lightweight stuff.
December 5th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
QD:
Naw, it wasn’t strictly money. How I reckon it, he was a kook (he submitted Priviledged Planet as part of the materials for his tenure application? Doesn’t pass the logic test to me!) who wasn’t profitable enough to make up for his kookiness.
That’s not much of a counterargument, to be sure, but I’m decidedly cynical when it comes to academia.
December 5th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Gyaagh! Whenever these Disco Institute folks get backed into a corner, their only means of escape is to play the religious persecution card. The thing is, I suppose so long as they continue to confuse their faith with actual science, they’ll always be weeping about their contrived persecution while condemning people who’d like to see our educational institutions maintain a little academic integrity.
December 5th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Dan:
Unfortunately, I don’t think the DI is confused. They realize science is by definition philosophically materialistic and wish to change it… and everyone loves an underdog, so they whine about being repressed by mean ol’ atheist scientists. That’s not what science is supposed to be. All the great scientists in the history books, Newton, Galieo, et al were religious. Some were even properly devout. See, religion has a place in science.
Never mind that Newton never said masses attract because God pulls them together, or that Galieo never said that objects accelerate independent of weight because God makes all things equal.
December 5th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
@Quiet_Desperation: So what should they base tenure decisions on? Tenure is, even in the most ideal world, a reflection of your ability to do quality research. You cannot do research without money, period. Therefor, if you have not demonstrated your ability to bring in funding you have not demonstrated your ability to do research. No matter how good the research you did with the start-up money they gave you, if you cannot secure outside funding your research will stop dead in its tracks as soon as that start-up money runs out. Your ability to bring in money is a necessary, but not sufficient, factor for doing quality research. Now he did not have much in the way of publications since his appointment nor has he gotten any grad students through. Both of these are also reflections of his ability to do research, but no matter how good his publication record and no matter how good his grad students did if he did not have funding he would not be able to do any more research. He has to pay for grad students to do the research, pay for space, pay for telescope time, pay for equipment and software, pay, possibly, for technicians or staff, pay for office supplies, pay to go to conferences, etc. He is dead in the water without money.
December 5th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Interestingly, there has been some media coverage over the “Dino Mummy” found in South Dakota (or was it North). Anyway, I was reading the comments section, and couldn’t actually believe that people were saying the new find is a hoax to perpetuate unfounded evolution by scientists. To be a creationist means you have to willfully ignore and deny the vast evidence, such as this dinosaur find. You can not be capable of producing trustworthy research when you are willfully ignoring sound evidence against creationism. Good riddance to that “professor”, I say.
December 5th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
The crux of the DI’s argument seems to be that if you assess GG’s career absent the prejudice of his colleagues against ID and his involvement in ID, then GG has demonstrated enough excellence in his time at ISU that and fair process would have ended with him being granted tenure.
So it not just GG’s career they’re trying to ressurrect. It’s not the discrimination against GG they’re really interested in. They will want the judge to rule that GG’s work on ID must be taken into consideration (in a positive way) in his application for tenure and thus vindicating their position that ID is a valid scientific pursuit.
They will fail. At the very best, in the highly unlikely event that they win the court case, then it will be on the narrowest grounds that GG suffered a hostile workplace or some sort of discrimination. If that happens, GG will still fail to get tenure, since his record at ISU simply isn’t good enough. (That won’t stop the DI from spinning any win in court, of course, but it would be a hollow victory).
December 5th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
From what I understand, the path to tenure used to be somewhat easier until the late 60’s or early 70’s. I was in graduate school at the time and Nixon in his ‘wisdom’ started cutting research grants to companies and universities. This caused a large number of PhDs to lose their positions mainly in the private sector. A large rush of these now unemployed PhDs applied for what positions were available at universities and colleges around the country. Because of this glut, the schools made it much harder to obtain tenure and even get on the path to tenure (tenure-track). I was directly effected by this in that my major professor was denied tenure and had to find a position at another school and this happened before I obtained my degree!
So what’s happened to Gonzalez shouldn’t be too surprising since he’s not produced to the level that would even put him on the level for tenure-track even back in those days if that’s still in use at the schools nowadays!
December 5th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Whole country doomed:
Romania removes theory of evolution from school curriculum
December 5th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
So … does this mean there is now a faculty job open at ISU?
December 5th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Yeah Phil! Come get a job in the frozen wasteland! We’ll take you to dinner sometime!
-EM
December 5th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
I read the post and saw no dynamite. (Nor did I see any Uranium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulators for that matter.) ISU Physics & Astronomy faculty are state employees and their “academic freedom” to deny tenure to a colleague is not an absolute right, the elitism of some academicians notwithstanding.
December 5th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
If you weren’t such a nice guy BA, you’d make an EPIC troll. ^_^
December 5th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
You just hit the nail on the head. Intelligent Design proponents claim it’s not a religious thing. But when the the people of Dover, PA voted out the pro-ID school board, Pat Robertson said that God would unleash his vengeance on the town.
Well, if ID has nothing to do with religion, why would God care one way or another?
By the way, I just checked: Dover is still standing.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
> By the way, I just checked: Dover is still standing.
LAST TIME I CHECKED, PAT ROBERTSON DIDN’T CUT MY PAYCHECKS.
–God
December 5th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Robertson claimed that God would destroy Dover, Gov. Perdue called for State-sponsored prayer to end the drought – - hmmm what do these have in common?
Oh yeah, Dover is still perfectly intact, and the drought rolls on, essentially unabated (we’ve had a couple of insignificant drizzles).
December 5th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
They should leave these IDers alone. Our Constitution allows that anybody can believe whatever BS they want to. I think people should pick on others there own size– leave the mental midgets alone. That s what makes life interesting– whacco here, whacco there!!
Oh well, I hope he ll ——-get tenure next time around? NOT!!!
December 5th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
ISU Physics & Astronomy faculty are state employees and their “academic freedom†to deny tenure to a colleague is not an absolute right, the elitism of some academicians notwithstanding.
Nice straw man. The argument being made (by Phil and friends) is that GG’s academic work was insufficient to earn himself tenure. Faculty are well within their rights to deny tenure to colleagues who fail to meet the department’s standards. Tenure tends to be difficult to obtain — you don’t get it for being a nice guy, or even for good work done a few years back. GG is just another piece of roadkill on the road to academia; there are lots of us out there.
December 6th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Following up on Davis’s comment – at typical state universities, the tenure review process starts with the faculty in the applicant’s department (who would not only usually by very familiar with his/her research and teaching, but will have to work with the applicant for decades if tenure is granted). The department chair often submits a separate recommendation. Then these are included with a recommendation from a college-wide committee, which then gets passed up to the highest academic officer (often the provost). In an interesting twist, the final decisions on tenure and promotion (which typically happen at the same time) are often made by different officers of the University, since one is an employment (financial) decision and the other is nominally an academic issue.
On TheBlackCat’s remarks about research support – there are some (a few?) areas of astronomy where one can remain in the research game without external funding. You can usually swallow the expense of a meeting or observing run per year. However, publishing the results is a lot harder with the expense of page charges, and you will definitely not be supporting graduate students (not to mention contributing to the departmental slice of overhead money, much of which does in fact support research infrastructure such as computers, library acquisitions, and electronic journal access). On top of these factors, universities claim to be very impressed with the recognition of research prowess provided by obtaining funding via nationally peer-reviewed proposals (no matter how many times the people at the NSF say they’re tired of being de facto parts of every tenure review in th ecountry in science, it still goes on). That said, the typical funding levels vary a lot across the discipline – if you build gizmos and have to employ technicians and equip a lab as well as support students, that costs a lot more than doing theory where the major expenses are student support and travel.
December 6th, 2007 at 9:55 am
[...] over at Bad Astronomy has it a bit backwards, but hey it’s not his fault. He didn’t have to sit through that [...]