An assistant professor who supports intelligent design and was denied tenure at Iowa State University (ISU) was found to have the highest score among the entire faculty, according to the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS),which calculates the scientific impact of scientists in astronomy.Should a professor - who doesn't even teach a class on intelligent design - be denied tenure simply because he happens to believe in it? I think not....The ranking system is devised on how much a scientist impacts other colleagues’ research. The more times a person’s papers are cited in other scientific articles or research, the more weight that person receives.
The citation index is normalized since multiple people often author an article, so an article that is cited with more than one author will be weighted less than a paper which has only one author.
The score here looked at articles published from 2001-2007. Calculating Gonzalez normalized index, he received a score of 143. The next closest professor on the ISU staff had a score of 103 and the next best tenured astronomer was 68.
I had an interesting conversation last week with a good friend who is an editor for a major New York publishing house. They are considering a manuscript from a very well respected scientist about intelligent design. They have passed it around to scientists that they have worked with in the past and it has been given positive reviews - the science is strong. Now it is very important here to stress that this book is not a book about creation science. It would actually be offensive to those who believe God created the earth much as we see it now. It does argue, however, that there was a designer to this world and to all life - even if that life does have a common ancestor.
The biggest problem my friend has run into, however, is getting any of the scientists to publicly say anything good about the book. The reason? They would probably be fired from their jobs simply for saying anything positive about the book - no matter how good.
The academy should be about the free exchange of ideas - there is even a well-respected professor at Princeton who believes infanticide is tenured. Shouldn't that same free exchange of ideas and tolerance apply to someone who believes in intelligent design?
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Reddopto: "If the proposition that there is no God is no more provable philosophically than the proposition that there is a God, why must an underlying postulate for science be materialism? Certainly it's easier to limit science in that way, but why is that considered academic rigor?" Methological naturalism (aka 'science') is not the same beast as philosophical naturalism. Science is the pursuit of understanding how regular causes may operate to explain physical phenomena. As such it distinguishes between 'explained' and 'unexplained' phenomena, not 'natural' and 'supernatural' events. Supernatural events would likely fall into the 'yet unexplained' bin. This is why scientists, regardless of their personal religious beliefs, can produce the same work. Science performed by Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and atheists doesn't look all that different.
cs- I'm not sure you understand the degree of selfcontradiction Gonzalez has created for himself. It's one thing to have a private thought incongruous with your work and standing. It's another to publish a work- and publicly stand by it- that reveals a gross flaw or irreconcileable problem in your thinking. An analogy would be a Protestant minister with a church and congregation who sneaks off and attends Catholic masses. That is tolerated, even if not really condoned. But if this minister publishes writings in the local Catholic journal attacking the creed of his denomination and suggesting that his denomination was founded on a fraudulent reading of the Bible, can or should he stay installed as minister of a that congregation? Of course not. As a caveat, it is my opinion that Creationism is built into a lot of peoples' Christianity, but it isn't per se Christian. American Creationism is largely buttressed by use (or abuse) of Biblical authority. But worldwide, significant politically active Creationisms are forming in traditional African religion, Islam, and iirc Hinduism.
A the more significant point, 'pseudoscience' is really just a nice way of saying 'occultism'. Creationism as it is practiced as a contemporary belief system is an occultism. I once wrote out a complete 'proof' of it, i.e. demonstration of how it conforms to the three dogmas of occultism of Henri Constant. It's a bit long to lay out in detail in a mere'comment' post. But the three dogmas are those of existence of an 'Astral Plane'/Other World from which ours emanates, the Analogy Of Above And Below, and the Omnipotence of the trained Will. Evelyn Underhill adds a corollary in 'Mysticism and Magic', the loveless selfassurance of the true initiate- which is source of his sense of not being bound to truthfulness or account to any but his initiated equals. I'll leave it to the reader to have a look at the trial and findings in the Kitzmiller v Dover lawsuit about ID and see whether this theological frame fits. My experience says it does, but these are recorded findings in the public record, based in clearcut evidence, behaviors, and answers under oath. The case- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v_Dover Judge Jones's findings about ID and its proponents- http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District_et_al. What I find most informative about the Opinion is the clear laying out of the historical sequence of jurisprudence about Creationism between the Scopes trial and the Dover trial. My personal opinion about the creation(s) described in the Book of Genesis is that they are not about physical/material creation of the planet and lifeforms in the first place. I think they are wonderful and say something more important- that the world we live in with our bodies and by our senses is somewhat incidental, and that all significant and fully lived human life begins in 'the garden'. In the Song of Songs 'the garden' is symbol/allegory for that place in prayer in which there is spiritual encounter or presence.
dolgre wrote: ( http://www.haloscan.com/comments/jwalking/75377191973521183/#49857 ) Look, folks. Intelligent design is not Astrophysics. It's not Chemistry. It's not Geology or Biology or Genetics or any of the disciplines in the sciences. It is a mystical or religious philosophy. ... Grand Canyon look too big to you? God made it--or made it LOOK like a river wore down those cliffs. Either way, stop your silly researching and get back to the Bible, sonny. ... (I)f this guy is an ID'er, then that tells me something is terribly wrong with his qualifications as a scientist. I think Dolgre hit the nail on the head with his above post. "Intelligent design" is NOT science, no matter how fervently its followers, including those who just opened the 'creationism museum' in Kentucky want it to be. And thank you to Jillian for the links to the court case in which Judge John E. Jones put this to rest so decisively. Without this court decision, can you imagine the havoc that would have been wreaked on our schools?
Let's look at this a bit deeper, shall we? Gonzalez was denied tenure over holding controversial views in a field outside the scope of his teaching practice. Singer holds controversial views on a subject within the realm of his teaching field, bioethics. When you place these situations side by side, it is hard to avoid the impression of improper discrimination.
"Let's look at this a bit deeper, shall we? Gonzalez was denied tenure over holding controversial views in a field outside the scope of his teaching practice. Singer holds controversial views on a subject within the realm of his teaching field, bioethics. When you place these situations side by side, it is hard to avoid the impression of improper discrimination." This isn't a deeper look, it's extremely superficial. You are assuming that because the man says he was discriminated against because of his belief in ID it is the truth. I don't see any empirical evidence of that. You are also not taking into consideration the other possible variables, in either case, that may explain why one was denied tenure and the other granted it. The fact is, we certainly don't have enough information to judge.
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