Des Moines Register Reveals New Information about Gonzalez Tenure Denial

Today’s Des Moines Register has an article highlighting the growing controversy over the denial of tenure to gifted astronomer Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University (ISU). The story is remarkably fair and accurate as far as it goes, and it reveals that the approval rate for tenure applications in Gonzalez’s department over the past ten years has approached 70%! So much for the claim that tenure at ISU is particularly hard to get. Unfortunately, what the article doesn’t do is give any information about Dr. Gonzalez’s outstanding scholarly record—such as the fact that his work has been recognized in Science, Nature, Scientific American, and many other top science publications; or the fact that he is co-author of a major Read More ›

Iowa State Professor Who Was Denied Tenure Exceeds Department’s Tenure Standard by 350%

So just why was gifted astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University denied tenure? Certainly not because he hasn’t fulfilled his university’s tenure standards for excellence in research. According to his own department’s standards, to be promoted to associate professor (with tenure), excellence sufficient to lead to a national or international reputation is required and would ordinarily be shown by the publication of approximately fifteen papers of good quality in refereed journals. So how many refereed articles has Gonzalez published? Ten? Twelve? Fifteen? Twenty? Actually, he has published 68 articles in refereed journals, thus exceeding his own department’s normal standard for research excellence by 350%! (Unfortunately, the Ames Tribune story about the denial of tenure to Gonzalez wrongly reports that Read More ›

Wikipedia “Intelligent Design” Entry Selectively Cites Poll Data to Present Misleading Picture of Support for Intelligent Design

I recently discussed how Wikipedia has inaccurate information on intelligent design, or constantly rebuts (fallaciously) the claims of ID proponents. This post looks at merely two sentences out of the long Wikipedia entry on intelligent design and finds inaccuracy, misrepresentation, bias, and hypocrisy. These two sentences come from Wikipedia’s discussion of polls and intelligent design. Wikipedia presently states: According to a 2005 Harris poll, ten percent of adults in the United States view human beings as “so complex that they required a powerful force or intelligent being to help create them”.[17] Although some polls commissioned by the Discovery Institute show more support, these polls have been criticized as suffering from considerable flaws, such as having a low response rate (248 Read More ›

University of Missouri Doctor Lectures on Design

It looks like CSC contributor Michael Egnor is not the only professor of medicine to stick his neck out for intelligent design and face severe personal attack. Dr. John Marshall of The University of Missouri–Columbia lectured this week on his own campus with the title “Intelligent Design: Is It Science or Religion?”

I stand corrected on David Brooks

Recently I shared my reading of David Brooks’ recent colum “The Age of Darwin.” The whole thing read like parody to me. I thought for sure that Brooks could not seriously write that, while we are generally post-modern people who are skeptical of metanarratives, we have and should abandon this view because Darwinism is the true metanarrative of life. I thought he was just pointing out the contradiction in academia between postmodern and Darwinian thought. With thanks to one ENV reader named Oleg, I stand corrected. I had forgotten that Mr. Brooks shared his views on Darwinism in The New Republic in 2005: