Category: Culture
Chronicle of Higher Education Promotes Misinformation about Guillermo Gonzalez’s Publication Rate
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 Read More ›
Recent Comments on Flock of Dodos at Telic Thoughts
Links with more Information: Hoax of Dodos, a response to inaccuracies in Flock of Dodos Haeckel’s Bogus Embryo Drawings (Clip on YouTube) There is a thread at Telic Thoughts discussing the Flock of Dodos [FOD] film where I posted a comment last week. I posted the comment after a commenter named “Randy” asked a question about Discovery Institute’s responses to the film. I repost the comment below because it clearly explains my position regarding the film, and also provides various useful links for interested readers to visit for more information: An early commenter named “Randy” asked an interesting question. Having watched FOD a few times now, I understand that many people (including me) will enjoy its humor and its apparent Read More ›
New Law Review Articles Discuss Teaching Evolution: Darwinist Law Professor Supports Censorship of ID Ideas
In a recent law review article in Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, Stephen A. Newman, law professor at New York Law School, provides a wonderful example of how prevalent among some academics is the idea that it is acceptable and appropriate to censor intelligent design ideas. Newman writes: Consider the experience of two librarians who received copies of two intelligent design books, Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe and Darwin on Trial by Philip [sic] Johnson, as donations to their high school collections. When the librarians refused to put the books on the school library shelves, they were accused of censorship. In fact, exercising their professional judgment, they concluded that these books had “little or no value to our Read More ›
Would Galileo Side With John Hauptman or Guillermo Gonzalez?
We’ve recently discussed Iowa State University physicist John Hauptman’s prejudice against ID-proponents which was printed in the Des Moines Register. In response to our article observing misrepresentations of Guillermo Gonzalez’s arguments, David Deming, geologist and geophysicist and associate professor at the University of Oklahoma, sent some enlightening comments that further respond to Hauptman’s op-ed against Guillermo Gonzalez. Part of Dr. Deming’s comments are reprinted below: It certainly must have been a profound embarrassment for the Iowa State president to issue a press release stating ID had nothing to do with the tenure decision on the same day that Hauptman published a confession that it was the essentially the only reason he voted against Gonzalez’s tenure. I saw your most recent Read More ›
Montana Law Review Features Exchange over Kitzmiller Intelligent Design Decision
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).