Casey Luskin

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 ›

Links with more Information:Hoax of Dodos, a response to inaccuracies in Flock of DodosHaeckel’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:

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 ›

Does Panda’s Black Box really contribute something new or is it just more Darwinist “name-calling and fingerpointing”? A book has come out about intelligent design, published by Johns Hopkins University Press and titled The Panda’s Black Box, that promises on its dust-jacket that it “moves beyond mere name-calling and fingerpointing.” Does it live up to its promise? Let’s look at some of the statements in the book to find out. We’ll start with my favorite quote, by bioethicist Jane Maienschein: “There is no doubt, there is no evidence against evolution, and there is no controversy about the science of evolution.” Just keep repeating that to yourself over and over again until you believe it. Other examples include Scott F. Gilbert’s Read More ›

Two new law review articles were recently published in Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion discussing the teaching of evolution. Asma T. Uddin authored an article entitled, “Evolution Disclaimers, Establishment Jurisprudence Confusions, and a Proposal of Untainted Fruits of a Poisonous Tree,” which aimed to “determine the constitutionality of disclaimers” regarding the teaching of evolution. The second article, “Evolution and the Holy Ghost of Scopes: Can Science Lose the Next Round,” by New York Law School professor Stephen A. Newman, provides a shimmering example of how mainstream academics support blatant censorship of the pro-intelligent design viewpoint. A series of two posts will discuss these articles. Disclaiming Disclaimers I’ve discussed recently why think textbook disclaimers are not an effective way to Read More ›

The Privileged Planet argues for design based upon a testable prediction of a convergence of the requirements for both habitability and scientific discovery. Rob Crowther recently discussed the intolerance of ISU physicist John Hauptman’s Des Moines Register op-ed that supported ousting ID-proponents from the academy.  Hauptman is a member of Guillermo Gonzalez’s department at ISU who voted against Dr. Gonzalez because Gonzalez believes ID is science.  Hauptman justifies his intolerance by claiming that “Intelligent design is not even a theory. It has not made its first prediction, nor suffered its first test by measurement.”  (In fact, Hauptman holds scientific theories to a very high standard, writing, “Any single wrong prediction, and you must junk the theory.” If that’s the case, Read More ›

Links of Interest: Hoax of Dodos, a response to inaccuracies in Flock of DodosHaeckel’s Bogus Embryo Drawings (Clip on YouTube) As noted recently, we are presently highlighting some textbooks that use Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings to promote evolution. These textbooks use Haeckel’s drawings to assert that they represent factual evidence for evolution in the present-day. “Flock of Dodos” film producer Randy Olson has claimed that either (A) the fraudulent drawings haven’t been used in any modern textbooks, or alternatively, if that argument fails, then (B) when they are used, it isn’t to promote evolution, but simply to demonstrate some kind of historical perspective on the development of evolutionary thought. This post will discuss one recently-published textbook, Peter H Raven & Read More ›

The The Chronicle of Higher Education began its recent article on Guillermo Gonzalez’s tenure case by admitting that Dr. Gonzalez “has amassed a better publication record than almost any other member of the astronomy faculty,” and that, “[a]t first glance, it seems like a clear-cut case of discrimination.” But the article was desperately looking for a way to attack Gonzalez. They managed to find one astronomer (who admitted he “has not studied Mr. Gonzalez’s work in detail and is not an expert on [Gonzalez’s] tenure case”) who was willing to make the argument that Dr. Gonzalez’s production has “slowed down considerably” at Iowa State University (ISU), alleging that “[i]t’s not clear that he started new things” since joining ISU. What Read More ›

An extremely important measure of a scientist’s reputation is the impact his or her research is having upon a field as measured by the number of citations to that scientist’s work in research articles by other scientists. In short, the more times a scientist’s work has been cited by others, the greater the impact of his work on his particular field. By this standard, Iowa State University (ISU) astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez has performed incredibly well, despite his denial of tenure by ISU. Gonzalez joined ISU in 2001, and for his publications since 2001 he has the highest normalized citation count of all astronomers in his department, including both tenured and untenured faculty! Moreover, despite the fact that he is much Read More ›