Science and Culture Today | Page 1367 | Discovering Design in Nature

There has been much unfounded speculation this week about the specific standards governing astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez’s application for tenure at Iowa State University. Some have claimed, for example, that outside research grants must be a primary criterion for tenure at ISU. Unfortunately, the specific tenure and promotion standards adopted by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at ISU have not been available online. So we have decided to make them available for download here so that people can read the standards for themselves. These standards make clear that the key criterion for research excellence in Dr. Gonzalez’s department is the number of refereed papers, not the level of outside funding:

Evaluation of research ability is based primarily upon published papers in refereed journals…. (p. 4)

According to a story to be published in the May 26 edition of World Magazine (already available online here), two faculty members of the department that denied tenure to Guillermo Gonzales at Iowa State University have admitted that his work on ID played a role in the denial. While Prof. Eli Rosenberg, Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, insisted to the magazine that intelligent design “was not an overriding factor” (emphasis added), he then conceded according to the magazine that Gonzalez’s pro-ID book The Privileged Planet “played into the decision-making process. He also explained that the reputation of a professor among others in his field is a significant factor.” Of course, if “reputation” is used as a code word for whether one’s views are popular among fellow scientists, then this is another way anti-ID bias entered into the decision.

But Rosenberg is not the only department member who admitted that intelligent design played a role in the tenure decision.

It seems like just yesterday that University of Minnesota biologist P.Z. Myers, who runs what Nature declared to be the #1 science blog, admitted, “I get to vote on tenure decisions at my university, and I can assure you that if someone comes up who claims that ID ‘theory’ is science, I will vote against them.” As Iowa State University (ISU) has denied tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez, possibly due to his views on intelligent design, pro-ID biologist Mike Gene has provided insightful commentary on the situation: “[T]his issue has become larger than Guillermo Gonzalez’s situation, so it won’t matter when the official reasons for denial are eventually supplied. What matters is that the academics have gone on record and given Read More ›

My friend and colleague John West wrote an essay recently commenting on my post about the link between Darwinism and eugenics. He raised some very important points, with which I agree, and I’d like to clarify my view and clarify our fundamental agreement.

A distinguished science professor at a major American university has weighed in on Iowa State University’s denial of tenure to pro-ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, expressing astonishment at the result. According to Dr. Robert J. Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University: I went to the Web of Science citation index which is the authority on citations. Only journal papers, not conference papers, are indexed. There are lots of Prof. Gonzalez’s papers listed. My jaw dropped when I saw one of his papers has 153 citations and 139 on another. I have sat on oodles of tenure committees at both a large private university and a state research university, chaired the university tenure committee, and have seen Read More ›

Two of the five active tenured astronomy professors in the department that denied tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University are connected to a widely-publicized statement that denounces intelligent design as “creationist pseudoscience.” Professor Steven Kawaler, the Program Coordinator for astronomy in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at ISU, actually signed the statement, and he provides a link to both the statement and an article about it on his website. University Professor Lee Anne Willson, meanwhile, is married to ISU mathematics professor Stephen J. Willson, who also signed the anti-ID statement.Known as “Project Steve,” the anti-ID statement was the brainchild of the pro-Darwin National Center for Science Education. The statement declares that “it is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically Read More ›

Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Iowa State University (ISU).

Born in Havana, he and his family fled from Cuba to the United States in 1967, where he earned a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Washington in 1993. Author of nearly 70 peer-reviewed scientific papers and co-author of a major college-level astronomy textbook, Dr. Gonzalez’s work led to the discovery of two new planets, and his research has been featured in Science, Nature, and on the cover of Scientific American.

Dr. Gonzalez’s Scientific Research

In late 1995, Dr. Gonzalez began working on a series of projects examining stars with planets to see what sorts of properties they exhibited. This has been a major part of Dr. Gonzalez’s scientific research, and he has published twelve articles in peer-reviewed science journals on the subject and continues to research new planets and systems. Dr. Gonzalez’s research in this area led his research team to the discovery of what is known as the Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ), a term Dr. Gonzalez coined.

The Ames, Iowa Tribune is now calling for an explanation from Iowa State University’s president about the recent denial of tenure to pro-ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez. It seems clear that the hard questions being raised about Gonzalez’s case aren’t about to go away.

Iowa State University has attempted to defend its denial of tenure to widely-published pro-ID astronomer Guillmero Gonzalez by insisting earlier this week that tenure is hard to get at ISU. Indeed, according to a statement about the Gonzalez case posted on ISU’s home page, tenure

is a high standard of excellence and achievement — so high, that many good researchers have failed to satisfy the demands of earning tenure.

So just how “many” is “many”? Not very many, it turns out. We requested data from ISU on the number of tenure applications and rejections at the university for the past five years, and here is what we found out:

Bill Dembski has posted an excellent riposte to John Derbyshire’s recent comments at the AEI conference on Darwinism and conservatism in which George Gilder and I participated. Eventually I plan to write my own reflections about some of Derbyshire’s comments, but in the meantime Dembski hits the nail on the head.