Science and Culture Today | Page 1376 | Discovering Design in Nature

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.

The powers-that-be at ISU seem to be a little vexed by the attention they’re getting for denying tenure to astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez. Yesterday they released a statement regarding Dr. Gonzalez’s case, “Facts regarding the status of tenure case at Iowa State,” an unusual move on their part.

Showtime Networks will air filmmaker Randy Olson’s fanciful evolution film Flock of Dodos, apparently not realizing that key parts of the film are so wildly inaccurate that they amount to a hoax. In response, Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman has sent a letter requesting air time to respond to the film’s various false claims.

Flock of Dodos makes a number of false assertions about scientists and institutions researching the theory of intelligent design, and has drawn fire from scientists and scholars for its misrepresentations and outright inventions. Discovery’s Center for Science & Culture (CSC) has launched a webpage, www.hoaxofdodos.com, detailing the false facts in the film.

Discovery Institute sent a letter last week to Showtime Networks Chairman and CEO Matthew C. Blank outlining just a few of the film’s numerous errors.

So what is the Darwinist Amen-chorus saying about Iowa State University’s refusal to grant tenure to ID-proponent Guillermo Gonzalez? Predictably, they are in denial. According to them, intelligent design proponents may be evil and deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth, but of course Darwinists aren’t engaging in persecution when they deny them jobs, harass them, and vilify them. They are merely engaging in normal academic behavior!

This seems to be the point of Darwinist Ed Brayton’s escape-from-reality blog complaining about what he calls the “ID Persecution Complex.” In truth, however, it’s not ID proponents who suffer from a failure to accept reality, it’s the Darwinists. Darwinists like Brayton exhibit symptoms of what might be called Darwinist Denial Syndrome: When confronted with evidence of discrimination against an ID proponent, they deny, deny, deny.

The Associated Press is now covering the denial of tenure Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University, filing a fair-minded and generally accurate article that mentions some of Dr. Gonzalez’s scientific accomplishments and discusses the surrounding context of intolerance.