Replies

Even before finding out Mims was a creationist, I was disinclined to accept his account, on the basis of the selectivity of his citations. However, upon reading Pianka's homepage, I have to admit that his ideas on population control are decidedly outre, although his knowledge of population science itself is perfectly sound. Pianka should be well aware that they will lead themselves to misinterpretation if he fails to successfully articulate them, and that appears to be what has happened here. And there's no doubt that he's an excellent teacher: here's some of the glowing praise he has received from students.

What I find most interesting is that many of those jumping to defend Pianka now had, almost exactly a year ago, attacked-hell, eviscerated- Larry Summers on the basis of equally biased and out-of-context hearsay.

I was suspicious of Mims' comments as well. The "standing ovation" seemed to be a weird response and I figured he was misrepresenting it.

But to be honest, if he's only saying that population implosion is inevitable (remember Marx was "only" saying that Communism was inevitable) a lot of his students are getting the same mistaken idea. If you go to the link to the evaluations web page (Is one supposed to post such things on the web? It seems pretty obnoxious to me.) you will see the following in Fall 2004:

"Being of the same mindset as you, Dr. Pianka, I greatly appreciate your dedication to educating the university's undergrads about the plight of the earth and how wholly it is underscored by economic goals and successes. The only path to change is education." [This sounds like a political advocacy class to me.]
"I have a much greater empathy for those non-human creatures who are suffering. Much of the info you taught is swept under the rug by politicians and corporations, and I am sad that it took an upper division college course to show me how important this is. I watch commercials with fear seeing all the new disposable products I will not buy. I am not writing this because I did well in this class (I HOPE to get a C!). I was truly touched by your dogma." [I guess the student doesn't realize the irony of the last sentence.]
"I don't root for ebola, but maybe a ban on having more than one child. I agree . . . too many people ruining this planet."
"Though I agree that convervation biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90% of the human population should die of ebola is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness. I found Pianka to be knowledgable, but spent too much time focusing on his specific research and personal views."

From Spring 2004:

"Dr. Pianka, Very interesting lectures. You were intimidating enough to make me actually listen. This class elaborated a lot on former evolution classes I have taken. I definately won't have a ton of kids now, to keep the population down for the good of the future planet. "
"Prof. Pianka is an excellent professor. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a lecture as much as his. He is opinionated, and I really enjoyed that. Not enough profs are so willing to express their beliefs so openly and bluntly."
"I really enjoyed the class. You put a whole new perspective on how humans fit in the world."

If he's playing intellectual parlour games, he's a particularly actor.

And I should say this: He's a popular teacher, not necessarily a good one.

I'd definitely encourage you to take note of any student comment that mentions "math" or "equations". :)