Posted on 07/11/2005 6:48:41 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Discovery Institute [of Seattle] has filed a public records request with the Ohio State University (OSU) seeking all documents related to Darwinist attacks on OSU doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard. The request was submitted under the Ohio Public Records Act.
In June, Leonard's dissertation defense in the area of science education was suddenly postponed after three Darwinist professors [O the horror!] at OSU attacked Leonard's dissertation research because it analyzed how teaching students evidence for and against macroevolution impacted student beliefs. According to a news report in The Columbus Dispatch, the professors admitted at the time that they had not read Leonard's dissertation.
"We are concerned that Leonard is being targeted for unfair and possibly illegal treatment because of his viewpoint about evolution, in violation of his First Amendment rights," said Dr. John West, Associate Director of the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute.
"We are further concerned that university officials may have been improperly influenced in their actions by outside Darwinist pressure groups who are trying to destroy Leonard's career because of his support for teaching scientific criticisms of Darwin's theory."
Leonard, who is a high school biology teacher as well as a graduate student, helped draft Ohio's innovative "Critical Analysis of Evolution" lesson plan adopted last year for use in schools statewide by the Ohio State Board of Education. In May of 2005, Leonard also testified in favor of new science standards being drafted in Kansas that would cover scientific criticisms of evolutionary theory.
"It looks an awful lot like Leonard is being targeted for payback," said West.
The public records request was submitted by attorney Seth Cooper, a Senior Program Analyst in Public Policy & Legal Affairs at Discovery Institute.
"We are requesting all communications to and from university officials involving Mr. Leonard's Ph.D. candidacy in order to determine if university officials have violated his rights," said Cooper. "We also want to determine the extent to which university actions may have resulted from a coordinated campaign by outside pressure groups to deprive Leonard of his academic freedom and his constitutional rights."
For sure.
I don't speak law, but I can't imagine how this could possibly have any relevance to the First Amendment. Lenard has not been prevented from following his religious convictions, nor has he been silenced.
The First does not give a right to bring un-scientific religious ideas into a university and demand a graduate degree for espousing them. Particularly when breaking committee composition rules are the basis of action against Lenard. The professors did not comment on Lenards religious ideas, nor seek to gag him, thus the First is irrelevant.
The legal system may eventually rule in Lenards favor based on the First. But the legal system has been veering away from the clear meaning of the Constitution for decades now, so I wouldn't be surprised.
On a second subject, you discussed the possibility of a class action by Kansas students because of the state's new policy on teaching evolution. I believe there would be a cause of action, because Kansas students will face uphill battles being admitted into quality out-of-state universities.
The case you mentioned of the student who had problems getting a biology degree because he would not accept evolution will be compounded to every Kansas student. The specific biology student may have won his case after litigation, but that option will not be possible for every student with a Kansas home address, and thus they will suffer material damage.
On a third subject, you've reposted the paragraph from the Discovery Institute's press release claiming that Lenard has been damaged by publicity from the three professors who opined against his degree process. The professors did not "publicize" their opinions. They expressed them privately to the university, and a reporter got them under a public documents request. Their discussions on privately operated blog sites may be another matter, but the fact that the reporter wrote a story based on government documents legally obtained is not a cause of action against the professors. They were merely doing their job of maintaining high academic standards.
No, the attacks on Leonard are based on the composition of his committee. Did you miss that somewhere?
I'm sure the attorneys will work at that. And they may succeed. But I honestly can't imagine that the professors motive was to attack Leonards religious beliefs, but rather to defend science against the ongoing attack from religious zealots.
For the Intelligent Design community the case itself would open the door to make two points a matter of legal record - 1) that the Intelligent Design hypothesis is factually not religion and 2) that regarding it as such at the university level results in religious discrimination.
I suppose an OJ Jury in Kansas could decide anything, but no honest person could believe that Intelligent Design is separate from religious creationism. A great many people publicly espousing ID claim they are the same, despite the evidence at hand of a deliberate conspiracy on the part of the Discovery Institute to claim ID and creationism are separate.
Once your point 1) is falsified, then 2) is irrelevant.
The sad thing in this whole case is that science has been dragged into the black hole of the legal community in an issue over what is scientifically true, or not true. This is a sad day for science, which many in the ID community have publicly said they desired. IDers are making progress via the law what they cannot do via truth.
"...after three Darwinist professors [O the horror!] at OSU..."
The horror is not what they believe, it is what they are saying, without merit.
You are whining. Buck up.
The Axson case didn't get far in the trial court either, but it won on appeal. And various appeals court decisions which I have read do cite decisions of other appeals courts. Perhaps they are trying to avoid having the Supreme Court settle disputes between the circuits?Or there is no fundamental disagreement, even if they take slightly different views on things. If there is no fundamental disagreement among the Circuits, the USSC has little reason to look at it.
IMHO, Leonard's attorneys will work diligently to establish that the agents of the university were motived by their desire to punish him for his religious beliefs which they wrongfully equate to Intelligent Design. If the agents have continually asserted that Intelligent Design is really creationism, it makes the case for the plaintiff, IMHO.Actually, I think that one of the major (and probably insurmountable) problems in prosecuting this case would be the ID community's repeated assertions that ID is scientific and not religious. Since that is the case, one of the university's strongest defenses is to simply say that they discriminated against him, but not for his religious views, but because of the fact that they don't believe that ID is good science, regardless of whether they think it is religion or not. They say, "We took him at his word that ID is science. Fine. But as science, we found it woefully inadequate, and unworthy of a degree.."
There absolutely nothing illegal in discriminating against someone on the basis of the belief that they are bad at science. It is only when there is an anti-religious animus element is included that there is a constitutional violation.
For the Intelligent Design community the case itself would open the door to make two points a matter of legal record -
1) that the Intelligent Design hypothesis is factually not religion and
2) that regarding it as such at the university level results in religious discrimination.
Perhaps that is the motivation, but I don't think these conclusions would necessarily follow. It is not relevant from a legal standpoint wither ID is religious or scientific, in fact (and the court would probably punt on that question anyway.) The issue is solely what motivated the negative actions.
The university could think that ID is religion, but at the same time, fire someone because the university also believe ID is bad science. If it is unlawful discrimination to fire someone based on the fact that ID is bad science, even if you also believe it to be religious in nature.
I expect that showing that you reasonably should have known that your statements were, in fact, false would make a decent presentation as far as "malice" is concerned - willful ignorance of the truth, as opposed to willful deception, will likely not get you a pass. Of course, this is all still predicated on the statement(s) being actually false.Not "reasonably should have known", that's a negligence standard. The standard is "reckless disregard". You basically have to have had clear reason to know it was false, but willfully ignored that reason when no one in their right mind would have done so, or basically not cared whether you are printing fact or lie, with your failure to make any inquiries into truthfulness being inexcusable under any circumstances.
But you are right, the threshold question is "is there a false statement?"
That's your opinion. Mine differs somewhat. After discovery we'll know who is right.
Did you miss that somewhere?
Actually I've stated that the composition of his commitee violates the rules as set forth by the Science Education program nested within the College of Education. So the evidence is pretty clear. I didn't miss that somewhere.
The questions in that area is why that was allowed to happen and continue for several years and was it common practice in that program. If it was, then we have a case of selective enforcement which would probably help his tort with a jury.
But the bigger question is the attacks on his dissertation by university actors accusing him of “unethical human subject experimentation” without having read the dissertation while the fact that the Ohio Board of Ed has set forth policy consistent with what these actors have deemed unethical. In essence they have bit the hand that feeds them, public money.
No, this is incorrect. The burden of proof is always on the plaintiff to prove their case. And again, I think that you are missing the distinction between making a statement of fact about another person, and expressing an opinion. As far as I can tell, the professors expressed their opinions or concerns on the issue, and not statements of fact.
Regardless of all that, it seems as though you are advocating that Leonard should somehow be protected from dissenting opinions by the law. This is how I see the situation: Leonard put himself and his dissertation out there to begin with, which opened the topic for a little First Amendment candor. He was the one who chose to publicize himself and his dissertation process by walking into the Kansas hearings and referring extensively to his own unpublicized and undefended research. Now he's whining about the attention he got. Wah, wah, wah, cry me a river.
If you don't want public attention, then don't put yourself in the public eye. He made his bed, now he has to lie in it.
This has already been addressed by the Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard.
But one quick comment. I believe that if the question of whether ID was religion ever was litigated in court, that the evidence would show that ID=religion.
First, there is zero affirmative evidence of a designer, but instead negative evidence against evolution is used to argue the point. Anything can be argued *against*, but without any evidence whatsoever *for* something, then the something is not proved. Evolution could perhaps be disproved utterly, but without evidence of a designer, ID is not proved.
Without evidence for a designer, belief that there is one can only be defined as "religion".
Evidence of a nearly 1 to 1 correlation of people who claim that there is a designer also have a specific diety in mind for that designer demonstrates that ID is a religion. I've seen some loudly claim that they are "not Christian" or follow any other organized faith, yet believe in ID. But those people are rare, and I strongly suspect that many of those are deliberatly lying because they know that it will promote the hidden agenda of their faith. And I suspect others merely have an emotional hatred of the loudly demonized "Darwinists", and thus accept ID in the same way that communists hated "capitalists" and thus accepted communism against all logic.
Got to run. Be back in the AM.
You're welcome.
Actually no, it did not win on appeal. It was remanded back to the district court, which is free to come to the same conclusions that it did before, based upon guidelines set forth in the appellate opinion. Unless it has already been retried in the district court, no one has won yet.
The main difference between the "intellectual dishonesty" of the creationists and that of the "Darwinists" (a terrible term, BTW. Almost nobody really believes that Darwin's theory is correct) is that when the dihonesty is exposed, those who support evolution cease to use the dishonest information to support evolution (not to mention that it is invariably EVOLUTIONISTS themselves who expose the dishonesty) whereas creationists tend to continue to use the dishonesty in support of creationism.
It does not address the Intelligent Design hypothesis at all, it deals with teaching "creation science".
How exactly is posting a Native American creation story an ad hominem attack? Who is being personally attacked here? I believe that the point Coyoteman makes is that there's no objective reason to reject this story and accept the Christian creation story; it's just a matter of faith, and that those who support the teaching of creationism in schools would be hypocritical not to support the teaching of other creation stories such as the posted one. This is certainly not an ad hominem attack; it's a point that, if wrong, needs to be refuted by creationists.
If they have always consistently said prior to their actions that intelligent design is religion, no jury is going to buy into the idea that they switched horses in midstream and were regarding intelligent design as science at the moment they acted.
Precisely what are "Maxwell's Three Laws"? I have never heard of them. I have heard of Maxwell's equations of electrodynamics, of which there are four, and which are completely irrelevant for evolution. I also have heard of the laws of thermodynamics, which again do nothing to prevent the occurrance of evolution, so I am confused by your post.
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