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."
It's been crickets on my favorite threads too! Perhaps it's just the season or the weather - too nice perhaps to be surfing the net.
Rissing lost and now he makes stupid statements about Leonards dissertation without ever having read it. If it wasn't so pathetic it would be laughable.
????
The entity that actually grants the degree Leonard is seeking is the School of Teaching and Learning in the College of Education. Within that, the Science Education Ph.D. program requires that
Upon completion of the [candidacy] examination, the student may reorganize the committee to reflect the expertise needed for the dissertation. The dissertation committee must have at least three members: two from the science education program area and one from outside the science education program area. (Italics added)
Leonard’s final dissertation committee did not meet those requirements. It was composed of his advisor, Paul Post from the technology education program area of the section for Math, Science and Technology; Glen R. Needham of the Department of Entomology in the College of Biological Sciences; and Robert DiSilvestro of the Department of Human Nutrition in the College of Human Ecology. For the final defense an Assistant Professor from the department of French & Italian in the College of Humanities was also assigned to the committee to monitor the procedure. Thus, there were no members from the science education program area on Leonard’s final dissertation committee.
What is more noteworthy is that there are no members of Leonard’s dissertation committee who are specialists in science education or in evolutionary biology, even though Leonard’s dissertation is specifically directed at methods of teaching evolutionary biology in public school science classes. The two senior tenured members of the committee, DiSilvestro and Needham, in fact share a single salient qualification: they have both publicly associated themselves with the intelligent design creationist movement in Ohio and elsewhere.
DiSilvestro is an original signer of the Discovery Institute’s A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism statement and testified for the Intelligent Design Network at the recent Kansas Kangaroo Court hearings, as did Leonard. According to his departmental profile, DiSilvestro’s professional interests are “Nutritional biochemistry and clinical nutrition of antioxidant nutrients and phytochemicals, especially in regard to inflammatory aspects of disease and exercise recovery; mineral and phytochemical effects on weight loss.” According to a transcript of a recording supplied by an attendee, DiSilvestro told the Kansas Kangaroo Court that he doesn’t use evolutionary theory in his own research.
Needham has testified in support of IDC proposals before the Ohio State Board of Education. There is a department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology in the College of Biological Sciences, but Needham is not a member of that department. His research on ticks is only marginally related to evolution and he does not teach evolution. (See here from one of his colleagues in Entomology.)
DiSilvestro was contact person for the Ohio Intelligent Design Movement’s 52 Ohio Scientists Call for Academic Freedom on Darwin’s Theory petition, and Needham was a signer.
Leonard’s Ph.D. advisor, Paul E. Post, is primarily associated with technology education at the Ohio State University and has no visible credentials in science or science education. Post replaced Leonard’s first advisor, Paul Vellom, who was a science education specialist, when Vellom left OSU. It’s not clear why Leonard’s current Ph.D. advisor is not in his area of concentration.
As far as we are aware, DiSilvestro and Needham are the only two faculty members of the Ohio State University who have spoken publicly in support of Leonard’s approach to teaching evolution using intelligent design creationist-based materials. (Judging from the model lesson plan Leonard wrote for the Ohio State Board of Education, his materials are primarily drawn from Wells’s Icons of Evolution.) The committee deck was clearly stacked, and a “design inference” regarding the composition of Leonard’s committee seems warranted. As Michael Behe tells us
The strong appearance of design allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it’s a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it’s so obvious.
When several members of the faculty of the Ohio State University brought these and other anomalies to the attention of appropriate administrators in the Graduate School, the novice Graduate School Representative on Leonard’s Committee, the assistant professor of French & Italian, asked to be relieved, and was immediately replaced by Dr. Joan Herbers, Dean of the College of Biological Sciences and an evolutionary biologist. Shortly thereafter, Leonard’s dissertation defense was postponed, apparently at the request of Leonard’s advisor in consultation with the Math, Science and Technology Education section head.
So what we have is a graduate student, by all reports an earnest young man, who has been led down the garden path, seemingly guided by a couple of tenured ID Creationist faculty members whose anti-evolution agenda apparently overrode any commitment to the integrity of the academic process, the value of graduate education and research, or the well-being of the student. The phrase “cynical manipulation” comes to mind. Regardless of whether Leonard was a willing participant in the exercise, the tenured faculty members involved have a direct responsibility — to education, to science, to their colleagues and university, and to Leonard himself — to ensure that the integrity of the degree-granting process at the Ohio State University is maintained.
By participating in a loaded committee for his dissertation defense, Leonard’s mentors demonstrated as clearly as possible that they have no confidence in Leonard or in the academic worthiness of his dissertation. Had it been otherwise, there’d have been no need to load up his committee with ID Creationists who have no professional qualifications in the subject of Leonard’s thesis research. That behavior is of a piece with the IDC strategy of the last couple of years: fix the jury and you don’t have to worry about the merits of your position. Sternberg publishing Meyer, Sermonti publishing Wells, the Kansas Creationist Kangaroo Court, and now the Leonard affair, all demonstrate the same pattern of behavior: game the system so the fix is in, and science (and education) be damned.
Again, I aver that intentionally besmirching Leonard personally in the media (including the internet) was a huge legal misstep on the University's part. It seems like the facts speak for themselves - and both personal injury and maliciousness can be supported. When a person is intentionally injured by staff, the university cannot claim the act was academic "freedom of speech".
I'm surprised it is not already in the courts (or perhaps it is).
What do you mean by black hole?
Just keeping it real. Have a good one.
They were also selected for their expertise in their involvement with the Ohio Academic Content Science and Technology Standards. For example, Prof. Glen Needham served on the science writing advisory committee for the model science curriculum adopted last year by the Ohio State Board of Education.
I read that as selecting his allies for his committee members.
Still it's not like its a real PhD. It's education.
Bet they get away with it. Nobody noticed till too late.
What catches my eye is Rissing and his compadres issuing statements regarding the content of Leonards work without ever having read it. Smacks of bitchiness and agendas, no?
What catches my eyes are DiSilvestro and Needham gaming a system so nobody had a chance to critically review the dissertation.
Bet the kid gets his Phd but the profs get in as much trouble as tenured profs can (read not much).
If it rises to the level of academic dishonesty (in the full daylight of review) all their carriers could be over. Actually getting the doctorate could be bad for them.
Shows how our perspective affects what we read.
I'm not amazed. Evolution, a phenomena, and NS a Theory of why Evolution happens is under attack because it is filled with crappy science.
The definition of species is different for current (and testable) animals vs. the fossil record.
We have examples of cross species breeding that are being ignored by "evolutionary" biologists, instead of being heavily studied.
We have scientifically rigorous evidence that in addition to evolutionary extinction trees, there are mergers of "species" that are inconvenient to THEORIES of EVOLUTION.
We have numerous people that can't even distinguish between a theory, and a phenomena.
BRYAN LEONARD is a needed person in education.
Maybe he can get some rigor back into the soft part of biology.
My apologies to molecular biologists, hard core geneticists, and all the other hard scientists in the field. I am not talking about you.
DK
I don't think so. I read both sides of the story and concluded that the important part was three university professors trashing a students work without ever having read it. You come to a conclusion that doesn't accord with the statement above. See number 2.
Undoubtedly our world views affect our conclusions but it certainly doesn't affect what I read.
Got a couple of cans of hornet spray with ya?
Note how the Discovery Institute's version (which starts this thread) bears little resemblance to the actual facts, and contains heavy amounts of dishonest spin (typical for creationists):
[The following is from: http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/001127.html]And the followup:
ID vs. Academic Integrity: Gaming the System in Ohio
Posted by Richard B. Hoppe on June 7, 2005 12:44 PM
Bryan Leonard is a recently visible figure in the intelligent design creationism movement. Leonard is a high school biology teacher at Hilliard Davidson High School in a suburb of Columbus. As an appointee to the Ohio State BOE’s model curriculum-writing committee, he was the author of the IDC-oriented “Critical Analysis” model lesson plan adopted by the Ohio State Board of Education last year, and he recently testified at the Kansas Creationist Kangaroo Court hearings. The credential that endears him to the IDC movement is that he is a doctoral candidate in science education at the Ohio State University, and his dissertation research is on the academic merits of an ID-based “critical analysis” approach to teaching evolution in public schools.
Leonard was scheduled to defend his dissertation yesterday, June 6, but we learned late last week that his defense has been postponed.
Here are the facts as we know them and some reasonable inferences from those facts.
The Graduate School of the Ohio State University generally requires that a thesis defense be publicly announced. There’s some question whether the announcement of Leonard’s defense actually occurred. In any event, several members of the OSU faculty learned of Leonard’s impending defense and of the composition of the committee that was to conduct the examination.
The entity that actually grants the degree Leonard is seeking is the School of Teaching and Learning in the College of Education. Within that, the Science Education Ph.D. program requires that
Upon completion of the [candidacy] examination, the student may reorganize the committee to reflect the expertise needed for the dissertation. The dissertation committee must have at least three members: two from the science education program area and one from outside the science education program area. (Italics added)
Leonard’s final dissertation committee did not meet those requirements. It was composed of his advisor, Paul Post from the technology education program area of the section for Math, Science and Technology; Glen R. Needham of the Department of Entomology in the College of Biological Sciences; and Robert DiSilvestro of the Department of Human Nutrition in the College of Human Ecology. For the final defense an Assistant Professor from the department of French & Italian in the College of Humanities was also assigned to the committee to monitor the procedure. Thus, there were no members from the science education program area on Leonard’s final dissertation committee.
What is more noteworthy is that there are no members of Leonard’s dissertation committee who are specialists in science education or in evolutionary biology, even though Leonard’s dissertation is specifically directed at methods of teaching evolutionary biology in public school science classes. The two senior tenured members of the committee, DiSilvestro and Needham, in fact share a single salient qualification: they have both publicly associated themselves with the intelligent design creationist movement in Ohio and elsewhere.
DiSilvestro is an original signer of the Discovery Institute’s A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism statement and testified for the Intelligent Design Network at the recent Kansas Kangaroo Court hearings, as did Leonard. According to his departmental profile, DiSilvestro’s professional interests are “Nutritional biochemistry and clinical nutrition of antioxidant nutrients and phytochemicals, especially in regard to inflammatory aspects of disease and exercise recovery; mineral and phytochemical effects on weight loss.” According to a transcript of a recording supplied by an attendee, DiSilvestro told the Kansas Kangaroo Court that he doesn’t use evolutionary theory in his own research.
Needham has testified in support of IDC proposals before the Ohio State Board of Education. There is a department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology in the College of Biological Sciences, but Needham is not a member of that department. His research on ticks is only marginally related to evolution and he does not teach evolution. (See here from one of his colleagues in Entomology.)
DiSilvestro was contact person for the Ohio Intelligent Design Movement’s 52 Ohio Scientists Call for Academic Freedom on Darwin’s Theory petition, and Needham was a signer.
Leonard’s Ph.D. advisor, Paul E. Post, is primarily associated with technology education at the Ohio State University and has no visible credentials in science or science education. Post replaced Leonard’s first advisor, Paul Vellom, who was a science education specialist, when Vellom left OSU. It’s not clear why Leonard’s current Ph.D. advisor is not in his area of concentration.
As far as we are aware, DiSilvestro and Needham are the only two faculty members of the Ohio State University who have spoken publicly in support of Leonard’s approach to teaching evolution using intelligent design creationist-based materials. (Judging from the model lesson plan Leonard wrote for the Ohio State Board of Education, his materials are primarily drawn from Wells’s Icons of Evolution.) The committee deck was clearly stacked, and a “design inference” regarding the composition of Leonard’s committee seems warranted. As Michael Behe tells us
The strong appearance of design allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it’s a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it’s so obvious.
When several members of the faculty of the Ohio State University brought these and other anomalies to the attention of appropriate administrators in the Graduate School, the novice Graduate School Representative on Leonard’s Committee, the assistant professor of French & Italian, asked to be relieved, and was immediately replaced by Dr. Joan Herbers, Dean of the College of Biological Sciences and an evolutionary biologist. Shortly thereafter, Leonard’s dissertation defense was postponed, apparently at the request of Leonard’s advisor in consultation with the Math, Science and Technology Education section head.
So what we have is a graduate student, by all reports an earnest young man, who has been led down the garden path, seemingly guided by a couple of tenured ID Creationist faculty members whose anti-evolution agenda apparently overrode any commitment to the integrity of the academic process, the value of graduate education and research, or the well-being of the student. The phrase “cynical manipulation” comes to mind. Regardless of whether Leonard was a willing participant in the exercise, the tenured faculty members involved have a direct responsibility — to education, to science, to their colleagues and university, and to Leonard himself — to ensure that the integrity of the degree-granting process at the Ohio State University is maintained.
By participating in a loaded committee for his dissertation defense, Leonard’s mentors demonstrated as clearly as possible that they have no confidence in Leonard or in the academic worthiness of his dissertation. Had it been otherwise, there’d have been no need to load up his committee with ID Creationists who have no professional qualifications in the subject of Leonard’s thesis research. That behavior is of a piece with the IDC strategy of the last couple of years: fix the jury and you don’t have to worry about the merits of your position. Sternberg publishing Meyer, Sermonti publishing Wells, the Kansas Creationist Kangaroo Court, and now the Leonard affair, all demonstrate the same pattern of behavior: game the system so the fix is in, and science (and education) be damned.
This is emphatically not a case of academic freedom. It is rather another example of academic carpetbagging by the DI and its associated IDC zealots. Academic freedom entails academic responsibility, and it is not apparent that Leonard’s mentors fulfilled their responsibility, either to Leonard personally or to the academic world as a whole.
So Leonard’s dissertation defense is being held in abeyance while the Ohio State University ascertains whether the processes that are intended to ensure the academic integrity of OSU degrees are being adhered to. The dissertation may be a perfectly acceptable piece of work, but the apparent attempt to subvert the degree-granting process at the Ohio State University makes that moot. One more time: the issue is the integrity of that process and the responsibilities of faculty members, not the specific student or his work. One hopes that in the end, Leonard gets an appropriately constituted committee, one that not only satisfies OSU’s requirements but also has the expertise to help Leonard correct any errors introduced by the old committee and that can knowledgeably evaluate his dissertation so his degree is not tainted and he has contributed something of value to science education.
RBH
[The following is from: http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/001145.html]
The DI Spins Academic Freedom
Posted by Richard B. Hoppe on June 13, 2005 04:47 PM
The Discovery Institute has a habit of misrepresenting issues, thereby publicly shooting itself in the foot. The most recent instance is a press release misleadingly titled Attack on OSU Graduate Student Endangers Academic Freedom. In it, Bruce Chapman, President of the Discovery Institute, presents a version of events filled with fabrications and misrepresentations.
Let me first briefly recapitulate the actual sequence of events.
Sometime in the past, months or years ago, Bryan Leonard, a doctoral candidate in science education at The Ohio State University, put together a dissertation committee whose composition violated the clear requirements of the program in which he was seeking a degree.
On Thursday, June 2, 2005, an assistant professor of French & Italian assigned to Leonard’s defense withdrew from the committee and was immediately replaced by Dr. Joan Herbers, Dean of the College of Biological Sciences and an evolutionary biologist. According to the graduate school, it was
Paul Post, Leonard’s dissertation advisor, [corrected in edit] Peter Paul, head of the School of Teaching and Learning, who initially got the graduate school involved, resulting in the change in Leonard’s committee.
In a letter dated and delivered on Friday, June 3, three full professors — Rissing, McKee, and McEnnis — transmitted concerns raised by Leonard’s public testimony in the recent Kansas BOE hearings to the graduate school of the Ohio State University. That letter is a public document, available to the press on request (using an official Ohio Request for Public Records procedure if necessary). The formal letter communicating concerns to the OSU Grad School was requested by and sent to a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch on Wednesday 8 June.
Also on Friday, June 3, Leonard’s advisor, Paul Post, requested a postponement of Leonard’s defense. In other words, contrary to Bruce Chapman’s claims (discussed below), Ohio State did not prevent Leonard from defending his dissertation; his advisor requested the postponement the day after a qualified faculty member was appointed to his committee and on the same day that questions were raised about the composition of the committee.
On Tuesday, June 7, 2005, I posted a description of what was then known about the Leonard affair, together with some reasonable inferences from that description. Notice of my posting was transmitted over my signature to members of the press.
In statements since then, the Graduate School has said that it is looking into the circumstances surrounding the composition of Leonard’s committee and questions about the conduct of his research.
So we have a series of events, precipitated by
Leonard’s advisor[corrected in edit] the School of Teaching and Learning and by Leonard himself in Kansas, that resulted in his advisor requesting the postponement of Leonard’s defense after a qualified faculty member — Dr. Herbers — was appointed to his committee.Now, what is the DI’s version? To be blunt, nothing that is recognizable in the reality-based community. Some examples:
Bruce Chapman, DI President, blows it in the first paragraph:
An effort by three professors at Ohio State University (OSU) to publicly damage the academic future of a graduate student, Bryan Leonard, because of his support for teaching about the controversy over evolution is “an attack on academic freedom and a violation of professional ethics,” said Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman.
As described at length in my previous posting, the central issue is not academic freedom, it is academic responsibility. Put as plainly as possible, the Intelligent Design Creationists packed Leonard’s committee contrary to the Ohio State University’s graduate school requirements. They’ve been caught with their paws in the cookie jar up to their elbows and Chapman desperately wants to change the subject.
Chapman’s misdirection continues
“Bryan Leonard has not even had a chance to defend his dissertation through the university process and they have gone to the press to try to discredit him in public” said Chapman.
Chapman conveniently omits the fact that the “university process” was subverted by Leonard and his IDC mentors months ago, if not years ago, in the very composition of his committee. That their subversion of the process was caught before Leonard’s defense attests to the fact that the University is following its own “university process” to ensure the integrity and quality of its graduate degrees.
That same process permits, indeed requires, any member of the graduate faculty to transmit concerns regarding irregularities in graduate education to the dean of the Graduate School. To do otherwise would be to acquiesce in the subversion of the academic integrity of the graduate program.
Chapman goes on
“It seems to me that the graduate student’s real crime in this group’s eyes is that he represents the science teaching policy recently adopted by the Ohio State Board of Education” added Chapman. “Having failed to win their way with the state board, they are taking it out on an unusually promising graduate student who was consulted by the board in its deliberations.”
The real crime at issue is the perversion of the academic integrity of the university’s degree-granting process by IDC professors. Leonard was almost certainly a participant, but the academic “crime” was committed by his faculty mentors. (And having read Leonard’s model lesson plan draft as it was originally submitted to the Ohio State BOE, “unusually promising” seems to me to be a pretty long stretch: Judge for yourself.)
Moving right along, the DI press release says
The professors apparently have not even read the dissertation they are denouncing. According to an article in the June 9, Columbus Dispatch, OSU professors Steve Rissing, Brian McEnnis, and Jeffrey McKee are seeking to discredit the dissertation research of Mr. Leonard, an OSU graduate student (and current high school biology teacher).
While it has been mentioned in comments to my earlier posting, it bears repeating that Leonard’s dissertation is not a public document (yet), and the three professors did not have access to it. Leonard himself called attention to it in his testimony to the Kansas BOE hearings, attempting to influence public policy on the basis of undefended and unpublished research. The three did not attempt to “discredit” the dissertation; their concerns are with the integrity of the academic programs of the University.
Furthermore, Leonard’s testimony in Kansas also raised the ethics question. Knowing of that testimony and of the illegitimate composition of Leonard’s committee, had the three professors not acted then they themselves would have been guilty of an ethical violation for failing to call the graduate school’s attention to the issue. The content of Leonard’s dissertation is irrelevant to the core issue, which is the subversion of the university’s degree-granting process by Mr. Leonard and his IDC mentors.
Note also that the DI press release doesn’t bother to give the URL of the Dispatch story, making it difficult to check the DI’s version of the story. The Dispatch story is here (requires registration; if necessary, search on “Leonard dissertation”), though that will become a pay-for-access story within a few days. (The DI’s failure to provide a link is itself worth comment: The DI tends to provide links only to (mis)information it can control. Can anyone think of a precedent for that practice?)
Later the DI press release says
“The complaining professors are simply defining as ‘unethical’ any research that disagrees with their dogmatic view of how to teach evolution” said Chapman.
In fact, the question here is whether Leonard’s research as performed was vetted by the Institutional Review Board. Once again, the question arises from Leonard’s testimony in Kansas. IRB review and approval is not a minor bit of red tape. Violating IRB requirements can cost a university dearly. Failure to properly submit to, and receive approval from the local IRB of any research protocol involving human subjects (if this is what happened in Leonard’s case) is not only a matter of administrative red tape, it is in itself a violation of ethical guidelines, and could result in major penalties for the Institution and involved investigators, including the partial or complete loss of federal funding.
The only public description to date of Leonard’s research comes from his Kansas hearings testimony. Lack of normal explanation and descriptions of experimental results that are available for outside examination is why such “publication by news conference” is avoided in academia. The student’s dissertation committee should have advised against such public statements based upon a confidential document; the committee was certainly aware of the student’s testimony: one of its members — DiSilvestro — also testified in the Kansas hearings.
Normally, other members of any graduate faculty would assume that a student and his/her dissertation committee would assure compliance with IRB regulations. Given the composition of that committee in this case, the OSU professors exercised their only ethical option and reported their concerns regarding the process resulting in the formation of the committee and possible concerns about human subjects to the OSU Graduate School.
We can expect the Discovery Institute’s “academic freedom” and “viewpoint discrimination” spin to continue. The concept of academic responsibility appears to be wholly outside the DI’s ken.
RBH
Now this is laughable.
Then you didn't actually read both sides, or you misunderstood it. Actually, the real problem seems is that you read the creationist propaganda and swallowed it whole. That's almost always a major mistake, at least to anyone who wants to form conclusions based on reliable information, instead of misinformation.
What's really funny here is that you yourself have "trashed the letter of three university professors without ever having read it."
I'm thinking of a word here, it starts with an "H" -- can you guess what it is?
If you actually had bothered to "read both sides of the story", you'd have learned that the professors had *not* developed their concerns merely out of thin air -- they had Leonard's own lengthy descriptions of his dissertation which he made during the Kansas hearings to go by. And expressing their concerns "without ever having read" the dissertation is hardly the evidence of cavalier recklessness you foolishly presume it to be, since the dissertation IS NOT AVAILABLE for ANYONE to read (other than the dissertation committee itself) until it is accepted and published. The professors *can't* read the dissertation, although I'm sure they'd like to. But they still have a responsibility to express their concerns to the University if they have become aware of indications that it is flawed or that its acceptance (or its acceptance process) could damage the university's reputation -- and Leonard's own public announcements about his dissertation have been more than enough to set alarm bells ringing.
Now, would you like to send me five dollars for every example I can find where you have "trashed" someone's work on FreeRepublic without actually having personally read or viewed the work in full? I mean, surely, you wouldn't express horror and indignation at these professors expressing concern about a work without having read it if you were in the habit of ever doing such a thing yourself, right?
What's that verse about casting stones, again?
You find it funny that it torpedoes your whole point? I do too.
Yeah. Right. You betcha. Post what you consider the *best* two or three examples, and let's see how well they hold up, shall we?
Meanwhile, here are several *hundred* examples of complete intellectual dishonesty and moral bankruptcy from creationist "leading lights":
Tell me, cookcounty: Do you condone this behavior of creationists? Yes or no? Is lying for the "cause" of creationism acceptable to you?Summary of the ability of the two creationists (Hovind and Havoc) to present information they *know* is false, and to *fail* to retract when reminded of their falsehoods, is presented here, along with links to all appropriate documentation.
This sort of behavior, unfortunately, is *typical* of creationists. Here, want dozens of more examples of their distortions? A few more for the road? Another? Still more, perhaps? How about even more? Ooh, here are some good examples. And there's lots more where that came from, like this and this and this and lots more here and *tons* here and countless more here and yet more here, a goodie... Wait, there's more over here, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., *ETC.*, etc., etc., etc., . How about 300 more creationist misrepresentations? Not enough, you say? Well then visit Creationist Lies and Blunders. Hey, what about Freeper metacognative's (he's a creationist) ability to accuse Daniel Dennett (evolutionary scientist) of wanting to put Christians into concentration camps for their beliefs, when Dennett was *actually* clearly writing about how RADICAL ISLAM may need to be contained? The ugly details here.
The creationists keep claiming that, but they keep falling flat on their faces when asked to actually present examples. Almost without exception, their "examples" turn out to be either a) the creationists don't even understand the science, they only "know" a ludicrous cartoon-version of it, or b) the creationists are lying about their alleged examples.
The definition of species is different for current (and testable) animals vs. the fossil record.
Yes, of course. But if you think that this is due to "crappy science", then you don't understand the field.
We have examples of cross species breeding that are being ignored by "evolutionary" biologists, instead of being heavily studied.
ROFL! Okay, whatever you say. Don't quit your day job. Yes, cross-breeding occurs. No, evolutionary biologists are not "ignoring" it. Yes, they study it. No, it is no challenge for evolutionary theory. I'm amused that you think it does.
Where exactly did you "learn" this silliness? From a creationist source, right? Hint: Trying to "learn" about science from creationists is like trying to "learn" about conservatives from Michael Moore, and for exactly the same reasons.
We have scientifically rigorous evidence that in addition to evolutionary extinction trees, there are mergers of "species" that are inconvenient to THEORIES of EVOLUTION.
Yeah, yeah, and there's "proof" that President Bush started the Iraq war as a favor to his buddies in the oil business...
But just for giggles, feel free to provide a citation to this "scientifically rigorous evidence" (translation: A creationist told you, right?) of "mergers of species" which are "inconvenient" to "THEORIES OF EVOLUTION". We'll wait.
(Sure sign of crackpotism: When they CAPITALIZE words FOR no obvious REASON.)
We have numerous people that can't even distinguish between a theory, and a phenomena.
"We" do? Do you have a mouse in your pocket?
BRYAN LEONARD is a needed person in education.
"BRYAN LEONARD", (capital LetTERS aNd aLL) is a crackpot whose ability in science doesn't extend further than regurgitating Jonathan Wells's error-filled screeds, from what I've personally seen. Why do we "need" someone like that in education? There's more than enough misinformation in education as it is.
Maybe he can get some rigor back into the soft part of biology.
*snicker*. Come on, show us what you've got. Show us some of this "rigor" you imagine you have in hand that would be a boon to education, which the biologists seem to have overlooked. Identify some of the "soft part" of biology, if you think you can. And no, babbling about cross-breeds and contextual species classifications not only doesn't qualify, it strongly indicates that you really don't know what you're talking about -- not that this stops you from loftily attempting to "educate" the real scientists, of course...
Next up, Dark Knight will "correct" Bohr on quantum physics...
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