Professor Rigid on Evolution (must "believe" to get med school rec)

The Lubbock Avalanche Journal ^ | 10/6/02 | Sebastian Kitchen

[hispanarepublicana]

Professor rigid on evolution </MCC HEAD>

By SEBASTIAN KITCHEN </MCC BYLINE1>

AVALANCHE-JOURNAL </MCC BYLINE2>

On the Net

• Criteria for letters of recommendation: http://www2.tltc.ttu.edu/dini/Personal/ letters.htm

• Michael Dini's Web page:

http://www2.tltc.ttu. edu/dini/

Micah Spradling was OK with learning about evolution in college, but his family drew the line when his belief in the theory became a prerequisite for continuing his education.

Tim Spradling said his son left Texas Tech this semester and enrolled in Lubbock Christian University after en countering the policy of one associate professor in biological sciences.

Professor Michael Dini's Web site states that a student must "truthfully and forthrightly" believe in human evolution to receive a letter of recommendation from him.

"How can someone who does not accept the most important theory in biology expect to properly practice in a field that is so heavily based on biology?" Dini's site reads.

Dini says on the site that it is easy to imagine how physicians who ignore or neglect the "evolutionary origin of humans can make bad clinical decisions."

He declined to speak with The Avalanche-Journal. His response to an e-mail from The A-J said: "This semester, I have 500 students to contend with, and my schedule in no way permits me to participate in such a debate."

A Tech spokeswoman said Chancellor David Smith and other Tech officials also did not want to comment on the story.

At least two Lubbock doctors and a medical ethicist said they have a problem with the criterion, and the ethicist said Dini "could be a real ingrate."

Tim Spradling, who owns The Brace Place, said his son wanted to follow in his footsteps and needed a letter from a biology professor to apply for a program at Southwestern University's medical school.

Spradling is not the only medical professional in Lub bock shocked by Dini's policy. Doctors Patrick Edwards and Gaylon Seay said they learned evolution in college but were never forced to believe it.

"I learned what they taught," Edwards said. "I had to. I wanted to make good grades, but it didn't change my basic beliefs."

Seay said his primary problem is Dini "trying to force someone to pledge allegiance to his way of thinking."

Seay, a Tech graduate who has practiced medicine since 1977, said a large amount of literature exists against the theory.

"He is asking people to compromise their religious be liefs," Seay said. "It is a shame for a professor to use that as a criteria."

Dini's site also states: "So much physical evidence supports" evolution that it can be referred to as fact even if all the details are not known.

"One can deny this evidence only at the risk of calling into question one's understanding of science and of the method of science," Dini states on the Web site.

Edwards said Dini admits in the statement that the details are not all known.

Dini is in a position of authority and "can injure someone's career," and the criteria is the "most prejudice thing I have ever read," Seay said.

"It is appalling," he said.

Both doctors said their beliefs in creationism have never negatively affected their practices, and Seay said he is a more compassionate doctor because of his beliefs.

"I do not believe evolution has anything to do with the ability to make clinical decisions — pro or con," Seay said.

Academic freedom should be extended to students, Edwards said.

"A student may learn about a subject, but that does not mean that everything must be accepted as fact, just because the professor or an incomplete body of evidence says so," Edwards said.

"Skepticism is also a very basic part of scientific study," he said.

The letter of recommendation should not be contingent on Dini's beliefs, Edwards said.

"That would be like Texas Tech telling him he had to be a Christian to teach biology," Edwards said.

Harold Vanderpool, professor in history and philosophy of medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, said he has a problem with Dini's policy.

"I think this professor could be a real ingrate," Vanderpool said. "I have a problem with a colleague who has enjoyed all the academic freedoms we have, which are extensive, and yet denies that to our students."

Vanderpool, who has served on, advised or chaired committees for the National Institute of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, said the situation would be like a government professor requiring a student to be "sufficiently patriotic" to receive a letter.

"It seems to me that this professor is walking a pretty thin line between the protection of his right to do what he wants to do, his own academic freedom, and a level of discrimination toward a student," he said.

"It is reaching into an area of discrimination. That could be a legal problem. If not, it is a moral problem," Vanderpool said.

Instead of a recommendation resting on character and academic performance, "you've got this ideological litmus test you are using," he said. "To me, that is problematic, if not outright wrong."

William F. May, a medical ethicist who was appointed to President Bush's Council on Bioethics, said he cannot remember establishing a criterion on the question of belief with a student on exams or with letters of recommendation.

"I taught at five institutions and have always felt you should grade papers and offer judgments on the quality of arguments rather than a position on which they arrived."

Professors "enjoy the protection of academic freedom" and Dini "seems to be profoundly ungrateful" for the freedom, Vanderpool said.

He said a teacher cannot be forced to write a letter of recommendation for a student, which he believes is good because the letters are personal and have "to do with the professor's assessment of students' work habits, character, grades, persistence and so on."

A policy such as Dini's needs to be in the written materials and should be stated in front of the class so the student is not surprised by the policy and can drop the class, Vanderpool said.

Dini's site states that an individual who denies the evidence commits malpractice in the method of science because "good scientists would never throw out data that do not conform to their expectations or beliefs."

People throw out information be cause "it seems to contradict his/her cherished beliefs," Dini's site reads. A physician who ignores data cannot remain a physician for long, it states.

Dini's site lists him as an exceptional faculty member at Texas Tech in 1995 and says he was named "Teacher of the Year" in 1998-99 by the Honors College at Texas Tech.

Edwards said he does not see any evidence on Dini's vita that he attended medical school or treated patients.

"Dr. Dini is a nonmedical person trying to impose his ideas on medicine," Edwards said. "There is little in common between teaching biology classes and treating sick people. ... How dare someone who has never treated a sick person purport to impose his feelings about evolution on someone who aspires to treat such people?"

On his Web site, Dini questions how someone who does not believe in the theory of evolution can ask to be recommended into a scientific profession by a professional scientist.

May, who taught at multiple prestigious universities, including Yale, during his 50 years in academia, said he did not want to judge Dini and qualified his statements because he did not know all of the specifics.

He said the doctors may be viewing Dini's policy as a roadblock, but the professor may be warning them in advance of his policy so students are not dismayed later.

"I have never seen it done and am surprised to hear it, but he may find creationist aggressive in the class and does not want to have to cope with that," May said. "He is at least giving people the courtesy of warning them in advance."

The policy seems unusual, May said, but Dini should not be "gang-tackled and punished for his policy."

The criterion may have been viewed as a roadblock for Micah Spradling at Tech, but it opened a door for him at LCU.

Classes at LCU were full, Tim Spradling said, but school officials made room for his son after he showed them Dini's policy.

skitchen@lubbockonline.com 766-8753

[AndrewC]

I suggest the next time you're in a library you read an article in Scientific American's May 2002 issue, The Mammals that Conquered the Sea. Unfortunately, that one's not on their web site. It gives you a somewhat less skewed version than you get from asking the slimy lawyer for one side.

Why don't you read post 204 before you display your lack of reading skills. But you are to busy with Ad hominem to do that.

[VadeRetro]

We seem to have the assymetrical situation where you tell me to shut up at your convenience, Abuse-Button Boy, but I can't seem to tell you to keep your lawyerly blue spew out of my reply queue.

Note that I just outed to yet another person, the activity for which you hit the button the previous time. (Well, this time was more like a reminder to the ever-forgetful but even-tempered scripter.) I will continue to do every time you deposit your mendacious rantings in my lap.

If you want to talk to me, I'd suggest you put it on the Abuse Button screen and send it to the AdminModerator.

[AndrewC]

We seem to have the assymetrical situation where you tell me to shut up at your convenience, Abuse-Button Boy, but I can't seem to tell you to keep your lawyerly blue spew out of my reply queue.

Am I drawing you into an argument not concerning you? I posted directly to your post. If that is abuse, press the abuse button. As for blue spew, I almost agree with you on the Scientific American nonsense.

[Junior]

It's always the first weekend of the month, unless some Federal holiday falls thereupon, and then it's the weekend after.

[VadeRetro]

I posted directly to your post.

Then I will post directly to your post. You hypocritically talk out of both sides of your mouth. You posture before the creationists as one not believing in common descent with modification. You deflect any rebuttal by protesting that you do.

You attack all the evidence for what you supposedly accept as true. Thus you resemble the lawyers for the California child murderer, lawyers who presented a case in court which tried to undermine points of the prosecution case which they knew to be true.

I don't know why I protest at this, except that I'm tired of seeing it in my reply queue. God knows you're a self-discrediting, obvious humbug.

[AndrewC]

Perfect Ad Hominem. You have not countered my original explanation to scripter.---

Those are the "fossil bones" of a mesonychid. Not too long ago the paleontologists had a carefully plotted linkage from those bones to Flipper. Then real science stepped in and provided overwhelming evidence that whales and hippos are kissing cousins. That left the flustered bone-pickers rather speechless for a fraction of second. Science being what it is, something had to give, not the theory, but the evidence was changed. Things that were huggably close to the mesonychid have stepped a small distance away. The predictions have been forgotten and have not been counted against the theory. The theory remains intact unmarred by the "changed" evidence. Thus my attributing "Paleontologists suck as paleontologists".

[Taliesan]

Let the professor recommend whoever he wants to recommend, based on the color of their hair, if he wants.

[VadeRetro]

I have stated nothing irrelevant. Let's go to the videotape:

To: Alouette

I know a number of ultra-Orthodox Jews who are highly qualified physicians, engineers, physicists (including Israel's leading hydro-physicist), and other type of scientists in spite of believing that the earth is 5763 years old.

They'd certainly suck as paleontologists.

25 posted on 10/6/02 12:51 PM Eastern by VadeRetro

An obvious point, and not one that can be attacked frontally. Nobody who has a religious commandment to believe that the earth is 5763 years old is going to be able to properly interpret or present data about a much older earth. I might as easily have said "They'd certainly suck as geologists," or "They'd certainly suck as astronomers." These people cannot do a good job in any area which involves an obvious contradiction to what they perceive as a duty to promulgate an idea contradicted by the everyday facts of certain disciplines of study.

So what does AndrewC post?

To: VadeRetro

They'd certainly suck as paleontologists.

Paleontologists suck as paleontologists.

Whale bones.

A diversion to a subject the lurker is expected to imagine as rout of paleontology. What is the nature of this rout? Paleontologists changed their story in light of new evidence, the crucial piece of which was paleontological.

Pakicetus, a creature with a rather cetacean head except the nostrils haven't become a blowhole yet, had artiodactyl ankles and Mesonychus didn't. So Meso is either a spectacular convergence, or a spectacular retention of related features on another branch, or a close relative that lost the ankles.

There's no there there. Paleontology has not gone away as a fallout of the exciting finds in Pakistan. The whole discussion is a diversion from the question of whether YECs should be working in areas of science that require knowledge more recent than about 450 BC.

The Clinton trick. Open your mouth and say something. The faithful will score you as having answered all points. Play to the pom-pom shakers.

You allegedly believe in common descent with modification. That should produce a fossil record of evolution change, as indeed it seems to have done. Yet AndrewC is out blocking for the Luddites.

Odd.

[VadeRetro]

Let the professor recommend whoever he wants to recommend, based on the color of their hair, if he wants.

That's simply how it works and always was, whether anyone likes it or not.

[VadeRetro]

BTW, feel free to pull one of your hissies and get the thread pulled. I'm not the abuse-button junkie you are.

[VadeRetro]

That should produce a fossil record of evolution change ...

"evolutionary change"

[AndrewC]

Paleontologists changed their story in light of new evidence, the crucial piece of which was paleontological.

As I said they suck as paleontologists.

Your defence--

• denial---. The narrative is false. Mesonychus was not called into question by any old-news molecular studies.
• Ad Hominem ----And, having provoked a sh!tstorm of blue obfuscation, I'm out for the night.
• More Ad Hominem, with evidence of lack of reading skills ---For an even better overall summary, I suggest the next time you're in a library you read an article in Scientific American's May 2002 issue, The Mammals that Conquered the Sea. Unfortunately, that one's not on their web site. It gives you a somewhat less skewed version than you get from asking the slimy lawyer for one side.
• Even More Ad Hominem which is of such poor quality it is not even worth quoting here from post 242.
• Yet even more Ad Hominem not worth quoting from post 245.
• Finally coming to the conclusion that paleontologists suck as paleontologists.

[VadeRetro]

Give it to someone who cares, hypocrite!

[AndrewC]

I'm not the abuse-button junkie you are.

Tell me about piltdown pig. Tell me about the thread on which I took umbrage at your attempt to draw me into your argument with someone else. I warned you twice and when you continued by a personal attack, I pressed the abuse button. The admin moderator instead of telling you to knock it off chose to move the thread into the smokey back room. At that point I refused to participate in the thread, yet you all managed to have the thread pulled from the smokey back room. Pretty brazen ® VadeRetro 2000

[VadeRetro]

You allegedly believe in common descent with modification. That should produce a fossil record of evolutionary change, as indeed it seems to have done. Yet AndrewC is out blocking for the Luddites.

[VadeRetro]

Tell me about piltdown pig.

Medved. A banned sneak-back. Clack! Clack! What else do you want to know?

[AndrewC]

Give it to someone who cares, hypocrite!

Once more admitting your disdain for fact.

[AndrewC]

What else do you want to know?

More evidence of your lack of reading skills.

[VadeRetro]

You allegedly believe in common descent with modification. That should produce a fossil record of evolutionary change, as indeed it seems to have done. Yet AndrewC is out blocking for the Luddites.

[AndrewC]