Top: Euglena, Hymenopimesis Wasp, Butterfly, Platypus
Bottom: Bat, Fugu, Cambrian species
Posted on 10/06/2002 8:16:21 AM PDT by hispanarepublicana
Professor rigid on evolution </MCC HEAD>
By SEBASTIAN KITCHEN </MCC BYLINE1>
AVALANCHE-JOURNAL </MCC BYLINE2>
• 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/
On the Net
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
No, they are not fine. It is called abuse of power and it is despicable. He is there to teach not to indoctrinate, big difference but then tyrants do not have the slightest regard for human decency so one should not be surprised that an atheist would pull such a stunt.
Refusing to write a letter of recommendation makes them "tyrannical and despicable"??
Why don't you quit your own tactics of hate-mongering?!
Quit listening to those voices in your head (here's a hint: they are not from God).
The only thing that natural selection does is kill organisms. How can one add to diversity, to the genetic pool by destroying and thining out the population and the genetic pool? This is a totally ridiculous proposition just as silly as saying that 4-2 = 6.
Not exactly. An example of ad hominem would be "The theory of evolution is invalid because Darwin was a racist."
What Vade is engaging in is called "pointing out hypocrisy."
Your story stinks. You're going to spend more time than you like discussing it until you find someone else to baffle with BS.
Grouse all you like, the points I address will either stand or fall on things other than your red herrings.
What if you were at a company and were in charge of hiring a scientist? If one came along with top notch credentials and you found out they didn't believe in evolution, I guess you'd have to think twice about hiring them. You would hesitate to hire Dr. Russell Humphreys, a nuclear physicist at Sandia National Laboratories who has had over 20 articles published in scientific journals, Dr. John Baumgardner, the author of the catastrophic plate tectonics theory mentioned in Nature, Dr. Edward Boudreaux of the University of New Orleans, the author of 26 articles and four books on physical chemistry, multiple Nobel Prize nominee Dr. "Fritz" Schaefer the Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia, Dr. Raymond Damadian, the inventor of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Dr. Maciej Giertych, Head of the Dept. of Genetics at the Institute of Dendrology at the Polish Academy of Sciences to name a few. In fact, I assume you'd conclude they were incompetent. Any candidate who believes in evolution with mediocre credentials would be a superior candidate, because they must have a "more scientific frame of mind". You people are really too much with your self deception.
Methinks it's too late for that Vade. You were doing just the same thing you were complaining of medved. In fact, I would say you were doing worse than medved because with medved I never saw anyone refute his posts. With you they were refuted and shown to be totally absurd time and time again. In fact, in some of the longer threads you would post the same refuted nonsense more than once. So, it's too late Vade, you have shown your character already.
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Or "pointing out truly bizarre, schizophrenic-level inconsistency." But there's no real question.
What if you were at a pharmaceutical company and were in charge of hiring a medical researcher instead of a physicist? Oh, my! Your whole diatribe goes up in smoke!
Denial!
Main Entry: cat·a·ton·ic Pronunciation: -'tä-nik
Function: adjective
Date: 1904
1 : of, relating to, being, resembling, or affected by schizophrenia characterized especially by a marked psychomotor disturbance that may involve stupor or mutism, negativism, rigidity, purposeless excitement, and inappropriate or bizarre posturing
2 : characterized by a marked lack of movement, activity, or expression
- catatonic noun - cat·a·ton·i·cal·ly /-ni-k(&-)lE/ adverb
Top: Euglena, Hymenopimesis Wasp, Butterfly, Platypus
Bottom: Bat, Fugu, Cambrian species
But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days.
You bend over backwards to make absurd, lawyerly nitpicks which you only imagine to stand.
This behavior occurs against the evidence which supports what you claim to believe, common descent with modification in an old-earth setting. You have at no time addressed where the unique AndrewC model would produce a different fossil record or extant biota from, say, Gouldian Punk-Eek.
You have become notorious for your tap-dances, your obfuscating blizzards of irrelancies, your cryptic little zen koans designed to make the dummies think your scoring points for the Lord ... Yes, this stands or falls, but not on its own.
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