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

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

From this analysis of Darwin, Hamlet, Dawkins, Hardison, coincidence, and selective evolution...

It is unbelievable how ridiculous it is for evolutionists to use this program as proof of anything. First of all supposedly evolution is looking for something new, not for something that already exists, so how could it match an unknown. Secondly, if natural selection is picking the correct matches, how can it pick something that does not function yet? Sort of shows the desperation of evolutionists in the face of the problems presented to it by the discovery of DNA.

Also, a mutation doesn't have to be beneficial to spread in a population, a neutral mutation can do that as well. It may not be as likely to spread as a beneficial one but the chances for this are not zero. Especially in small populations this can happen quite often (-> founder effect, genetic drift).

Not correct. Neutral mutations cannot spread and likely will be lost within a few generations due to the laws of genetics. An allele with no survival benefit will just reproduce at the same rate as the population so it will never spread throughout a whole population. It will likely be lost due to the laws of chance. Since only one individual would originally have that mutation and at each reproduction there is only a 50% chance of the mutation to be reproduced with 2 chances of it being passed on in a stable sized population, it would eventually be lost due to the laws of chance (eventually you would get 3 procreations in a row that did not pass on the mutation).

Small populations also have a very big problem for evolution. Yes, they make mutations much easier to spread and that is the problem. Bad mutations are much more frequent by several orders of magnitude than good mutations as even evolutionists will agree. Therefore the tightly knit small population will be long destroyed or accumulate so many bad mutations that it will become unviable.

My observation would be that some folks don't know how to debate without attacking the person (i.e. ad hominem attack). Such posts, laced with clever dialogue, obscure, they don't illuminate. And a careful reading of such posts reveals more about the mindset of the poster than the addressee. Further, a careful parsing of such posts also reveals that they are almost bereft of hard, logical, factual content. I am mildly (very mildly) entertained, not moved, and it ain't about science, as I've said before. Should we label such junk "Evolution Lite"?

Note to moderator. Hi, Phaedrus.

Hello, Patrick. You don't need me around to get yourself banned. Your stuff rises only to the level of mild irritation, at least for me. And I've yet to "Abuse Button" anyone out but certain folks do tempt me from time-to-time, not all of them on your side of the chasm. Do try, though, Patrick, to keep it relevant, for the sake of us all.

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

If I were on a search committee in nuclear physics, a candidate's creationism wouldn't weigh too much on my mind, other than to make me wonder what other odd ideas he might believe in. It's irrelevant to the area of research, and at Sandia, he's not going to be teaching freshman students. If the hire were in chemistry (my field), which is closer to biology, a creationist job-seeker would worry me more; such views would be an absolute prohibition, IMO, if the hire were in biological chemistry. As someone else pointed out, you wouldn't hire a Bible-teacher who was an atheist.

By the way, 20 papers isn't exactly productive; if you're looking for a Research God who's a creationist, shoot for a couple of hundred.

Most of the people you cite are similar nonentities. The one exception I'd make is Henry Schaefer, who's a real quantum chemist, and probably has several hundred papers. I can't imagine why he's making what I consider uninformed pronouncements so far outside his field, but he's a bit of a gadfly in it as well.

Damadian, by the way, is a fruitcake who tried to use the courts to steal credit for inventing MRI from its real inventor, Paul Lauterbur . I'm pretty well informed on the details of this case: I succeeded Lauterbur at SUNY Stony Brook. Paul, while a great scientist, is a bit of a slob, or at least his group were slobs; you could practially trace the evolution of his idea from the debris in his lab!

My observation would be that some folks don't know how to debate without attacking the person (i.e. ad hominem attack).

I think that many here do not understand that even a compliment can be Ad Hominem, if the effect is to argue away from the point and towards the "man". This latest tirade with VadeRetro started when I pointed out a relevant example of "garbage in / garbage out" to his comment. The example I gave was from May 2002 Sciam which erroneously described a "garbage" program. The argument proceeded from Ad Hominem to a personal attack in post 633.

Thanks anyway, I poked around a bit, but frankly I don't much care about global polution speculation. Nice idea, but then so is swiss cheese. I can eat swiss cheese, but the ammount of polution that a given mountain would produce gassing noah is getting a bit out there when I can see the evidence at my feet.

I guess you figure I am a dummy for not taking it hook line and sinker. ok!

I figure that those who try to refute the bible ignoring what they are walking on in bodies that they cannot fix non-the-less design writing books on theorys that You have to be brainwashed to read and enjoy need to get a life.

But then I am a simple indian, who believes that the evidence of nature is a book for all to read. Seems like a whole lot of work to refute the obvious. Build a bee. Design a new form of life. Make a little bang from nothing. Now that is interesting! But how much a mountain would fart if it flooded? zzzzz...

Actually religion should be a requirement for practicing medicine. It is a well known scientific fact that faith heals and helps keep people alive. An atheist cannot heal the sick.

See, I fight and I fight agains the urge to use Taliban comparisons here, and then Gore3000 posts something like this.

I consider creationists the single biggest impediment to conservatism on campus. A lot of scientists, engineers, and MDs are inherently conservative. But when I try to get them involved with organizations like NAS (which, AFAIK, has no position on evolution) they come back at me with attempts by creationsts to get 'equal time' in school, and ask 'how can you associate with fruitcakes like that?'. And I have to mumble it 's one issue from a large number of issues. But to a scientist, it's a very important issue. It betrays a rejection of the way we work.

As usual, the materialists have things backwards - and if you were in medicine you would not be saying that belief in God prevents one from practicing medicine.

Now you're simply fabricating again. My brother, BTW, a far more devout Catholic than I, is an MD. I can say a belief in God should prevent you from putting words in other people's mouths, but it apparently doesn't. That's a shame.

You don't need me around to get yourself banned. Your stuff rises only to the level of mild irritation, at least for me. And I've yet to "Abuse Button" anyone out but certain folks do tempt me from time-to-time, not all of them on your side of the chasm. Do try, though, Patrick, to keep it relevant, for the sake of us all.

Thanks so much for your input. I wasn't aware that relevancy had become mandatory for this website. I appreciate the information. If placemarker posts are now forbidden, it would be very useful if Jim Robinson would make this generally known, as a lot of freepers use them to keep track of their progress in long threads. The sudden, unexplained deletion of a brief, innocuous placemarker (such as my #572) is not very helpful, either in instructing freepers about website policy or in maintaining a sense of community among freepers.

Living organisms ain't a form of information. They're real, physical entities, and thus subject to real, physical laws.

So now that we have discounted any form of information, what 'physical law' is responsible for your post?

We spend four years teaching intelligent students that. How long it would take to teach a creationist is anybody's guess.

I said that living organisms are physical entities subject to physical laws. That doesn't 'discount' information.

If placemarker posts are now forbidden, it would be very useful if Jim Robinson would make this generally known, as a lot of freepers use them to keep track of their progress in long threads. The sudden, unexplained deletion of a brief, innocuous placemarker (such as my #572) is not very helpful, either in instructing freepers about website policy or in maintaining a sense of community among freepers.

Yes as my placemarker in post 559 was also removed with no reason given.

If the hire were in chemistry (my field), which is closer to biology, a creationist job-seeker would worry me more; such views would be an absolute prohibition, IMO, if the hire were in biological chemistry.

I'm curious, what is it that you might happen as a result of having a creationist biologist, who has proven his knowledge and understanding of biology beyond a doubt, doing research? And don't say if they believe in evolution, they don't understand biology. I'm talking about understanding biochemistry, the various mechanisms by which organisms function and reproduce, DNA, etc.

There's no abuse of power. A teacher can refuse to write a letter of recommendation for whatever reason he wants. He is under no obligation, moral or legal, to give a letter to any student he feels is "unworthy", and he is the ONLY applicable judge to the "worthiness" of the candidate. You and I might not agree with his assessment methods, but it's none of our damn business.

Part of the first ammendmant gives people the right to freely associate (or not associate) with shomever they choose. Writing a letter of recommendation is a form of association, if he chooses not to associate himself on this professional level with the student in question that is 100% his perogative. I knew a prof who would only write 1 letter of recommendation per school per year (and he didn't write general letters, they were always addressed to the admissions board and not given to the student to send out willy-nilly), so if you wanted a letter from him and were aiming for a popular school you'd better ask early. I thought that was a pretty stupid policy, but it was his policy, if you didn't like it you went to a different prof.

It's not like this guy is the absolute gatekeeper. Just because he doesn't write a certain student a letter doesn't mean the student has capped out. The student has 4 years to impress profs enough for them to write him a letter, this is only one guy.

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