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
Yep. Have you ever had to ask for a letter of recommendation? Ever been asked? Ever refused a request? I have been on both sides and I believe the doc can set any criteria he wants for such a letter. If you object to his criteria, too bad.
Granting this, all it tells me, VR, is that humans had other than "modern" form before 100K years ago. That doesn't necessarily mean they were apes back then, and then on some magic date were somehow magically, alchemistically transformed from simian to man.
You're bending over backward to avoid inferring the obvious.
Sorry, VR, but it is not obvious to me. To me, it just flies in the face of reason that a thing "suddenly" becomes something it is not -- absent divine intervention, of course. :^) All that I have ever been able to observe in my life is that new individuals coming into the world always are of the same species as their parents. It would require a great leap of faith for me to "infer" a situation where this is not the case.
When I was a very little girl, I had a wonderful book on natural history that I simply loved. I was a real "horse nut," so was delighted with the beautiful color illustrations of the evolution of the horse -- from eohippus, to mesohippus, etc., etc., to the modern horse.
I understand now that what I was looking at in the pages of my favorite book was an example of microevolution. A horse is a horse is a horse, though it may have a great variety of forms over time, and still does in modern times.
But eohippus-to-modern-horse is not an analog of simian-to-human. The latter, of course, would be an example of macroevolution. Forgive me, but I simply cannot see what mechanism in nature could account for a thing changing into something that it is not. It's just that simple.
True, "proof is for geometry class." I stand corrected on that. But just to note -- "proof" is not something that philosophy is interested in. What philosophy is interested in is truth. And that's a very uncertain and sometimes quite slippery proposition....
Such a litany of denial! Doesn't any physical evidence mean anything?
It certainly doesn't mean exactly what you describe, but that's only because you made a mess of what it does mean. Before 100k years ago, "modern" H. sapiens was "archaic" H. sapiens, AKA Homo heidelbergensis. Before that, H. erectus. Before that, H. habilis, and so forth. Contemporary with archaic H. sapiens is H. neandertalensis, sometimes classified as H. sapiens neandertalensis, which may or may not have contributed to the modern gene pool.
I have no problem with that. Offhand though, the only career I can think of that meets that criterion is teaching evolution.
Not a valid dismissal. A horse is still a horse, except it started as something that only in retrospect was importantly different from a basal condylarth.
Fig. 22. Skeletons of condylarth and fossil equids. All are drawn to approximately equal length to facilitate proportional comparisons.From a good horse-evolution site.a: Phenacodus, corrected after Scott.
b: Hyracotherium, corrected after AMNH mount.
c: Mesohippus, after AMNH mount.
This is a logical fallacy. I'm sure a philosophy buff knows which one it is.
But the new individuals are not exactly the same as their parents.
Right again, BB. These things aren't sudden. It happens gradually, over many generations, mutation by mutation. Those individuals which are better suited for survival pass on their genetic material to the next generation. For any one individal, his relationship to his immediate parents is blindingly obvious. But over a stretch of a thousand generations, the progenitor at the start of your watch and his distant offspring might look rather dissimilar. If you could live long enough to watch the generations progress, you would actually see it happen. Alas, we can't do that. We have to make use of the fossil record and then reconstruct the past events. I know that you understand this. And I understand your reluctance to accept it. But if the Pope can deal with it, so can you. Keep mulling it over.
polite rejection---
nice paint job---bondo/chrome/blown engine...
totalled endlessly---bad rebuilds/recycles!
Real cruizer(on blocks/cartoons)
---govt b-52 video---only the scences-lies(background) move!
All the trophies are fake...never had track record!
Clowns---jason!
Ooh, now that was smooth - I'm taking notes. :-) A problem with your above statement is that BB doesn't accept your interpretation of the Pope's equivocal comments.
772 posted on 10/10/02 1:57 PM Pacific by PatrickHenry
Keep mulling...waxing---buffing it over.
773 posted on 10/10/02 2:03 PM Pacific by Jeff Gordon
Are you confusing technology/science with evolution....two different---opposite things!
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