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
He says in the future he'll try and be more "circumspect" around creationists, but he at least, doesn't call them liars.
I realize Patterson's letter, Darwin's Enigma and Kitcher's comments are challenging your worldview. There's nothing I can do about that. I also realize, and have previously commented on just this, that reading your many posts on the subject that you do not give credit, not even the slightest, to someone who challenges your worldview, even in the smallest way.
I posted the letter but you don't want to recognize it for what it is. You deny, you indirectly deny spin exists in a political situation mentioned by one of your own.
If it's so obvious, it shouldn't be hard for you to explain it, right?
It is so obvious, so damning, so damaging to your worldview that you don't want to admit it! You refuse. You obfuscate. You try to turn it around.
I am not going to continue this little battle - it's a waste of time. I have work to do. Plus, the wife is on a retreat and I have two boys age 2 and 6 to pick up and take care of for 3 days. I invite you to stop by, we'll BBQ, have pizza and do other guy stuff all weekend. Sorry gals.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
Now I know what the joke is.
And the proof of the last sentence is???????
....readily apparent to anyone who looks at the evidence with an open mind. Sorry, Gore3000, my policy is not to try to argue with nuts or fanatics. The statement that atheists cannot be physicians placed you in that category, along with f.Christian. Have a nice life.
In a sense. There are lots of interesting areas in real science for which you can't easily get funding. Universities will tend to avoid hiring in those areas. Now if you consider that 99% of us consider creationism to be a fringe religious movement and not a science, you can imagine that it would be doubly impossible for a creationist bioloigst to get hired.
Both birds and flowers have pigmentation, but the molecular structures and biosyntheses of these pigments are very different. Why would a designer do that? Why use a completely different mechanism for making a red pigment in two unrelated organisms? After all, the result - a red color - is the same.
In many ways, Intelligent Design is a misnomer. If you consider the biome as a designed entity, there's massive duplication and waste. Why did the designer reinvent the wheel, many many times over?
The question is not so much "Why continue it?" as "Why start it?" You jump in to save the meaningfulness of one Colin Patterson quote from a list that included Frances Hitching cited as an archaeologist, the ancient "secular creationist" Heribert Nilsson, the odious John Woodmorappe (exposed here, here, and here), "evolutionist" Michael Denton (really!), Tom Kemp, and how many more misrepresentations?
You and Pietro both, putting your blinders on. How many lies to we have to catch? What's the bet that Ready2go does anything except post the whole list again on some other thread, complete with Hitching, Nilsson, Woodmorappe, "evolutionist" Denton, and all?
What's the excuse for this selective attention span?
It's either that or a severe lack of comprehension and reading skills, maybe a combination.
Sorry to break ranks a little, but it doesn't look to me like that's the case. You had said that the letter itself showed that these scientists were saying to themselves things that they wouldn't say to the general public, and the general was reasonably asking specifically what it was you were referring to.
But if I might venture to answer that question myself, I do think it's highly significant that they would intimate that the fossil record provides an unreliable support for the theory of evolution. You certainly wouldn't get that impression from talking to VadeRetro, that's for sure. And it's also, as I see it, not the impression that the general public receives at all from the scientific establishment.
I find it inconsistent that whenever a critic of Darwin is not in the field of biology, that person is pilloried as a moron having no relevance to the discussion. However, Darwininians always crow loudly whenever the slightest hint of imagined support for Darwin's musing comes forth in a field far removed from biology. I give the example of the oscillator, ersatz radio receiver.
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