Reasonable Kansans

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Unbelievable

From here:

A distinguished science professor at a major American university has weighed in on Iowa State University's denial of tenure to pro-ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, expressing astonishment at the result. According to Dr. Robert J. Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University:

I went to the Web of Science citation index which is the authority on citations. Only journal papers, not conference papers, are indexed. There are lots of Prof. Gonzalez's papers listed. My jaw dropped when I saw one of his papers has 153 citations and 139 on another. I have sat on oodles of tenure committees at both a large private university and a state research university, chaired the university tenure committee, and have seen more tenure cases than the Pope has Cardinals. This is a LOT of citations for an assistant professor up for tenure. The number of citations varies with discipline and autocitations are included in the tally, but this is a LOT of citations for an Assistant Professor. A lot.

The Iowa State U. Astronomy department is here. Their big star is Lee Anne Willson, University Professor. A University Professor is a rank more prestigious than a full Professor. She is their star. Her top two papers are cited 99 and 86 times. And she has been at this for 33 years.

And then there's Steven D. Kawaler, a full Professor who is the Current Program Coordinator for astronomy. He has a nice citation record with tops of 243 and 178.

There may be reasons I don't understand for denying Prof. Gonzalez tenure, but scholarship is absolutely not one of them.[my emphasis]


Just Wow...there is only one reason why Gonzalez was denied tenure, and I think Wesley Elsberry, who was at one time employed by the Darwin police, pretty much sums that up right here:

"A tenure committee should take note of someone advocating a scam as if it were legitimate science."
Elsberry et. al. intend to preach that everyone who questions the evolutionary paradigm is religiously motivated and a threat to science as well as a threat to the nation due to what they insist is a nation wide conspiracy among "fundamentalists" (and ID supporters) to establish a "Christian theocracy".

They also intend to lead the public into thinking that scientists, like Gonzalez, who are interested in further examination of the controversial issues surrounding the ToE and ID, are liars and con men.

There is also another tactic which anti-ID professors are going to eventually start using in order to put a stop to ID. "Dr.GH" puts it quite succinctly right here:

"Faculty have a proper concern about the reputation of the school and the consequent effect this has on their students. I would be more likely to accept a student from schools without creationists teaching than schools where they do."
Academic freedom be damned, the Darwinists have made it clear that those who dare consider the quite logical inference that a designer may, in fact, be responsible for the "illusion" of design we find in nature will be persecuted for following the evidence wherever it may lead.

Interesting, really, that Darwinists have go to these extremes...stifling academic freedom because their theory can't take the heat is pretty telling.

1 Comments:

  • At 1:02 PM, Larry Fafarman said…

    >>>>>I went to the Web of Science citation index which is the authority on citations. Only journal papers, not conference papers, are indexed. <<<<<<

    What is wrong with conference papers? Why aren't conference papers indexed? Though conference papers might not be peer-reviewed, they might have to compete with other papers to be selected for a conference. And even if there is no competition for selection, the conference papers should count for something anyway.

    It seems that there are an awful lot of crazy rules for judging tenure candidates. Apparently writing textbooks or popular books & articles doesn't count. Co-authorship of papers counts for much less than sole authorship. Co-authoring papers with former supervisors is frowned upon.

    >>>>> There are lots of Prof. Gonzalez's papers listed. My jaw dropped when I saw one of his papers has 153 citations and 139 on another. <<<<<

    And the Darwinists have been claiming without foundation that his papers have low numbers of citations.

    Anyway, I think that considering the numbers of citations in tenure decisions is a bad idea, for the following reasons:

    (1) The number of citations might have nothing to do with the importance or quality of a paper.

    (2) Different fields probably have great differences in the average number of citations per paper.

    (3) Papers cite papers that cite papers that cite papers and so forth and so the original paper might not get the full credit that it deserves.

    (4) An overemphasis on numbers of citations encourages academic fraud (I am not accusing Gonzalez of academic fraud).

    I am against tenure because I think that it is unfair to those who can't get it. But so long as we have it, I think that it should be administered fairly.

     

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