Iowa State University denies tenure to gifted pro-ID astronomer

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Teleologist, May 26, 2007.

  1. can i get a grant from the pinocchio institute?
     
    #51     Jun 2, 2007
  2. Outside research funding is not a published criterion for earning tenure in Dr. Gonzalez's department, therefore, any funding from any source is icing on the cake. I wouldn't equate NASA with the pinocchio institute. And it's being investigated whether everyone that got tenure in Dr. Gonzalez's department the past couple of years received outside research funding. Stay tuned.
     
    #52     Jun 2, 2007
  3. Excellent job in this thread, as always, jb and 2c. We have no choice but to patiently dismantle all their assertions, obfuscation and outright lies.

    Ah, how well I remember the good old days, when Teleologist would post that he had empirical proof for ID/Creation, then go skulking into the corner for a week when we asked him to produce it....when the Disgusting Troll would post that in his view, the origin of all life on earth is 'Magistrates were materialized out of pure potentiality'.
     
    #53     Jun 2, 2007
  4. Here you go MaxPi:

    http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/arts/24crea.html

    How stupid does it have to get? Trying to make what is now known of the real world around us fit with a literal interpretation of the Bible is incredibly STUPID!

     
    #54     Jun 2, 2007
  5. the creationist museum? i hear they got a grant from the pinocchio institute, same as gonzalez... obviously the guy's got pretty low standards to accept money from a political faction... can't teach kids
     
    #55     Jun 3, 2007
  6. BloodTrader wrote:
    Intelligent design has nothing to do with a literal interpretation of the Bible or this creationist museum.
     
    #56     Jun 3, 2007
  7. This is truly laughable. Dr. Gonzalez must be very embarrassed now that his supporters are parading his "successes" in the past 7 years. By any reasonable standards, the amount of funding he got has to be considered an utter failure.

    What do outside grants cover? The faculty's summer salary, his students' tuition and stipend. How much is needed to cover these? Assuming Gonzalez's 9 month salary is 60k, then his summer salary should be 20k. Each student costs about 20k (sum of tuition and stipend). I'm lowballing all the numbers here, and am not including the university overhead which is charged to all outside grants and goes between 50% to 100% depending on the university. So his total cost that needs to be covered by outside grants is at least 40k/year if he has one student (that would be unacceptable in most departments). And if he wants tenure, he should have at least two students and possibly many more. For example, if it takes an average of 5 years for a student to get a PhD and you want a student to graduate every year, then you should have 5 students at any given time.

    The 2000-2003 Templeton grant was apparently awarded before he went to Ames. Counting that one is a bit disingenuous but let's include that for the sake of argument. The total amount of grants he got from 2000 to 2007 is 172k (actually only 122k because the 50k from the Pinocchio institute was for the future 5 years). But he would have needed a minimum of 40k/year for a total of 280k over 7 years. No wonder he had only one student so far and I bet the department had to help pay for at least part of the cost.

    Also note that the sharp drop in number of publications occurred in 2004, the year when both the NASA grant and the Templeton grant ran out. That doesn't look like a coincidence to me. It looks like that his scientific career pretty much ended in 2004, possibly of his own choice. Iowa State would be neglecting their duty to the taxpayers if they granted this guy tenure.
     
    #57     Jun 4, 2007
  8. I don't really know why you feel the need to defend this, but all your arguments are meaningless without a comaprison to what the 91% of tenure candidates who were successful at ISU did in terms of pub's and grants. Of course, none of them had anti-religion bigots forming faculty committees to blacklist them.
     
    #58     Jun 4, 2007
  9. You're simply a bigot yourself and don't know it.

    I don't care what Iowa State does or wants. I just know that I wouldn't want someone like Gonzalez in my department. Not because of his religious views, but because he is demonstrated to be a burnt out scientist.
     
    #59     Jun 4, 2007
  10. Why would you call me a bigot? I point out the most relevant facts, eg that there was a committee formed to lobby against him because of his religion and that we don't know what the other successful tenure candidates had done in the areas you claim are so crucial. How could you possibly make the claims you are making without knowing how this guy compared to the others?

    Of course, we all know this is a standard part of "debating" with PC-crazed leftists. When they start to lose the debate, they immediately start calling their opponents hate-filled bigots. This is exactly what happened at ICU. Rather than debate Gonzalez's ideas, they got him fired and thus accomplished two objectives. One, they got rid of him. Two, they demonstrated to others that their own careers would be in jeopardy if they took any non-PC positions. If they could destroy an obviously top-rank candidate like Gonzalez, they could destroy anybody.
     
    #60     Jun 4, 2007