The Evil Monkey has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from a southeastern U.S. university. After a postdoctoral nightmare of Inquisitorial proportions, he is currently working in a laboratory and an adjunct assistant professor at a nearby state university.
Scicurious is a graduate student wrestling with a PhD in Physiology at a southern institution. She is a nerd, a geek, and also a dork. And yes, that really is her brain.
NotoriousLTP is an MD-PhD student in New York City. After finishing (hopefully soon) his PhD in behavioral neuroscience, he will re-enter the fun vortex that is medical education.
Phil over at Bad Astronomy has it a bit backwards, but hey it's not his fault. He didn't have to sit through that nightmare of a press conference.
I still stick by my own conclusion too, that by trying to say that Gonzalez's religious freedom has been curtailed, they are admitting ID is religion and not science, which they vehemently denied with the Dover case. I think if this comes to court, that'll be a fun issue to grill them about.
From the press conference, the DI is clearly trying to distance religion from ID. The subject never really came up until a reporter asked about it. Even a handout in the DI information packet gives instructions on how to properly define ID, which includes notions like separating it from creationism and religious concepts like "higher power". They've already had their day in court at Dover (and lost) because ID was (correctly) tied to religion. They don't want to go back there. Another flub of a court case will cement Intelligent Design as a legal failure.
No, this time around they'll likely try to claim a hostile work environment. They can't risk having ID identified with religion and not science yet again. Which is unfortunate, because as Phil said, it would be really frakkin' fun....
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It's gonna be hard to distance ID from religion, when it actually is all about religion...
Posted by: J-Dog | December 5, 2007 9:26 PM
I think ID has already been cemented as a legal failure. That's why you're seeing more use of the 'we don't want to teach ID, we want critical analysis' language. Its already been shown that ID cannot be uncoupled from its creationist roots. That IDers continually deny it doesn't change a thing. I could claim over and over that I don't have brown eyes, but the facts of the thing will always refute me.
Was it really a hostile workplace environment? Of course scientists are going to be hostile to non-scientific tripe presented as science. If they want to refute that, then they'll have to get into a judge looking at whether ID is science. Which I believe they opposed at Dover.
Posted by: Dave S. | December 6, 2007 7:36 AM
Dave S @ #2: ...they'll have to get into a judge looking at whether ID is science. Which I believe they opposed at Dover.
Actually, before Dover they were all for it. It wasn't until after Dover that they started saying judges can't determine whether something is science and shouldn't try and anyway no one ever asked for that.
Please join me in pointing and laughing.
Posted by: Trip the Space Parasite | December 7, 2007 6:52 PM