# 2 | J-Dog | February 13, 2007 11:17 AM

You make some awfully good points. dammit! And don't forget that many creationists are like "Dr." Kent Hovind... a fake doctorate from a diploma mill - the creo believers can't tell the difference anyway. IMO "Dr." Ross will always have the quotation marks, like Hovind, because he is a YEC.

# 4 | Factician | February 13, 2007 11:46 AM

You're absolutely right that he should keep his PhD. Obviously real scientists won't be fooled by him. But keep an eye out for popular "science" books published under the name Marcus Ross, PhD.

# 6 | Jason Rosenhouse | February 13, 2007 1:48 PM

Chad-

Did you actually read what I wrote? I argued specifically that URI did nothing wrong in awarding Ross his degree. I said it was his business how he uses his degree. In other words, I argued unambiguously against the view you have attributed to me.

My criticism of Ross is simply that it requires a certain lack of intellectual integrity to write a thesis you yourself do not believe in. As I just pointed out in a comment at my own blog, part of obtaining a degree is a public defense of your thesis. That means he had to publicly stand behind assertions he did not believe. That reflects very badly on him, but does not reflect badly on URI.

You wrote:

The usual suspects are denouncing him, his degree, and the university that awarded it, saying that nobody should get a Ph.D. if they don't sincerely believe in everything that modern science teaches.

I denounced neither his degree nor his university, and in fact defended both. I have denounced him for the reasons I have given. And while I'm flattered that Myers and I comprise the usual suspects, I'd appreciate it if you got your ducks in a row before lobbing grenades.

MartinM-

Thanks for the defense!

# 8 | Scott Coulter | February 13, 2007 1:57 PM

Chad,
Given your recent travails, I'm surprised you haven't made an obvious between admission to the Bar and getting tenure. Thoughts? I'm not an academic, so I might be a bit off-base.

In any case, I'm quite encouraged to see that your position on this issue agrees so well with mine. I've been an agitator for Christians being more involved with science, not less, for a long time; and I'd sure hate to live in a world where self-identifying as a Christian would make it harder to earn a science degree.
--sdc

# 12 | ERIC JUVE | February 13, 2007 2:30 PM

I wonder how many theology programs would accept an atheist as a doctoral candidate ?

# 14 | J Daley | February 13, 2007 2:53 PM

(From the engineer's creed)

"As an engineer, with humility and the need for Divine guidance...."

Maybe that's why so many engineers are ID advocates.

# 16 | quitter | February 13, 2007 3:51 PM

I'm still going to disagree on this one. I don't look at a PhD as a license to do science (I've published plenty of papers in grad school after all).

My issue is a combination of two things. One, is the same complaint as Rosenhouse, that his behavior is fundamentally deceptive. Two, is that no one is arguing for a belief-test or a morality test (at least not a negative one). You can believe in whatever you want and still get a degree. But in order to get a PhD you should believe in the scientific method. Several things Ross said made me think that he simply doesn't get science, like when he said data and facts were just "one paradigm" of studying paleontology.

So while he can believe in Buddha, or a young earth, or the FSM and I could care less for granting his degree, it's his incorrect understanding of the methods and basis of science that makes me believe he doesn't deserve a PhD in the sciences. Facts and data aren't just "one paradigm" of doing science, they are the paradigm. If he doesn't get that, he doesn't deserve a degree.

# 18 | bob koepp | February 13, 2007 6:21 PM

Has anybody ever heard of the philsophic stance, quite common among physicists, called instrumentalism? It doesn't require "belief" in "scientific facts," just accepting them as useful analytic and calculational devices. And this isn't even pomo -- it was standard fare for ancient greek astronomers.

# 20 | Chris Noble | February 13, 2007 10:56 PM

Maybe the scandal involving Jan Hendrik Schön is a better example.

If Ross ever commits the same sort of fraud as Schoen then this might be grounds for revoking a PhD. I believe it depends on the charter of the university whether they have the power to revoke a PhD.

Of course the chance of Ross publishing anything in peer reviewed journals is very small so this is unlikely to ever happen.

# 22 | MartinM | February 14, 2007 6:08 AM

This is about his religious beliefs, plain and simple. He doesn't believe in the scientific method in your view precisely because he does believe in his religion-- if you set those up as mutually exclusive, then requiring belief in one amounts to punishing belief in the other

The same could be said of teaching evolution in schools. There's a distinction to be drawn between actively punishing religious beliefs and simply acting in a reasonable manner which happens to be inconsistent with some set of beliefs.

That said, I don't really give a toss what Ross believes. As long as he produces the goods, that's enough for me. Science is more than just people. One could make a case for denying admission if another, more suitable candidate is available, but that's another question altogether. Even a trained monkey has some value.

# 24 | Barry | February 14, 2007 10:15 AM

# 13 | Scott Coulter | February 13, 2007 02:38 PM

(re: would a theology department accept an atheist as a student)
"Sadly, lots. There are, from an evangelical Christian perspective, plenty of largely non-Christian "theology" departments."

And the 'evangelical Christian' perspective is worth what?

By now, it would be just as reasonable to write off evangelicals as non-Christians, until proven otherwise.
And that's accepting the premise that 'non-Christian'='atheist'.

# 26 | Matt | February 14, 2007 11:02 AM

Didn't the right thing happen in pretty much every aspect of this case? He didn't lie to his department, the department required that he do science that was based on the state of the art, and he ended up at Liberty College, which is barely a real school. I mean, it's not like he got a job at Harvard, right?

Matt

# 28 | Beren | February 14, 2007 11:07 AM

You're right to bring up the issue of the authority that the PhD holds in the public mind. But you know, the problem goes beyond the sciences.

Plenty of people write junk history and get pretty good sales (or appear in History Channel shows) in part because they can put 'PhD' after their names. The non-specialist public (including many scientists, btw) just believes what these people write, but it really makes historians cringe. These charlatans are ignoring facts, discoveries, and even the methodology of their field.

But as bad as that is, what alternative is there? If we imposed a review board that could take away your doctorate for false or misleading statements, we'd quickly sink into dogmatism. Sooner or later, some temporarily dominant, but false, position would be enshrined as 'correct', and then all those who sought to challenge it would lose their doctorates. When they eventually managed to prove their point, the whole field would be in shreds.

It's best to call the PhD what it is, as you do. It's a recognition of work satisfactorily completed at a certain level. It's not the only criterion for holding a job. To the extent that it confers a level of authority in the public mind, that's something we need to challenge.

Regards,
Beren

# 30 | desider | February 14, 2007 11:16 AM

In any scientific field, you need to be proficient in the
tools of the trade even if you disagree with them.

Spherical geometry came about from denying Euclid's Fifth
Postulate, that parallel lines never intersect. But you
still need to work with Euclid's Fifth Postulate in other
geometric reference frames.

If you're a painter, you may hate live drawing and be antsy
to get onto post-modernistic whatever, but it would be a
crap school that didn't require you to have basic
proficiencies and awareness of artistic foundations.

In any case, science and academia work on the merits of
your work, not whether you have a PhD. Jumping genes
were a loony concept that would have gotten most people
thrown into a madhouse, but it turned out to be right.
But that's after a long period of proof, peer review,
validation of results, and other processes.

You want to try proving creation occurred in the last
10,000 years? Go ahead. But you need proof, not just a
pretty sounding write-up. Presumably the guy who got the
PhD will understand that much of the world of science,
more than pseudo-scientists with no training.

I'm not religious, but is it wrong for a scientist to be
inspired by the story of creation or the flood or Eden
or some other snippet of the Bible? I'm sure Mendel, the
founder of genetics and a monk, had more than a few musings
on Biblical significance. But what matters in the end is
the quality of his work. Shockley's rantings on eugenics
aside, his contribution to science are his work on
transistors. If students want to go protest war in Iraq
or El Salvador, why can't they hold alternative opinions
on the universe as well? And yeah, there are people who
don't like medicine or law all that much but go into it
to make a good living. Should they be disqualified from
practicing too?

# 32 | Christopher | February 14, 2007 11:20 AM

I doubt very much the issue for the university considering awarding the PhD is whether the candidate is a man of "faith" or whether he is a man of "science." Politics of this sort simply shouldn't be part of the equation in any area of academia.

Presenting and defending a doctoral thesis one does not believe to be true, however, strikes me as a different and very serious issue. I am under the impression that these things are supposed to be more than just exercises in sophistry. This isn't a parliamentary debate contest, is it?

# 34 | DaveMB | February 14, 2007 11:46 AM

I agree with Chad, except for his now-acknowledged failure to realize that the original poster he was attacking actually agreed with him completely.

I'm a faculty member in computer science at a research-1 institution and thus participate in the process of granting Ph.D.'s. I was even the outside member for a geologist who has rewritten the very ancient geological history of northern Saskatchewan. Yeah, if you do the work, and the work is a significant contribution, you get the Ph.D. and what you do with it is your own problem. If this guy now goes around saying that his young-earth creationist viewpoint is informed by a deep understanding of mainstream geology and paleontology, bizarre as his viewpoint is we have to give him that -- his understanding of mainstream geology was good enough for him to write a mainstream thesis.

Where it gets interesting is if he were to apply for a mainstream job. If a search committee rejects him over his religion, is that discrimination? Or a legitimate judgement of his intellectual integrity -- I'm not sure I could be confident of someone whose mind was so "essentially double" in the area I was hiring him to work in. Anyway, better that Liberty have him that some complete ignoramus who will teach The Flintstones as history.

As for the theological school, I'd think that any graduate theological program that couldn't grant a degree to an atheist, who sincerely wanted to learn what they were teaching and succeeded in doing so, shouldn't be granting degrees at all. Different seminaries have different mixes of academics and vocational training, but even the latter (courses in church management and sermon writing, for example) ought to be open to anyone. Since I'd hold the theological school to that standard, I can't help but do the same for the geology department.

A nice blog, I will try to stop by more often.

# 36 | pbl | February 14, 2007 12:01 PM

Whenever you see a claim about what "the usual suspects" did, without specifics, there's a pretty good chance that what follows is specious. I have yet to hear a respected authority denounce his degree or the university that granted it. But then, the strawman must fit the narrative.

# 38 | Consumatopia | February 14, 2007 12:06 PM

I think this whole controversy stems from a deeper deficiency in the scientific community. Scientists have collectively failed to proved the lay public with any way of distinguishing good science from science, other than becoming a scientist yourself. Keeping Scientist status as a "nebulous" thing is peachy keen for scientists--scientists are tightly connected to each other as a community, and are better qualified to evaluate each other's work.

But what are non-scientists like myself supposed to do? Now, you can just turn your nose up and say it doesn't matter what someone who has neither time nor capacity to evaluate a scientific white paper on its merits, without reference to the social status of the paper's author. And in my case, you'd be right--it doesn't matter what I think. I'm a John Q. Public nobody.

But what if I were a politician deciding what our nation's policy for dealing with global warming should be? At that point "nebulous" starts to fall short.

# 40 | PZ Myers | February 14, 2007 12:25 PM

As long as you're retracting dubious interpretations…

What Myers and Rosenhouse are essentially arguing is that the Ph.D. should serve both of the purposes that the legal profession splits apart: it should be an academic degree awarded only to people of good character-- which is to say, people who don't have beliefs that they find annoying.

That is not even close to what I said. This was a Ph.D. candidate who not only failed to understand basic concepts in his field, but was espousing weird, anti-scientific ideas that directly contradicted facts stated in his thesis. That a candidate believes in Jesus is annoying, but I agree that it should have absolutely no bearing on his suitability for the degree; if a candidate invokes Jesus as an explanation for his results, publicly and at scientific meetings disagrees with fundamental principles of his discipline, and then intentionally avoids any challenge of those ideas with his thesis committee, then there's a problem. A real problem.

# 42 | John Farrell | February 14, 2007 12:43 PM

Yes...but picking up on the thread another commenter had from above, let's assume more creationists are going this route, some, like Wells for purely intellectually dishonest reasons. Aren't a certain percentage of them surely likely to lose their creationism in the process of their studies as a result of the real science they are exposed to? I knew several undergrads in this boat when I was in college, all ex baptists in pre med, etc.

Which is another way of asking, where else are creationists going to get the exposure they need to let creationism go?

Just a thought.

# 46 | John Farrell | February 14, 2007 1:34 PM

Tom, thanks for reminding me to put Monkey Girl on my Amazon list...now I can throw out the three huge stacks of printed pdfs I've kept from the actual Dover case...

:)

# 48 | David C. Weiss | February 14, 2007 1:58 PM

A number of posters mentioned the cognitive dissonance involved in earning a degree in paleontology while being a young-earth creationist, but few have dwelt on the basic paradox of dishonesty involved in his work in earning that degree. To wit: if the man didn't believe in what he was being taught, then each and every "scientifically accurate" paper he turned in was a form of lying, if not outright premeditated fraud. To play chameleon and turn in appropriate, acceptable course work while not believing a single iota of it is fundamentally dishonest. I do not for a moment support disallowing his degree or what employment he might gain from it, but I would, if I were an employer, question his moral character at this clear dissembling. My opinion is obviously an oversimplification of the case, but it's my first emotional reaction to problems presented by it.

# 50 | Adam | February 14, 2007 2:10 PM

Above, where I said 'it doesn't matter what you believe', I should have said 'it doesn't even matter which one you pick'. My position is that at no point does it matter what you believe, just which theories best survive testing.

# 52 | David C. Weiss | February 14, 2007 2:31 PM

Adam #49

Let me quibble a little about your response. You may not have believed what you were taught about QM, but it wasn't because you believed that the material was an utter, pernicious lie itself. The degree of his religious conviction that paleontological evidence was either fraudulent, a malicious lie, or "planted by Satan to test our faith" is the standard by which I deem his degree to be a form of fraud.

# 54 | Adam | February 14, 2007 2:38 PM

David #52: Well, you are right that I didn't believe that it was a pernicious fraud, but I don't think that it would have made any difference if I did. If I did feel that it was all Satan's trickery*, no reason why I couldn't work in it if only to understand it. Or for fun, or for any other reason, because so far as I am concerned, it wouldn't matter why I did it, or what I actually believed, at all. The only thing that mattered was the quality of the results.

*Let's be clear: I didn't.

# 56 | Adam | February 14, 2007 2:48 PM

Also, because I do love a bit of shameless self-promotion, I made this post on the same issue yesterday, having first picked this story up on Sullivan's blog (which is also how I found this blog, thanks to Sullivan linking it today). I pretty much said the same sort of stuff as Chad, including in passing a comment along the lines of his last statement; it is on us, to a large extent, to educate the public as to what a PhD means, how science works, etc.

I had been hoping that the Cosmic Variance blog would pick up on this, but Sean (at least) is too busy. Which will teach him to have a real life (unlike me, who wrote my bit at 5ish am).

# 58 | gg | February 14, 2007 3:15 PM

One more comment:

Chad wrote: "If he had kept his beliefs to himself until after he graduated, he would've sailed through, and nobody would've had a problem with it. And everybody would assume that he had some sort of mid-life conversion experience, and became a kook after getting the doctorate. Would you be any happier with that state of affairs?"

Of course we don't want people to lie their way through school, but it also doesn't look good to have someone admittedly work their way through graduate school by supporting a thesis they disagree with because they think it's what the committee wants to hear. That also sounds rather unscientific.

# 60 | gg | February 14, 2007 4:13 PM

Adam wrote: "I just don't think that it matters... This Dr. Ross, though, put out work that passed scientific muster. He's moved science forward by producing good work and that's how the system is supposed to function. If Dr Ross can go through the whole system of producing sufficiently good work to get a science PhD, and still keep his own belief system intact, then fair enough...I don't think that there's dishonesty in publishing work that you don't believe, so long as it's scientifically good work; that judgement, of scientific quality, is the only one that counts."

I guess part of what I'm driving at is that although his beliefs evidently don't matter in terms of getting his science degree, getting that degree in itself doesn't make him a good scientist. In other words, he did what he had to do to get his degree, but now that he has it he evidently didn't really bring any science with him. The fact that he's ended up at Liberty U. is good evidence that this is the case, and I would expect that he'll never really publish good paleontology again or have to listen to anyone tell him that the Earth is older than 10k.

I'm not sure how you think there's no problem in publishing work that you don't believe, but this may be a semantic issue with the word 'believe'. As a physicist, the things I believe about the universe are inextricably tied up with the experimental and observational evidence that has been established, and will change as the evidence changes. This is what an 'open-minded' scientist presumably does, yet the student in question apparently will not allow their views on the age of the Earth to be shaken by any experimental evidence or, even stranger, can hold two completely contradictory views (and before anyone says it, no, this isn't like holding paradoxical views on quantum mechanics - the age of the Earth is an easily understandable and unambiguous concept, unlike the question, "What is a particle?"). Furthermore, there are many subjects in science which are still on the frontiers and it is fine to hold an agnostic position on (such as string theory, for instance). I don't think the age of the Earth is one of those.

By the way, I would be sincerely and genuinely interested in an example of someone publishing work in which they don't "believe"; that might help clear up my understanding of other's views.