Show me the money.

The Discovery Institute is (still, and predictably) in an uproar over Iowa's decision to reject Intelligent Design proponent Guillermo Gonzalez's tenure application. The DI is claiming that the decision could not possibly be anything other than an example of discrimination against a brave non-Darwinian scientist by the Darwinian Orthodoxy. Personally, I think it's something different. I think it's about the money.

According to an article that was just published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Gonzalez has not received any major research grants since arriving at Iowa. Casey Luskin of the DI points out that the tenure guidelines written by the department do not specifically mention funding as a requirement for research. That is true, but irrelevant. I've never heard of a tenure committee at a research university that does not look at outside funding.

Casey claims that if Iowa is using funding, it's clearly just an ad-hoc reason invented to deny an otherwise qualified candidate tenure. It's not. A professor's ability to get outside research funding is a very good indicator of how well they will perform at a research university. Here's why:

Science takes money, and the money is usually not provided by the university. Most schools will provide a new professor with a start-up package that includes a sum of money that is intended to get a lab started, and enough research published to attract outside money. After that, researchers are more or less on their own. The university will pay their salary, but in most of the scientific fields it takes more than a full-time researcher, some pencils, and some paper to produce good research.

Professors at research universities are not expected to be primarily teachers. They are not typically expected to be primarily researchers. They are expected to be PIs - principle investigators. A PI runs a lab that does research. The PI may (and often does) do some of the research personally, but the lab will usually also have graduate students, postdocs, techs, the occasional undergrad, etc.

Contrary to common opinion at the upper levels of university administrations throughout the universe, grad students and postdocs have to eat and sleep at least once a week.

Running a successful lab requires research funding. That's the funding that pays for equipment. That's the funding that pays for experiments. That's the funding that pays the salaries of the rest of the lab. If a scientist cannot bring in outside money, they are going to have a very, very, very hard time maintaining a successful lab. Without a successful lab, it is very difficult to maintain a good track record as a scientist.

Scientists without external funding also have a difficult time fulfilling their responsibilities to their graduate students. In the sciences, grad students are commonly supported though their advisor's grant funds. This is the support that makes it possible for grad students to find some level of food and shelter while still advancing in their degree programs. Departments usually do their best to pick up the slack and support students when advisors cannot, but that's often a less-than-satisfactory outcome for all involved.

Since landing at Iowa, Gonzalez has only managed to bring in a Templeton Foundation grant to pay part of his salary while he wrote his pro-ID book. He does not appear to have brought in any outside research funding. If that is truly the case, denial of tenure is really a no-brainer. No matter how good his publication record is at the moment (and it looks pretty good), there's no reason to expect that it would remain good without funding. There's no reason to expect, in the absence of funding, that he will be successful in establishing a good research lab. There's no reason to expect, in the absence of funding, that he will be able to continue to attract good grad students to the department, or support the students that he does bring in.

It's entirely possible, of course, that Gonzalez's ID activities played a role in the tenure decision, and I'm not sure that there's anything wrong with that. I know that I would personally be uncomfortable working in a department with somebody who is a senior fellow at an institution that actively attempts to undermine science education for children all over the country. Ultimately, though, I'd be surprised if his ID-advocacy was the primary reason for the decision. Failure to bring home the bacon will result in a denial of tenure in just about any research university out there - and Gonzalez, whatever else he might be good at, didn't manage to do that.

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There may also be a problem of fundamental misconceptions in one's understanding of a field when it comes to submitting proposals. Gonzalez may have exhibited enough of these to call his potential for obtaining funding into question.

If the publishing he did achieve came primarily from work that was proposed by others, he, in effect, was behaving like a parasite.

We don't know the details, but people who have to work up close and personal with those who have fundamental holes in their training will soon notice.

By Mike Elzinga (not verified) on 21 May 2007 #permalink

68 papers? That is about one per month for a typical pre-tenure period. Is astronomy so easy that one can make a substantial contribution once a month? Maybe so, I just don't know, but in biomedical sciences two or three papers a year is excellent productivity for pre-tenured professor.

Well, I was a Program Officer in the Division of Mathematics at the NSF for a couple of years almost 20 years ago, and the situation then was entirely different, and I doubt that it's changed much. The NSF was not created as a tenuring organization, and that is still not its purpose; when I was there, we considered it quite improper for universities to use grant-receipt as a criterion for giving tenure. If my memory serves me, one of the high (and permanent) functionaries in our Division offered to call any Dean to tell him/her not to use the award or non-award of an NSF grant in tenure decisions. Now, it's possible, because of the cheapness of mathematical research, that our position was untypical within the NSF; but somehow, I doubt it.

If it was a case where we were just talking about a failure to gain NSF funding, or NASA funding, or NIH funding, or funding from the John Jacob Jingleheimer Foundation for the Intensive Study of Bellybuttons, I'd agree fully. Tenure decisions should be made by the involved faculty, not by the grant approval committee at some external organization.

That's not what we're talking about here. The situation in this case appears to be a failure to gain any sort of extramural research funding. Let's be clear - the only grant anybody has mentioned was the 3-year Templeton, which was given for purposes other than research. The Discovery Institute can complain about how he is being discriminated against despite having some sort of testable desinish hypothesis, but it doesn't look like anyone - including them - has stepped up to fund it.

From the Iowa State Faculty handbook on Tenure evaluation:
QUOTE:
5.2.2.3.2. Research /Creative Activities.
Faculty members who engage in research/creative activities are expected to make original contributions that are appropriate to their chosen area of specialization and that are respected by peers within and outside the university.

Some examples of research/creative activity include the following:

conduct of experimental research

creative performance or exhibition

conceptualizing and theorizing in an original way

synthesis, criticism, and clarification of extant knowledge and research

innovative collection or analysis of empirical data

seeking and obtaining competitive grants and contracts

relating research to the solution of practical problems

leadership in professional societies or organizations

A portfolio format is used to document faculty research/creative activities beyond what is contained in the candidate's vita. The faculty portfolio includes materials such as summaries of completed, current, and future research projects; descriptions of applied use of research; summaries of grants, patents, and inventions; exhibition catalogs and other non-juried creative works.

The effectiveness of the candidate's research/creative activities is determined by evaluating the character of the scholarship of these activities using the criteria described in the scholarship section and in Table 1.

Scholarship resulting from research/creative activities is documented through means appropriate to the specialty, such as peer-reviewed publications, lectures, performances, exhibits, invited lectures, conference papers. Evaluation of scholarship considers its impact as judged by its influence, use, or adoption by peers; its originality, richness, breadth and/or depth of expression.
END QUOTE:

"seeking and obtaining competitive grants and contracts"
and
"summaries of grants, patents, and inventions"

Is part of the evaluation process. I don't think that anyone denies it at a research institution. It is one of the major points of evaluation even if it is put in among many. How are you going to do your research and support students without funding? Beats me what Luskin is going on about.

By Ron Okimoto (not verified) on 22 May 2007 #permalink

Tex,

It's easy to get crappy work published in crappy journals, so quantity tells you little. It is better to have one or two papers a year that land in Science and Nature than 10 a year in journals with terrible journal impact scores. Basically, the amount of citations of works contained in these journals is used to indicate their quality -- if they publish good work, it will get cited in the future. You can see the list of the top 10 journals by impact for '96-'06 here

[obviously, this is a general statement, not directed towards Gonzalez's work, with which I'm completely unfamiliar]

Looks like Luskin is twisting the facts (surprise, surprise!) He counts 68 pubs, and compares them to the department regulations

For promotion to associate professor, excellence sufficient to lead to a national or international reputation is required and would ordinarily be shown by the publication of approximately fifteen papers of good quality in refereed journals.

Of course, if he had bothered to go back two sentences, he would see that

For
promotion from instructor to assistant professor, clear promise of excellence in research is required,
as demonstrated typically by six papers of good quality, either published or accepted by refereed
journals.

Thus, it's obvious that the "fifteen papers" they are talking about means "fifteen papers since promotion to assistant professor", not "fifteen papers in your entire academic career". From 2002 to 2006 Gonzalez has 19 pubs, six of which were first authored. Some of the six in 2001 probably count as well, so he's probably got at least 20 pubs in the window that they are considering. That's a respectable number, but a far cry from the sixty-eight that Luskin is talking about. But hey, saying that Luskin is twisting the facts in a misleading manner is about as newsworthy as saying that DaveScott is dumb as a rock.

Somewhere in all this verbiage, I read that Gonzalez, as I think is appropriate for all tenure-track professors, has undergone a series of (scheduled?) reviews, to make sure he wasn't wandering off the track, and to let him know where he needed more focus.

And what I saw was, he was rated unsatisfactory at every one of these (five?) reviews. If so, it's puzzling why Gonzalez would continue all the way to the tenure decision itself -- unless the prospect of becoming a martyr to ID was the most appealing option available to him. More appealing than finding a position at a school whose orientation was more congenial to his convictions, perhaps.

Couple more things:
* if you look at the publication list that Luskin supplies, there are no "contributed papers" (conference abstracts) since 2003.
* three of the four 2006 papers are all single authored, short papers. Two of them are published in an online-only "Letters" version of a respectable journal (which, unfortunately, I don't see, to have access to), the third is based entirely on "publicly available data" from 2004. The fourth paper is a (single authored) review paper.
* his 2005 output consists of two research papers (in which he is fourth author of five) and his "Habitable Zones in the Universe", which is intelligent design crap (and despite all the attention that attracted, it has been cited zero times, according to the ISI Citation Index).
* his 2004 output consists of two papers, one in which he is fourth author of five, and one in which he is seventh author of seven.

While I can't mock his publication record too much (it still dwarfs mine), there's an obvious pattern here - there is a sharp decline in both the quantity and quality of his output since 2004, with an attempt to get his numbers up in 2006. Quite frankly, being fourth author of five (consistently) probably means that you are being added out of courtesy, rather than as a result of any real input into the research.

Lost in all the usual DI spin, is the bottom line that with ID's ultimate conclusion - "goddidit" - is a science stopper. Why would Iowa State grant tenure to a science stopper Mr. Luskin?

Ian,

I am going to have to disagree with you at this point. I am author number four on two recent papers and I busted my craw to get on those papers. In one paper. three of the eight figures are mine, and on the other paper, even though I did not directly contribute to the figures, ALL the preliminary work that was eventually redone by the first few authors to make prettier Western blots with all the other lanes they wanted was done by me. That constitutes about four months of non-stop transciption assays, Westerns, IPs, PCRs etc. Put that together with extensively writing and then rewriting both papers, and you are talking about a major time and intellectual contribution. The number in the authorial list does not automatically mean that the contribution to the paper was miniscule. I think that each publication has to be considered one at a time.

I am not an astronomer and I do read the journals that Gonzales reads. Therefore I cannot say anything about the work that went into his latter publications. Any astronomers out there who read these journals wish to comment?

MB

By Michael Buratovich (not verified) on 22 May 2007 #permalink

According to Iowa State's Annual Reports (from the 2000-2001 through 2003-2004 academic years) to the American Astonomical Society (I hope I got the name right), none of Double-G's publications from 2001 were submitted prior to him going to ISU. Also, a number of his publications were write-ups of research performed while at UW. In fact, almost 2/3rds of his publications after leaving UW were collaborations with UW faculty and students on long-term projects that started while he was there. While the ability to continue work on existing long-term projects is certainly valuable, it doesn't establish a record of original research. Note that after the comprehensive three year review, his publication pattern changed - I am speculating that he got a warning that he needed to start showing the ability to do original research.

One thing in his favor: it does appear that he was an advisor for a successful Master's candidate. David Oesper, with GG's (and one of the orignal author's) help, wrote the 2nd Edition of a major astronomy textbook as his Master's thesis. Since this book was published in 2006, I presume (but have not verified) that David now has an MS.

I'll try to hunt down the annual reports and post links and excerpts - I saw it on a different computer.

With respect to the issue of grants/funding, it would be interesting if it could be compared to the funding that others in that department had at the time of their approval of tenure.

Daniel Morgan Wrote:

It's easy to get crappy work published in crappy journals, so quantity tells you little. It is better to have one or two papers a year that land in Science and Nature than 10 a year in journals with terrible journal impact scores. Basically, the amount of citations of works contained in these journals is used to indicate their quality -- if they publish good work, it will get cited in the future. You can see the list of the top 10 journals by impact for '96-'06 here

Now, being married to a research professor, I'd disagree somewhat. This is based on years of feedback I've gotten from her and her contemporaries in biology.

In publication, Science and Nature, if you get a full paper, is THE good thing. But those papers are usually massive, ground-breaking in vast new paradigms and/or the product of a decade or more of theory and research. They're just not geared as venues for the two-to-three papers a year production cycle of the biology lab, where small, incremental discoveries are frequently made.

What most people, in her field, get into Nature and Science are not papers so much as "letters" which more along the lines of executive summaries of research than full papers. In the past this kept many people, in fields where detail, etc., was important from looking at Nature or Science as a good publication/citation vehicles. Simply because those letters really did lack the detail necessary to be useful.

Now, with the on-line supplements, Science and Nature are becoming more interesting as vehicles to spread results to the other people in my wife's field.

Now, from a CV perspective, Nature and Science are still tops. Don't get me wrong, they're still the king of the hill in this regard. But from a research standpoint, where you need to get the information Cell, Developmental Cell and Current Biology (among others) are, in many ways, more important because this is where the meat of research tends to end up.

(Have to go. Didn't finish the edit. Hope it's not too messed up and/or contridictory. Thanks.)

Mike Dunford said in the opening post,

Casey Luskin of the DI points out that the tenure guidelines written by the department do not specifically mention funding as a requirement for research . . . Casey Luskin of the DI points out that the tenure guidelines written by the department do not specifically mention funding as a requirement for research.

I agree with Casey. If getting outside grants is so important, then why isn't it mentioned in the tenure guidelines?

For the following reasons, I feel that grant-getting should not be a major factor in tenure decisions:

(1) Getting grants is easier in some fields than in others.

(2) Getting grants is often a crapshoot.

(3) A lot of good scientific research can be done without getting outside grants.

(4) Emphasizing grant-getting will discourage faculty from doing research in areas where they can't get or don't need outside grants.

(5) As for supporting graduate students, graduate students don't just do research but also provide teaching services for the university at a very low cost.

(6) A lot of the outside grant money comes from corporations, compromising the independence of the universities.

Also, a lot of the rules for evaluating tenure candidates are crazy. For example, according to what I have heard, the following kinds of work are often given little or no weight in tenure decisions: writing textbooks, reviews, and popular books & articles; editing the work of others; co-authored papers as opposed to single-author papers; papers co-authored with former supervisors; and continuation of research started elsewhere. These rules put faculty members in strait-jackets, denying them the freedom to use their own judgment to choose work where they feel they would be the most productive and/or make the best contribution.

Also, I think that considering the numbers of citations of papers when making tenure decisions encourages academic fraud -- researchers know that fabricating or exaggerating their achievements in their papers is likely to increase the numbers of citations.

Ian ( May 22, 2007 07:54 AM ) wrote,

Thus, it's obvious that the "fifteen papers" they are talking about means "fifteen papers since promotion to assistant professor", not "fifteen papers in your entire academic career".

I agree that papers that he wrote before coming to ISU should not be counted -- that would be unfair to tenure candidates who had little or no work experience before coming to ISU.

Let me state categorically: anyone in a science department at a research-1 university (such as ISU) who has not been successful in obtaining significant external financial support for his/her research is dead meat at tenure review time. Everyone entering a tenure-track academic appointment knows that these are the expectations and they know for certain what will happen if they fail to bring in the bucks. I'm sure that Dr. G. was not surprised that he was denied tenure.

By S. C. Hartman (not verified) on 22 May 2007 #permalink

It's Iowa State, not University of Iowa. When you say "Iowa" most people will assume you mean UoI.

By Mikeinjapan (not verified) on 22 May 2007 #permalink

All quotes excerpted from the Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society. To find the annual report, go to the following year's Annual Reports of Astronomical Observatories and Departments link and select the university in question. For example, for the 2001-2002 academic year, you would go to the 2003 volume.

ISU's yearly reports regarding Gonzalez's activities, by academic year:

2000-2001

Also at the end of the period G. Gonzalez joined the faculty as an Asst. Professor.

UofW's report stated that he left for ISU in August 2001.

2001-2002

Gonzalez obtained spectroscopic observations of stars hosting planets in December 2001, March 2002, and April 2002 at McDonald Observatory. This is a continuation of a long-term program started in late 1995 to derive the basic properties of stars with planets. Graduate student Chris Laws (University of Washington, Seattle) is using these data for his Ph.D. dissertation work. REU student Kyle Walker (Ohio State) assisted with measurement of the spectra during summer 2002. A search for the 6Li isotope in stars with planets in collaboration with D. L. Lambert and B. E. Reddy at the University of Texas in Austin and C. Laws found no 6Li in any of 8 stars with planets. This effort is continuing with observations of additional stars with planets. Work with E. Gaidos (University of Hawaii) on a study of the abundances of a sample of nearby young solar analogs was completed in 2001. Work with G. Wallerstein (University of Washington) and S. Giridhar (Indian Institute of Astrophysics) on the abundances of very metal-poor cool giants continues; the work is based on observations obtained in 2000 and 2001 with the KPNO 4-m and Apache Point 3.5-m telescopes.
In collaboration with graduate students J. Armstrong and L. Wells (University of Washington), Gonzalez is continuing a study of the Moon as a source for evidence of early life on Earth. The first paper from this study presents an estimate of the concentration of Terran material in the lunar regolith. The second paper considers the possibility of re-seeding the Earth following a sterilizing impact. The third paper will examine search strategies for Terran meteorites on the Moon.

Note that all the research mentioned for this year was either performed prior to the start of his stay at ISU or was a conbtinuation of long-term projects begun during his post-doc. None of his 2001 papers are listed in the publications section.

2002-2003

Gonzalez and Willson, with several undergraduate and graduate students, continue developing a series of web-based astronomy modules, collectively known as the Polaris Project. Aimed at the freshman non-scientist, several modules have been tested by students with backgrounds ranging from none to senior in physics/ astronomy. The presentation material is open for use by anyone:
http://www.polaris.iastate.edu
...
Gonzalez continues a long-term program, started in late 1995, to derive the basic properties of stars with planets. This is the Ph.D. thesis topic of C. Laws (U. Washington), which he expects to complete in June 2004. REU student Kyle Walker (Ohio State) assisted with measurement of the spectra during summer 2002. Work with G. Wallerstein (University of Washington) and S. Giridhar (Indian Institute of Astrophysics) on the abundances of very metal-poor cool giants continues; the work is based on observations obtained in 2000 and 2001 with the KPNO 4-m and Apache Point 3.5-m telescopes. In collaboration with J. Armstrong (Weber State), Gonzalez is continuing a study of the Moon as a source for evidence of early life on Earth, exploring the possibility of re-seeding the Earth following a sterilizing impact, and search strategies for Terran meteorites on the Moon.

A little bit of teaching related responsibilities, but his research is entirely a continuation of the previous post-doc collaboration. Nothing original.

2003-2004

D. Oesper progressed on a Masters program that Gonzalez and graduate student David Oesper have signed a contract with Cambridge University Press to revise the textbook Observational Astronomy, by D. Scott Birney. This project will be Oesters Masters thesis project. It is scheduled for completion in May 2005. Prior to going out of print a few years ago, this was a popular textbook for upper level undergraduate courses on observational astronomy.
...
Gonzalez (with Eitter and Kerton) continued construction of a precision radial velocity spectrograph (m/s resolution). The spectrograph is based on the "Externally Dispersed Interferometer" design of J. Ge and D. Erskine. It will eventually be used with the Mather Telescope at Fick Observatory to obtain high precision radial velocities to study giant planets around Sun-like stars.
...
Gonzalez continues a long-term program, started in late 1995, to derive the basic properties of stars with planets. This is the Ph.D. thesis topic of C. Laws (U. Washington), which he expects to complete in December 2004. Work with G. Wallerstein (U. Washington) and S. Giridhar (Indian Inst. of Astrophysics) on the abundances of very metal-poor cool giants continues; the work is based on observations obtained in 2000 and 2001 with the KPNO 4-m and Apache Point 3.5-m telescopes. In collaboration with J. Armstrong (Weber State), Gonzalez continues a study of the Moon as a source for evidence of early life on Earth, exploring the possibility of re-seeding the Earth following a sterilizing impact, and search strategies for Terran meteorites on the Moon.

GG is no longer mentioned as working on the Polaris project (the report doe discuss the project). He did assist in writing the textbook, which was published in 2006. I presume that means Oesper was awarded his Master's and that GG was his advisor. He also was tapped for helping construct an astronomical instrument. (This instrument had been discussed without mention of GG the previous two reports). But the description of his research is nearly a carbon copy of the previous year - the only changes I saw were some abbreviations and an update on an expected completion date. Nothing original.

No reports are available for following years. It seems that for the first three years, his publications were entirely based on his post-doc research, with the sole exception of a single review paper (which apparently his own post-doc advisor(?) -Wallerstein- recommended to the journal that it not be published because he felt it didn't meet the journal's standards). In all, this accounts for 11 (if you include the review paper and a paper published in the beginning of 2005 but listed in the 2003-2004 ISU report) of his 21 peer-reviewed publications. In fact, it appears he only had 6 publications that weren't a continuation of long-term projects dating from his post-doctoral work, two of which were reviews and one that appears to be part of his Privileged Planet hypothesis. That leaves only three publications (all in 2006) that are original research not dating to post-doctoral projects that tie in to his departmental credentials.

It should also be noted that the other professors have a much more extensive write-up than he does. The publication index in the reports show that his publication rate was actually on the low end for the department.

Kevin, considering the incredible detail of your investigation of Gonzalez's record, you should ask to be added to his tenure evaluation committee.

Why can't continued research be good, original research?

And where did all these arbitrary, nitpicking little tenure evaluation rules come from --

(1) You must get grant money.

(2) You get little or no credit for the following: writing textbooks (Gonzalez co-authored one), reviews, and popular books (Gonzalez wrote one) & articles (Gonzalez wrote at least one); continued research begun elsewhere; collaborating with one's former supervisors, colleagues, and students; and co-authored articles as opposed to single-author articles.

There is nothing about these little rules in Gonzalez's department's tenure evaluation guidelines at --

http://www.evolutionnews.org/isudeptphysastron.pdf

These ad hoc requirements for tenure that are being raised now are just smokescreens intended to hide the real issue, which is whether Gonzalez's pro-ID views were the primary cause of the denial of tenure.

Here are some excerpts from an interesting Seed Magazine article titled, "DIRTY LITTLE SECRET -- Are most published research findings actually false? The case for reform"

Pressure to publish can lead to "selective reporting;" the implication is that attention-seeking scientists are exaggerating their results far more often than the occasional, spectacular science fraud would suggest.

Cash-for-science practices between the nutrition and drug companies and the academics that conduct their research may also be playing a role. A survey of published results on beverages earlier this year found that research sponsored by industry is much more likely to report favorable findings than papers with other sources of funding. . . . .

Academic bias could also be to blame. As Ioannidis puts it, "Prestigious investigators may suppress via the peer-review process the appearance and dissemination of findings that refute their findings, thus condemning their field to perpetuate false dogma." Advocates of prevailing paradigms have been observed to band together in opposition against alternative ideas with perhaps more antagonism than one might expect from objective scientific debate. And the opposition isn't limited to publication of new science; jobs and grants are also more easily allocated to those affiliated with the scientific party in power.

-- from http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2007/05/dirty_little_secret.php

After some additional checking during lunch, I discovered that the masters student I mentioned above (David Oesper) did not in fact earn his degree and is now living a few states away. His graduate program was in Astronomy Education. So it appears that is yet another strike against GG.

Is David bitter? You be the judge:

The greatest frustration of my professional career has been having a much better than average aptitude, knowledge, and interest in the physical sciences and mathematics yet never having an opportunity to use or develop those skills in any permanent position I have ever held. Apparently, we live in a society that in general does not value such skills, as evidenced by the lack of career opportunities, especially in the rural midwest, which still has a reasonably good view of the night sky. Tis a bitter irony that almost all astronomy positions are located in light polluted cities!

CoI Disclaimer: I may have had professional dealings with a previous employer of Mr. Oesper during the time he was employed there.

If you argue that the lack of funding is sufficient to deny tenure, you should be able to show that there are very few tenured scientists who don't have grant funding. Specifically you should be able to show that the professors at Iowa State who went up for tenure without grant funding were denied tenure.

It's clear to me that those who hate ID and have a physicalist worldview are finding all sorts of "reasons" to justify the tenure denial. What they lack are facts.

But most of all they lack any sense of perspective. The notion that ID is going to undermine "science" hits Michael Moore levels of paranoia.

Paradigms are hard to topple. But when they fall, they fall hard.

I have been reading all over the web on this today, as I was first notified by it by a colleague who, like myself, is also a Christian. I am not a strict ID'er (depending upon what you mean), nor am I anywhere close to a anti-evolutionist. As such, I always look with suspicion upon claims that a Christian is being discriminated against by the scientific "establishment."

What I can tell is:
1)Gonzales had a good, though not stellar, pubishing record.
2) Funding is a part of the guidelines of tenure at ISU. Whether or not the department guidelines specifically mention it is irrelevant, as department guidelines are only their to clarify university guidelines for a particular discipline.
3) His ID work, at the very least, took away from some time for research.

As someone familiar with academia and the tenure process, I would add the following:
1) Money is important. Mr. Fafarman, you obviously seriously misunderstand the tenure process and the way colleges function. The obtaining of grants, fellowships and the like is not to PAY for grad students, or even so much to PAY FOR faculty salaries. It does pay for research (travel, telescope time, interferometer time, equipment, supplies, materials and the like) in astronomy, but it also is a measure of the status of the institution. Grad students want to go where they will work with people who can bring in money. They, then, will learn how to write good grant proposals. They may also not have to work as a teaching assistant (underpaid, overworked, and a black-hole for research time and energy), but rather, can focus their time on study and research and writing. When such a grad student graduates, s/he is much more attractive to hire at a big institution, which, as an astronomer, will help a bit in getting observation time, the manna of all astronomers.

2) for others who have criticized GG's research as not changing all that much, are you at all familiar with astronomical research? Looking for exo-planets is THE THING right now (with more potential than big bang or universe expansion, which will have to wait until the completion of the European supercollider and other planned missions before getting another big upsurge). Continuing his old research is not that surprising. Should he suddenly switch to studying variable stars at the low stellar size limit? Now if he is still living off of data collected at UW, that would be an issue. If he is conducting the same research (esp. the interesting question of the stellar paramaters neccessary to support one or more planets with life), but with new data, that would be interesting.

Being denied tenure is not exactly abnormal. 4 of the last 12 at ISU were denied. Harvard often denies tenure routinely, only to hire someone back after s/he has proven their "worth" elsewhere (a ridiculous practice only an Ivy could get away with). All in all, he is a good researcher who is probably not at the right institution, at least if he wants to promote ID, and that is his only grant money.

Kosh,

Now if he is still living off of data collected at UW, that would be an issue. If he is conducting the same research (esp. the interesting question of the stellar paramaters neccessary to support one or more planets with life), but with new data, that would be interesting.

That's the problem. Almost all of his work at ISU (basically, everything that he was a co-author) was based on either data collected while at UW or data that he had already scheluded to be collected before leaving UW (ie, he was in the middle of collecting data for the paper and had scheduled telescope time before leaving UW). It's completely reasonable for him to continue his research focus, and I doubt anyone here begrudges him continuing projects he had already committed himself to, but that's pretty much all he did. The work he did since coming to ISU that was not part of a previous commitment boils down to two reviews, a theoretical paper (based on data collected by others), and 3 papers based on new research (I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here). That's not a lot to hang your hat on. Especially when you throw in his (lack of) record with grad and undergrad students. Gotta run, but I'll try to post a comparison of him and Martin Pohl, who was granted tenure.