Disco. Inst. flack Rob Crowther is crowing about a grant they gave to Guillermo Gonzalez. Gonzalez was the Iowa State University astronomer who got tied in with the ID creationists at Disco. and with the old-earth creationists at Reasons To Believe, then was denied tenure when his publication rate dropped precipitously. Disco. responded to the tenure denial by insisting simultaneously that Gonzalez's ID research was powerful evidence of the scientific validity of their theological views, and that it was improper for ISU to consider this supposedly scientific work ("viewpoint discrimination" was their charge).
When ISU pointed out that Gonzalez wasn't just publishing less, but had also gotten no major grants and no telescope time, Disco. blasted back that grants and telescope time were irrelevant:
The claim is advanced, for example, that Gonzalez failed to secure enough funding for his research. But observational astronomers are not heavily dependent on sumptuous grants to support their research. They only need an already existing telescope, enough money to fly or drive to the facility, and an inexpensive computer to analyze the observational data they obtain.
And that's what makes Crowther's announcement so amusing. First, apparently Gonzalez needs not only a grant, but has to have an observatory at his own institution and have time on another 'scope:
Gonzalez will oversee the College’s new observatory, acquired from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. …
Generous donations from Discovery Society supporters have helped build a base of financial support for Dr. Gonzalez to continue his ongoing cosmological research. Gonzalez will both teach and have time to continue his research, especially during the summers. He plans to use the observatory to study photometric variations of sun-like stars to determine if the Sun's level of variation is exceptional. And, also to observe transits of planets orbiting other stars. Other research will make use of computer simulations.
"Having ready access to a state-of-the-art robotic telescope will make it more likely that I can obtain useful data," says Gonzalez. "In addition, I plan to continue observing at McDonald Observatory in west Texas at least once a year."
Needless to say, this is a far cry from what he was saying less than a year ago, when insisting that grants and telescope time weren't that important.
“Astronomical observations related to astrobiology or comparison of the Solar System's properties to other planetary systems serve to test the Privileged Planet thesis,” added Gonzalez. “Any research relating to the Privileged Planet thesis is relevant to ID.”
Sadly, that wasn't what Gonzalez and his supporters claimed during the tenure struggle. Disco.'s backgrounder claims:
…Dr. Gonzalez’s intelligent design work … was conducted completely outside of any relationship to ISU. First Amendment forbids a government entity like ISU from discriminating against an employee like Gonzalez on the basis not of his job performance but on that of ideas expressed outside the work environment. Dr. Gonzalez’s public comments and speeches as a citizen are clearly protected not only by academic freedom but by the First Amendment.
ID can either be a personal belief, irrelevant to tenure considerations, or a scientific claim subject to review by peers as part of the tenure process. His work on Privileged Planet is either a relevant part of his tenure packet (as measured by the fact that he seems to have listed it as part of his tenure review packet, and that Disco. defended Gonzalez by claiming "ISU tacitly endorsed Gonzalez's work on The Privileged Planet by administering his Templeton grant for the book project while he was writing it"), or off the table because it's part of his private actions undertaken "as a citizen," rather than as an ISU professor.
Of course, the department's decision on tenure suggests they didn't buy Disco.'s earlier protestations. And the fact that Gonzalez's appeals were rejected at every level suggests that no one else took him seriously. It seems, now, that even he and the Disco. Inst. didn't buy these persecution claims. The fact that he now insists he needs a grant and telescope time to conduct his ID research undermines every defense that he offered before.
Unfortunately for him, no amount of money can turn ID into science. Gonzalez may be able to feed his own confirmation bias in his new position at a Christian college, but that's not testability. Nothing will falsify his religious views, nor could anything. As for Grove City College, we can hope they won't look too closely at his recent behavior. The college insists "The ethical absolutes of the Ten Commandments and Christ's moral teachings guide the effort to develop intellect and character in the classroom, chapel, and cocurricular activities," which presumably includes the prohibition on bearing false witness.
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I wonder how big this telescope is - if it is robotic like they say, it's probably pretty small. Although the McDonald Observatory has one of the largest telescopes in the country, which seems like a waste of resources for someone who can't study something more than 6,000 ly away. After all, that's all they study in the Bob Jones University astronomy department - nearby binary stars.
The cat's out of the bag: It's not just what you do with it, size does matter.
At Iowa State, Gonzalez did have access to a fully instrumented research telescope (though only 0.6m). In fact, he was supposed to have been building an instrument to search for planets around other stars with it. There's an article in the Iowa State Daily about it from back in 2003:
http://tinyurl.com/5zxbez
Nothing ever came of that apparently (nothing in the astronomy literature that I could find, and nothing on the web either). Must have run out of steam on the project with the book on the way.
megan iz win teh intarwebz 4 teh dai! :-)
Grove City College. Bah. Humbug. A number of years ago they caught hell from government funding agencies for refusing to comply with nondiscrimination guidelines. The college said in effect, fuck you and your money, and went on with business as usual. I don't know if anything's changed, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the status is still quo.
Goddamned "Christian" colleges. Vanity of Vanities, sayeth the preacher's Kid: All is Vanity.
Oh good grief. What hypocrisy will Gonzalez and the DI think up next?
Gonzalez' future is assured as a new professor of physics at Grove City College in PA, an institution which proudly bills itself as independent of pesky federal regulations such as Title IX; as a result, its students are not eligible for federal aid. According to the college, "Intellectual inquiry remains open to the questions religion raises and affirms the answers Christianity offers." (The term "evolution" only appears in the pdf course description for one upper-level biology course taught at that college.) The college has recently acquired a telescope with the announced intent to "work with area public schools as well as other colleges and universities on educational and research projects." In other words, look out for an incursion by Gonzalez & his fans into the REAL science of area classrooms.
Oops, I said a naughty word. Didn't realize it until I'd already hit the "post" button. They just come so easily these days when I think about the IDiots at the DiscoToot.
.......at least I think that's why my previous post hasn't shown up yet. Sorry. :-(
As an observational astronomer, this made me laugh out loud:
And we need money to publish papers (about $130/page), and money to go to conferences to spread our findings, and money to pay our salary over the summer, and money to pay students and their tuition and buy them computers, and money to buy new instruments for said telescope so it doesn't become obsolete. And then the university needs a cut to pay the salaries of the staff that make the research and travel possible, to pay for utilities we all use, to pay for subscriptions to our professional journals, etc., etc., etc...
We may be cheaper than a biochemist, but we ain't cheap.
Kurtis - I heard about the cost of publishing once before and promptly forgot about it. It's not the same in Social Science, we don't pay for publishing. Does anyone know why you have to pay to publish? The cost of these journals is so high already, why must they charge authors to publish?
Did you read this, Josh ,about Louisiana ID laws?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19926643.300?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=…
care to blog a response?
What I take away from this is that I might still have money to do astronomy research if I had been a creationist like Guillarmo Gonzalez.
I find this personally insulting, I guess.
The claim is advanced, for example, that Gonzalez failed to secure enough funding for his research. But observational astronomers are not heavily dependent on sumptuous grants to support their research. They only need an already existing telescope, enough money to fly or drive to the facility, and an inexpensive computer to analyze the observational data they obtain.
Also, this is full of shit, so full of shit, as I can attest from personal experience.
While the statement is true on the face of it -- indeed, I could have kept doing my research on a few thousand dollars a year, to pay for travel for me and students to Chile, and to publish papers (had I managed to finish any), that would not have been sufficient to get tenure at a research University. Getting tenure would have required me to get a grant on the order of $100K a year, so as to do everything above, feed a grad student, and pay the University's "overhead" expenses on all of that. Hence, each year I was submitting an NSF grant proposal of about that size.
It's not about what you need to be an astronomer. It's about what you need to convince your University that you're prestigious enough and have a big enough member to be worthy of their continued recognition.
-Rob "no longer astronomer" Knop
Does anyone know why you have to pay to publish? The cost of these journals is so high already, why must they charge authors to publish?
Because the subscription costs to libraries cannot cover the expenses of publishing, editing, and printing the journal.
All of which is a bit of a sham. Nowadays, we do not need printed journals. What we need are, primarily, referees-- which, by the way, have always been done by other astronomers without being paid by the journals-- an editor to keep track of the overall thing, and perhaps some copy editing to check references and such. The last two things cost money. What we do NOT need is a full publishing company doing everything they do. Paper journals are a waste in this day and age. We all get our papers electronically nowadays. I really think the AAS dropped the ball by not revolutionizing the format of publishing a year or two ago when it was time to revisit the publishing agreement for the AAS journals.
As such, publication fees remain huge.
So essentially what the DI is saying is that they voted AGAINST a new telescope before they voted FOR one...