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The media today are actually Warsaw 1982

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In an article in National Catholic Reporter on academic freedom, journalist Menachem Wecker tells us,

Contrary to popular belief, academic freedom isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. Instead, it guarantees that professors can only be dismissed for cause, ascertained by a hearing of their peers.

Okay, but in these times, “cause” doesn’t mean very much, does it? Sure enough,

So if a biology professor “goes off the deep end” and tells students there’s no such thing as evolution, or genes don’t exist, that professor will go before a committee, which could decide that behavior is unprofessional, Reichman said. But if a biologist goes in a new research direction that threatens “some of the old truisms of the field,” that professor must be protected.

Have profs been going off the deep end and telling students that?

As opposed to this: The only human being in recent decades who actually discovered a whole new kingdom of life (the Archaea), Carl Woese, was skating on the edge because he did not worship at Darwin’s shrine.

 

He died hoping to bring the swine down.

But any tenured mediocrity or “aren’t I good?” girl is okay.

Trust me, it is hard to find a Darwin thesis too stupid for publication these days.

From Wecker, we also learn,

“The greatest discoveries in almost every field of knowledge,” Reichman said, “come from people who take risks and are sometimes viewed as troublemakers or pariahs.”

Yeh. That’s called having a mind instead of a BEhind, in a chair. It’s deeply unpopular now.

Over at Evolution News & Views, David Klinghoffer comments that students may need an online bunker to talk openly now.

It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that for professors with controversial thoughts on evolution, it’s indeed Warsaw 1983. I am waiting for journalists to pick up on and report that.

Klinghoffer, you’re my editor somewhere, and I love ya. But look: The legacy media today are just so Warsaw 1982.

They can’t afford to notice the seething mass of biologists with better ideas than the tenured hacks of the Darwin lobby. Not when there is still a Darwin soviet puny enough for them to surrender to.

Seriously, as we all know of course, academic freedom—like any other freedom—is not given, it is assumed. Along with all the risks, rewards, and fun.

See also: Yes, academic freedom is indeed under threat

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Comments
I share goodusername's puzzlement about your problem with the horse study. Do you think the horsekeepers are lying? That the survey has biased? If not, then what alternative explanation to you think explains the observed data?wd400
December 17, 2015
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Trust me, it is hard to find a Darwin thesis too stupid for publication these days.
You’ve posted this story many times as something “stupid”, but you never explain what problem you have with it. Is it that you don’t believe that the phenomenon occurs? Or is it the explanation for why it occurs that you disagree with? Or what?goodusername
December 16, 2015
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semi related:
Study: Elite scientists can hold back science - Brian Resnick - December 15, 2015 Excerpt: Max Planck — the Nobel Prize–winning physicist who pioneered quantum theory — once said the following about scientific progress: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Shorter: Science is not immune to interpersonal bullshit. Scientists can be stubborn. They can use their gravitas to steamroll new ideas. Which means those new ideas often only prevail when older scientists die. Recently, researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) released a working paper — titled, "Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?" — that puts Planck's principle to the test. Sifting through citations in the PubMed database, they found evidence that when a prominent researcher suddenly dies in an academic subfield, a period of new ideas and innovation follow. http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2015/12/15/10219330/elite-scientists-hold-back-progress
bornagain
December 16, 2015
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as to:
"So if a biology professor “goes off the deep end” and tells students there’s no such thing as evolution, or genes don’t exist, that professor will go before a committee, which could decide that behavior is unprofessional, Reichman said."
Yeah, that whole 'genes don't exist' thing is just a bridge too far. :) Notes:
Die, selfish gene, die - The selfish gene is one of the most successful science metaphors ever invented. Unfortunately, it’s wrong - Dec. 2013 Excerpt: But 15 years after Hamilton and Williams kited [introduced] this idea, it was embraced and polished into gleaming form by one of the best communicators science has ever produced: the biologist Richard Dawkins. In his magnificent book The Selfish Gene (1976), Dawkins gathered all the threads of the modern synthesis — Mendel, Fisher, Haldane, Wright, Watson, Crick, Hamilton, and Williams — into a single shimmering magic carpet (called the selfish gene). Unfortunately, say Wray, West-Eberhard and others, it’s wrong. https://uncommondescent.com/darwinism/epigenetics-dawkins-selfish-gene-discredited-by-still-more-scientists-you-should-have-heard-of/ Why the 'Gene' Concept Holds Back Evolutionary Thinking - James Shapiro - 11/30/2012 Excerpt: The Century of the Gene. In a 1948 Scientific American article, soon-to-be Nobel Laureate George Beadle wrote: "genes are the basic units of all living things.",,, This notion of the genome as a collection of discrete gene units prevailed when the neo-Darwinian "Modern Synthesis" emerged in the pre-DNA 1940s. Some prominent theorists even proposed that evolution could be defined simply as a change over time in the frequencies of different gene forms in a population.,,, The basic issue is that molecular genetics has made it impossible to provide a consistent, or even useful, definition of the term "gene." In March 2009, I attended a workshop at the Santa Fe Institute entitled "Complexity of the Gene Concept." Although we had a lot of smart people around the table, we failed as a group to agree on a clear meaning for the term. The modern concept of the genome has no basic units. It has literally become "systems all the way down." There are piecemeal coding sequences, expression signals, splicing signals, regulatory signals, epigenetic formatting signals, and many other "DNA elements" (to use the neutral ENCODE terminology) that participate in the multiple functions involved in genome expression, replication, transmission, repair and evolution.,,, Conventional thinkers may claim that molecular data only add details to a well-established evolutionary paradigm. But the diehard defenders of orthodoxy in evolutionary biology are grievously mistaken in their stubbornness. DNA and molecular genetics have brought us to a fundamentally new conceptual understanding of genomes, how they are organized and how they function. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-a-shapiro/why-the-gene-concept-hold_b_2207245.html Podcast - Richard Sternberg PhD - On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Part 5 - In the following podcast, Dr. Sternberg’s emphasis is on ENCODE research, and how that research overturned the ‘central’ importance of the gene as a unit of inheritance. As well he reflects on how that loss of the term ‘gene’ as an accurate description in biology completely undermines the modern synthesis, (i.e. central dogma), of neo-Darwinism as a rational explanation for biology. http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/11/on-human-origins-is-our-genome-full-of-junk-dna-pt-5/ Landscape of transcription in human cells – Sept. 6, 2012 Excerpt: Here we report evidence that three-quarters of the human genome is capable of being transcribed, as well as observations about the range and levels of expression, localization, processing fates, regulatory regions and modifications of almost all currently annotated and thousands of previously unannotated RNAs. These observations, taken together, prompt a redefinition of the concept of a gene.,,, Isoform expression by a gene does not follow a minimalistic expression strategy, resulting in a tendency for genes to express many isoforms simultaneously, with a plateau at about 10–12 expressed isoforms per gene per cell line. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7414/full/nature11233.html Duality in the human genome - Nov. 28, 2014 Excerpt: The gene, as we imagined it, exists only in exceptional cases. "We need to fundamentally rethink the view of genes that every schoolchild has learned since Gregor Mendel's time. Moreover, the conventional view of individual mutations is no longer adequate. Instead, we have to consider the two gene forms and their combination of variants,",,, "Our investigations at the protein level have shown that 96 percent of all genes have at least 5 to 20 different protein forms.,,, http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-11-duality-human-genome.html
bornagain
December 16, 2015
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Evolution is a old truism of the field. its just saying there is no academic freedom. Just a boss who decides what they allow. Like supreme courts in canada and america. Dictatorship. Sure it is. Yes they must teacj evolution but yes say what the truth is. Its not true. Otherwise a professer is not professing the truth but is just a drone for a establishment. NO CLAIM to feewdom or any relationship to ACTUAL accomplished science etc folks of the past. as long as evolutionism is beyond criticism in schools then freedom is not in play. The fanaticism of hostility to christianity and possibly social/political results from it behind this very foreign stance of thought and speech control in schools since WW11. It must be stopped once and for all.Robert Byers
December 16, 2015
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