Guillermo Gonzalez — the latest
| November 28, 2007 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
Backers battle ISU professor’s tenure denial
By LISA ROSSI • REGISTER AMES BUREAU • November 28, 2007Ames, Ia. — The fight will rage on over Iowa State University astronomy professor Guillermo Gonzalez, who advocated for intelligent design, the theory that disputes parts of evolution, and lost a bid for tenure.
Advocates for Gonzalez said in a release distributed Tuesday that they will hold a news conference at 11 a.m. Monday in Des Moines. There, they said, they will discuss documents they contend will prove that Gonzalez “lost his job” because he supports intelligent design, not because he was deficient as a scholar. Gonzalez’s backers say an appeal to the Iowa Board of Regents and possibly a lawsuit would be the next steps.
54 Responses to Guillermo Gonzalez — the latest
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Prof. Hector Avalos must feel pretty silly. He spent all that time organizing a campaign and a petition drive among ISU professors to isolate GG and disavow ID, when all he really had to do was check on how much grant money GG had brought into the school. I mean, as a tenured professor, Avalos must have known about the school’s funding requirements for tenure.
I agree with russ and collin! As for my buddy aardpig, in the same way that you can expect between 60k-100k per year(but thats not the important aspect according to her), I also assumed that you meant 500k per year. I figured 500k would be pretty steep (thats the whole point that I looked into it). I guess if we both clairified that, it would have saved me some time. Maybe tomorrow I will contact the professor again to get further detail, and see what she thinks. Other than that, time will tell why he is truely lost tenure!
Surely GG did not only get the NASA grant. That was only one of his grants. It would be nice if someone could find his total grants so we can judge him.
From Luskin’s comments (follow Russ’s link in #12):
“In fact, Dr. Gonzalez received $64,000 from the NASA Astrobiology Institute from 2001-2004 and $58,000 from the Templeton Foundation from 2000-2003. Additionally, in early, 2007 Dr. Gonzalez obtained a five-year $50,000 grant from Discovery Institute to collect new observational astronomical research data.”
Assuming these numbers are accurate, that’s a rather poor funding record to show over a 6-year timeframe. Moreover — no grants from any of the big funding programs (e.g., NSF’s Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Grants Program, or NASA’s Astrophysics Theory Program).
Something seems to be eating my posts on GG’s publication record; it may be the large number of URLs I included. Here’s another shot, using an edited version of a post I made a few months ago to UD:
“I’ve just spent a little time at NASA’s ADS (Astrophysics Data System), hunting down all the papers done by Gonzalez since he arrived at Iowa in 2002.
I weeded out those papers that weren’t by this particular Gonzalez (there’s someone of the same last name doing work on gravity waves, and also a couple of folks in South America). I then weeded out those papers that were not refereed, or weren’t published in the first- and second-tier journals (these being MNRAS, ApJ, AJ, A&A, Icarus and PASP).
This left a total of 13 papers, with the following ADS keys:
1) 2006PASP..118.1494G
2) 2006MNRAS.371..781G
3) 2006MNRAS.370L..90G
4) 2006MNRAS.367L..37G
5) 2005ApJ…627..432G
6) 2005AJ….129.1428G
7) 2004AJ….127..373T
9) 2003AJ….125.2664L
10) 2003PASP..115..277C
11) 2003Icar..162…38W
12) 2002Icar..160..183A
13) 2002MNRAS.335.1005R
Of these,
*) Only 4 (1-4) had Gonzales as the first author
*) Of these four, one (1) was a review published in PASP, which is a second-tier journal.
*) Of the remaining 3, which were published in MNRAS (a first-tier journal), *all* of them were short, 4-page letters, rather than substantial pieces of research.
While letters do contain significant results, they are not comparable to longer, more in-depth papers. Given that the three letters were published in 2006, one suspects that Gonzalez was attempting to make up for the fact that prior to last year, he had not published a *single* first-author paper since arriving at Iowa.
Moreover, if one counts his total paper output over the past 5 years (whether first author or not), it comes in at 2.6 papers a year, which is pretty poor for someone trying to get tenure.
One further point about GG’s grant income. NONE of the grants I listed were awarded during the tenure-track period (2002-2006). The first two awards were given before Gonzalez arrived at Iowa State (and indeed may have played some role in him being offered a tenure-track position in the first place). The DI award is in 2007, which may have come too late in the game for the tenure decision.
I have alot more sympathy for GG than aardpig. Although, even he (aardpig) would probably agree that none of this makes GG a bad professor. However, it does leave reason to dismiss. I’m not saying its even fair. But, there are serious issues with funding, and the peer reviewed technical notes, while probably valuable contributions, are not something a major research university is looking for.
All I have been saying is that we can all enjoy Priv Planet, and GG’s contribution to that. But, be careful about painting Iowa as the bad guy. Again, my gut reaction is that Iowa is probably the bad guy, but GG did not do himself any favors by not bringing in funding, or even publishing major peer reviewed paper.
If Iowa was looking for a reason to dismiss him, they certainly had just cause (if what aardpig is saying is true).
That also does not mean that he wouldn’t be a fantastic addition to a smaller teaching college who’s expectations are not at the same level as Iowa.
Ajl –
Please, don’t get me wrong — I’ve got plenty of sympathy for GG. I myself know how tough it can be — and I’ve seen very good scientists fall by the wayside, for reasons similar to GG.
My point is really that this *isn’t* a clear-cut case of discrimination. Without knowing the full details of what went on with the tenure committee, we can only conjecture that GG’s relationship with ID (for instance, through his DI grant) may have played a role in his tenure decision.
But as you yourself (Ajl) point out, the deck was already stacked against GG. He *wasn’t* the uber-productive scientist that Casey Luskin has tried to make him out to be — and in fact, to those familiar with academia, Luskin’s patently-ignorant remarks serve only to *weaken* GG’s case. I’m sure there *are* situations at universities where supporters of ID are discriminated against. But this isn’t one of them. Find a different battle, guys.
Does anybody know how GG’s papers stack up in impact (as measured by citations in the Science Citation Index)? I don’t have access to the SCI right now, and I don’t know what a good citation rate is in his field. But citations in the peer-reviewed literature are often used (though rarely spelled out) in tenure decisions.
Another issue: GG’s book, The Privileged Planet. I think this book is a strike against GG’s tenure and that it would be even if it had nothing to do with ID. This may be surprising, but it’s true. Any assistant professor in the physical sciences who publishes a book before tenure is likely to find that it causes problems. It’s well known that if you publish a book in science before tenure, people will tend to say “he’s not spending enough time at the bench/ telescope/ collider etc.” Obviously in some dsiciplines (in the humanities and some of the softer social sciences) book publication is where it’s at. But from biology to physics, book publication is usually thought of as the privilege of the already-tenured.
This is not the actual number you’re looking for, but I’ll see if I can find it:
http://www.discovery.org/scrip.....38;id=4079
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....ronom.html
Gonzalez joined ISU in 2001. His normalized citation count for articles published during 2001-2007 is 143, the best of any other astronomer in his department during this period. The next best citation count among all of his astronomer colleagues is 103; and the best citation count for a tenured astronomer in his department is only 68, or less than half of Gonzalez’s count.
Post #40 should be blockquoted
Good find russ. This is the type of info I have been wondering about since hearing about the case!
Russ, I’m trying to run the same search and I get a lot fewer articles. But I’m limiting my search to refereed articles. Also, I get a a fair number of self-citations (that is, papers in which Gonzalez is an author), which are usually excluded when comparing citations.
Here are the OFFICIAL reasons cited for denying Gonzalez tenure ( none of them related to his work on ID) :
Geoffroy said he focused his review on Gonzalez’s overall record of scientific accomplishment as an assistant professor at ISU.
He also said he:
1) Considered peer review publications,
2) Gonzalez’s level of success in attracting research funding and grants,
3) The amount of telescope observing time he had been granted,
4) The number of graduate students he had supervised and
5) The overall evidence of his future career promise in the field of astronomy.
Regarding #1, all objective evidence tells us that Gonzalez EXCEEDS the criteria.
According to the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS), Dr. Gonzalez has the highest “normalized citation count” among astronomers in his department for his publications since 2001, the year he joined ISU’s faculty. The normalized citation count is a standard measure of the scientific impact of a scientist’s research in the scientific community.
There should be NO DOUBT as to Gonzalez’s qualifications here.
Regarding #2, I think this should be judged against the success of attracting research funding of OTHER TENURED faculty members at ISU. How does Gonzalez success in attracting research funding COMPARE to those who were tenured ?
Since I am not privy to this data, I can’t answer that. Anybody in the know who can enlighten us ?
Regarding #3, The question should be asked of ISU — exactly what amount of telescope observation time is REQUIRED in order to be considered satisfactory ? They do not say. Also, we do not know how much time Gonzalez actually had the chance to spend on this.
Regarding #4, How many graduate students must one supervise in order to be considered satisfactory ? Is it fair to compare the number one supervises in say, the engineering or health science programs ( more popular in my opinion ) as compared to astronomy ? ( which will definitely have less enrolees ) ?
The problem I have is this — the school does not have a METRIC at all for determining what is and is not satisfactory in terms of telescope observing time AND number of graduate students supervised.
Criteria #5 is of course SUBJECTIVEand is really depended on criterias #1 to #4.
getawitness: I didn’t do the search myself, I only referenced the discovery.org article, so someone with more expertise than myself will have to fact check the piece.
Seekandfind – Geoffroy would have examined the number of papers published by Gonzales during his time at Iowa. Citations weren’t relevant, still less citations to papers published before then.
On the funding issue, the numbers I’ve seen for the amount of funding Gonzales received wouldn’t be enough to support a single graduate student through a PhD. For someone in Gonzales’ situation, that’s not good – he should be trying to build his research group up by attracting funding so he can hire students and post-docs. Even if there aren’t any set targets, it’s difficult to do worse than no students. I doubt that things are that different between my field(s) and astronomy – they have to train students too. This pretty much answers point 4 as well, unless he was given start-up money to hire students.
Bob
SeekandFind:
The problem I have is this — the school does not have a METRIC at all for determining what is and is not satisfactory in terms of telescope observing time AND number of graduate students supervised.
whether you have a problem with it or not is irrelevant. That is the way it is.
And, while it is possible to turn anyone down for any reason, GG made their job easier.
If, instead of getting grants from DI and Templeton, and a $64,000 NASA grant, he published a paper in Science, or Nature, or one of the leading journal in his field, got a $500,000 grant (or, two $250,000 grants) in the 6 years he was at Iowa while they still could have denied him tenure, it would be a harder sell.
As you’ve seen Bob O’H, myself, and aardpig indicate, his indirect costs where very poor. In this case, there was alot of room for criticism. In fact, in my field, even if you were at a teaching college with a heavy course load, the amount of money he received on the tenure clock is unimpressive.
Again, I say, just be careful which wagon you hook your horses to. Mike Behe said it well of Assistant Professors who advocate ID: “keep your head down (that is, do your research), and you mouth shut”. Once you get tenure, there will be ample time to publish things like PP and do interviews with Lee Strobel, etc. Until then, earn your keep as a Professor at your University.
If this thing keeps getting pushed, I’m afraid GG will eventually be publicly ridiculed. Remember, Iowa holds all the cards – they can pick and choose the shortcomings like its been done here. And, they have alot of justification for doing so.
If in good faith, the caution to form and hold conclusions tentatively when we are lacking in some information is appreciated. We are not in the position of holding all the facts; but with the facts we do have we can come to some reasonable but admittedly tentative conclusions.
It seems we can agree that universities attempt to draw researchers who will increase the respectability of their institutions. A way this happens is through development of productive concepts that expand scientific research. One can judge how productive a concept has been by it’s use in the field by other researchers as well as it’s ability augment or refine current methodologies and production of new ones. Judging from journal citations and appearance in popular scientific journals and newspaper articles, G. Gonzalez’s lead author article on GHZ in Icarus has been a productive and novel one. So in this respect, aside from his many other scientific contributions, it’s hard to see how he could not meet even a high bar set for tenure.
As for the case of research funding, it seems legally dangerous not to document that requirement.
No wonder contempt for the academy continues to grow.
See this:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/.....3rlosv.asp
RE:
————–
If, instead of getting grants from DI and Templeton, and a $64,000 NASA grant, he published a paper in Science, or Nature, or one of the leading journal in his field, got a $500,000 grant (or, two $250,000 grants) in the 6 years he was at Iowa while they still could have denied him tenure, it would be a harder sell.
———————–
Well, the least the university could do is spell out OPENLY exactly how much grant money is considered SATISFACTORY. There is absolutely NO WRITTEN REQUIREMENT regarding this matter.
Also, it is a very simple matter to compare the grant money Gonzalez received during his stay COMPARED to other faculty members. If the money he is able to receive exceeds AT LEAST ONE tenured faculty member, then this so called “grant money” issue becomes moot.
Because of this, one cannot help but suspect that grant money is an EXCUSE and the real reason lies someplace else.
aardpig seems to like making personal attacks against me by stating: “I’m sorry, but Casey Luskin isn’t qualified to evaluate Gonzales’ publication record” and calling me “disingenuous” and “patently ignorant.”
I wasn’t aware that going to law school negated my 2 university degrees in science, and I’m not interested in calling people names on this forum, but I would encourage UncommonDescent users to realize that aardpig is promoting false information about Dr. Gonzalez’s track record and he is ignoring all of the undeniable evidence of anti-ID discrimination against Gonzalez at ISU. Here are the facts:
(1) aardpig asserts that “arguably, the amount of money brought in is the *most* important factor in tenure decisions at research universities.” Why then does Dr. Gonzalez’s department does not even list grants as a criterion for gaining tenure? Instead, the only objective standard in their tenure guidelines states, “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.” Dr. Gonzalez exceeds this objective standard by 350%!
(2) Dr. Gonzalez has 6 peer-reviewed papers wherein he is first author from 2002-2006, not 4 as aardpig suggests. Additionally, some of his papers were co-authored with graduate students, wherein it is reasonable to presume that he was trying to help the grad student by letting him be first author.
(3) Aardpig makes another personal attack stating that it is “disingenuous” to compare Dr. Gonzalez to faculty in other fields. In reality, questions about tenure are commonly settled by comparing a faculty member in question to other faculty at the university who received tenure. But regardless, I’m more than happy to compare Gonzalez to other ISU astronomers:
- Dr. Gonzalez has a higher total normalized life-time citation count than all but one tenured astronomer in his department, and leads all tenured ISU astronomers when their citation record is corrected to take into account their status at Dr. Gonzalez’s career stage;
- Dr. Gonzalez leads all tenured ISU astronomers who voted on his tenure in his normalized citation count since 2001, the year he joined ISU;
- Dr. Gonzalez leads tenured ISU astronomers who voted on his tenure in normalized publications during that same period.
So the reality is that it appears that he outperformed every ISU astronomer who voted against his tenure during his probationary period. That shows very high productivity, and that’s an extremely relevant comparison. To do the campuswide comparison once more, Dr. Gonzalez has more peer-reviewed journal articles than all but 5 faculty granted tenure at ISU since 2003.
(4) Dr. Gonzalez’s work has been praised in Science, Nature, and he co-authored a peer-reviewed astronomy textbook with Cambridge University Press. He was also invited to write various review papers in recent years. These are all indicators of his “national or international reputation.” I’m not aware of any other ISU astronomers who published a peer-reviewed textbook with Cambridge University Press recently.
You can debate all you want about grants. But the bottom line is that Dr. Gonzalez is eminently qualified for tenure under his department’s standard of having “excellence sufficient to lead to a national or international reputation.”
Finally, aardpig thinks that there is no evidence of discrimination here. To make this statement he must deny all of the statements that DO EXIST from ISU faculty showing that they discriminated against Dr. Gonzalez due to ID. If aardpig wants to pretend that there was no anti-ID prejudice at ISU, then he’s going to have to explain to us all why the evidence documented in the links below somehow does not exist:
Secret ISU Faculty E-mails Express Vitriol Towards Intelligent Design, Disregard for Academic Freedom, and attempts to Hide a Plot to Oust an Outstanding Scientist
and
Design Was the Issue After All: ISU’s official explanation in Gonzalez case exposed as a sham
For this reason, SeekandFind is correct to state “one cannot help but suspect that grant money is an EXCUSE and the real reason lies someplace else.” Read those links, and you will find the real reasons.
Aardpig: You wrote, “I’m sorry, but Casey Luskin isn’t qualified to evaluate Gonzales’ publication record. He’s a lawyer, not an astronomer. I, however, *am* an astronomer. While none of us will probably ever know what went on at ISU, let me offer some perspectives based on my *own* experience of the tenure process in astronomy departments at research universities.”
I really grow weary of credentialism and elitism in this debate. In mathematics, someone who does probability theory is not qualified to assess the actual research of someone who works in algebraic geometry. Yet there are all sorts of objective measures by which the quality and impact of the research can be assessed even by someone outside the field.
I’ve tolerated you because funding is an issue in tenure considerations these days and you seem to have some expertise here. But step out of line again, and you’re out of here.
russ [46], I may have done the search incorrectly. It’s a curious and poorly documented page, so it’s not clear how exactly they set up the search.
I agree with SeekandFind and Casey that “the real reason lies someplace else” than in grants. I’m perfectly willing to believe that animosity to ID played a role (though I also think that PP would have likely counted against him even if it weren’t an ID book, simply because books by assistant professors in science are nearly always a black mark). I’m just surprised that people are, well, surprised about this.