First, I note that the basic rhetorical pattern of refusal to address the actual issue of injustice has continued right to the end of the thread. GAW’s remark at 57 is sadly telling: Mountains out of molehills, anyone? [No surprise to see he was subsequently banned.]

That is telling, especially when we see the putting up of a whitewash in the face of clear evidence that the tenure process was simply tainted from even before it began.

1] On topic: GG tenure case

ENV has a useful summary on the case here.

Key points — follow the link for details — include:

# Eli Rosenberg, Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, instructed other voting faculty in Dr. Gonzalez’s tenure file that his support for ID as science is a litmus test that “disqualifies him from serving as a science educator.”

# John Hauptman, an ISU physicist, explicitly admitted that he voted against Dr. Gonzalez’s tenure because “Intelligent design is not even a theory.” He further said, “I participated in the initial vote and voted no, based on this fundamental question: What is science?”

# In secret e-mails recently released, other faculty prejudged Gonzalez’s tenure case a year before the official tenure deliberation process began. It is noteworthy that in these e-mails, the faculty were only complaining about Dr. Gonzalez’s support for intelligent design—they were NOT complaining about his academic track record . . . .

In other words, various ISU faculty prejudged Dr. Gonzalez’s tenure case long before they even started to look at Gonzalez’s academic accomplishments, and in fact they admitted they would hold him to a higher standard than otherwise due to his support for ID . . . . # Had Dr. Gonzalez been denied tenure after receiving a fair hearing, perhaps there would be no grounds for complaint. But this evidence shows that without question, Dr. Gonzalez was indeed not given a fair hearing.

# Dr. Gonzalez’s department does not even consider grants as a criterion for gaining tenure. As one external reviewer observed “Dr. Gonzalez is eminently qualified for the promotion according to your guidelines of excellence in scholarship and exhibiting a potential for national distinction. In light of your criteria I would certainly recommend the promotion.” (emphasis added) So the over-focus on his department’s perception of Gonzalez’s grants is largely a red-herring and a distraction.

In the end, grants just became the pretext for denying tenure to Dr. Gonzalez . . . . Nevermind the fact that Dr. Gonzalez has published over 350% more peer-reviewed science articles than what his department ordinarily requires for indicating the type of reputation that demonstrates research excellence.

Clearly, we can see the playbook rule: when defending injustice — change the subject and blame the victim.

And, by the way, the attempt to redefine science as in effect the best evolutionary materialistic explanation of the cosmos from hydrogen to humans, is historically utterly unwarranted and philosophically deeply question-begging.

So, all the huffing and puffing that since GG wasn’t a nice little materialist he could not be a real scientist is is its own refutation.

2] What about grants and grad students etc?

First, on papers, it is plain that the criteria applied related to the lifetime performance. On that ground, GG far exceeded the criteria,and even on the record of papers in ISU, he also exceeded the criteria. DLH at 22 on publications is telling.

That’s why we see the sort of external recommendation just cited.

It is troubling indeed that a man who has pioneered a whole new area for observational Astronomy was not able to attract heavy funding and a large number of grad students. But, given the attacks made upon him, perhaps that is not so surprising.

In short, we need to ask how well he did relative to the resources reasonably available to him and within his reasonable control — especially as we are here looking at the problem that grantmaking can easily become an instrument of control and ideologisation of science.

For that, the answer is obvious and in his favour. Maya’s attempted denial of the facts on the record at 38, is therefore inadvertently revealing:

The bottom line is that Gonzalez has managed to get only a few articles published in refereed journals in recent years (Publish or Perish!), he has not generated grant revenue for his department, and none of the graduate students he has been advising have completed their doctoral work, despite his having been at ISU since 2001 (the usual time to complete such work is around three years).

Now, it would be nice to address some of this in detail, but the basic problem here is that if GG were half as bad as he is being made out to look, he would never have attracted the sort of recommendation we see above, now would he have been given the sort of favourable internal rating as a researcher [as I recall, he won a prize at ISU] nor would he have been able to publish a textbook with so prestigious a publisher. In short,this sort of statement reads like the allegations in a bad divorce case, not a reasonable record of credible facts relevant to the case.

And, of course, this was never the issue, based on what we know from the record was going on long before the actual vote was made.

3] Dcost, 89: it looked like Maya was making good points. If any of her arguments have already been addressed, it would be a simple matter to provide a reference to the refutation.

First, you underscore the need for a FAQ list.

However, there is a fundamental problem with the point you are trying to make. This can be seen from looking at:

4] Maya, 72: The easiest way to silence the ID critics is to state the theory clearly, show how it explains the evidence better than the alternatives, make the falsifiable predictions, and do the experiments to test those predictions.

Already done. And confirmed. And published under peer-review.

An excellent case in point on inference to best explanation in biology on a longstanding conundrum is Meyer’s peer-reviewed article on the Cambrian Revolution — despite many dismissals, simply READ it to see its point.

Similarly Loennig’s discussion of dynamic genomes makes a very interesting point or two.

Minnich has been doing interesting empirical research on the flagellum for years, which came out at Dover and was duly ignored by that Judge when he rueld that such research does not exist. But, it does.

All three may be accessed through the link on peer reviewed publications.

In astronomy (GG’s field) the issues over finetuning are a matter of massive record. Cf my always linked Section D for a discussion.

There’s more — simply go to the DI CSC web site and look at the collection of peer-reviewed articles there, as linked.

In short, M has come across as someone who is denying the easily accessible evidence as it does not seem to suit her case. That will get the ire of the likes of even a Patrick.

Onlookers, kindly cf as a start my always linked — I give this as this gives a quick run through the different domains that ID relates to.

5] according to Michael Behe. In Dover he admitted, under oath, that a definition of science that included ID would also include astrology. Is Behe incorrect?

This reflects a classic distortion of what Behe said, as Jerry pointed out in 77.

More to the point, Evo mat advocates very often distort the nature of the design inference and other linked theoretical constructs. So, it is appropriate to point out Wm A D’s useful definition:

intelligent design begins with a seemingly innocuous question: Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause? . . . Proponents of intelligent design, known as design theorists, purport to study such signs formally, rigorously, and scientifically. Intelligent design may therefore be defined as the science that studies signs of intelligence.

In very brief summary:

–> we know of three major causal factors, from massive experience: chance, necessity, agency.

–> Techniques for discriminating the effects of the three are routine scientific praxis and technical praxis, e.g statistical inference, or even the basic inference that one has a signal in a world where noise exists and could in principle mimic a signal.

–> The essence of such techniques is that one looks at the existence of contingency [which points away form nechanical necessity and associated natural regularities], then one looks for a pattern that we have a sufficiently large configuration space so that islands of observed functionality or other specification are sufficiently unlikely on the null hyp of chance that we may reasonably infer to agency.

–> In every case where we do directly know the cause, such FSCI is the product of agency. Therefore on inference to best explanation we have good grounds to infer that even if we do not directly observe the agent in action, FSCI is a signature of agency. [Cf. my always linked Appendix 1 section 6 for a discussion of why this is so on basic principles of statistical mechanics.]

–> In short, and in light of notorious longstanding conundrums like the origin of life, the Cambrian life revolution and the observed cosmological finetuning, which ID explains but evo mat based paradigms cannot reasonably account for, ID has significant scientific merit.

–> However, in some cases, such inference to design points away from the assumptions of the evolutionary materialism that currently dominates much of science and associated educational institutions, the media and public policy.

–> So, those who are committed to this worldview and associated research programmes that embed that worldview, challenge inference to design. Not at root because of evidence and explanation but because of a priori metaphysical commitments and demands.

6] Is no one here willing or able to meet the challenge of a mere grad student?

Great rhetorical flourish. The problem is, it is a fair observation on the above, that in reality M has been reiterating long since answered points, as thought they were brand new; then, proceed to be largely unresponsive to replies and references. That is why Patrick, a rather tolerant guy, eventually gave up on her.

GEM of TKI

I never suggested PT, nor did Maya in her challenge to you. Talk.origins has a robo-moderator that merely prevents cross-posting to too many groups (five, I believe).

“The main issue is that Maya was not making any positive contribution to the discussion on UD. Instead she was parroting talking points that I’ve seen phrased by many Darwinists.”

From an outsider’s perspective, pointed here by someone who does follow the ID movement fairly closely, it looked like Maya was making good points. If any of her arguments have already been addressed, it would be a simple matter to provide a reference to the refutation.

Banning her for polite, and rather moderate, disagreement does give every impression that this blog, and by extension ID supporters, cannot withstand rational, evidence-based criticism. Refusing to accept Maya’s challenge to discuss the issue in a neutral venue reinforces this impression.

Maya’s challenge was to any moderator and ID supporter here. It looks like a great opportunity to get your refutations of her arguments into a public forum once and for all. Is no one here willing or able to meet the challenge of a mere grad student?

On a site structure note . . .

In re 87 [HT CS]:

The main issue is that Maya was not making any positive contribution to the discussion on UD. Instead she was parroting talking points that I’ve seen phrased by many Darwinists . . . . I understand that many people will come to UD as a Darwinist and they have questions that will be very common.

IMO, this underscores the need for an ID FAQ and forum, as part of that still upcoming resources section — and with prominent links on the facing page. Maybe, a link to the IDEA centre site with its FAQ’s and primers? [NB: I am having a web page access problem so I can't actually load these pages though they come up in Google -- yahoo I can't get just now either. Oh, the joys of living in paradise . . . at least, I can just walk down to a beach and watch the moon and stars and waters.]

Just a thought . . .

GEM of TKI

http://www.uncommondescent.com/comment-policy/

Now moderation on UD is very subjective. I consider myself to have been a “noncommittal Darwinist” at one point. As in, I believed it due to the education system asserting it, and not because I strongly supported it, which is probably the case of many ID proponents on UD. I understand that many people will come to UD as a Darwinist and they have questions that will be very common. So I’m forced to judge intent. Is this person honestly interested in discussing ID (and is unintentionally raising objections that have been answered, without realizing it) or is this person incapable of having reasonable discourse? I judged Maya to be the latter. I DO read all comments in the moderation queue, so she’s free to try and prove me wrong that she’s incapable of such.

BTW, that is how “I” see things. Bill, Denyse, Dave, etc. probably have their own views on the best moderation practices. It’s not something we’ve discussed all too much, although if I’m uncertain about something I’ll forward it to Bill. But I can objectively say that I’m probably the most lenient moderator on UD, so if you manage to raise my ire you probably deserve it.

It’s neutral in the sense that anyone can post there and no one can prevent another party in the discussion from participating.

“The problem is not that ID cannot stand up to scrutiny. The problem is that her objections have been phrased by others many times in the past and answered aplenty.”

That should make it very easy for you to counter her arguments.

I’m not interested in debating Maya, especially if it’s over commonly refuted arguments she can find with google’s “searchterm site:www.uncommondescent.com”. If anyone else wants to that is up to them.

Maya claims:

Do you realize how poorly this reflects on the quality of your arguments? You have to resort to censoring a grad student because your claims cannot stand up to even minimal scrutiny.
…
I publicly challenge Patrick and any other Uncommon Descent moderators
or posters to defend their claims in a neutral venue. I suggest the
talk.origins Usenet newsgroup

I think it odd she even considers TO “neutral”. I certainly don’t have the gall to claim that of UD, which prominently displays its purpose in the top-right corner.

The problem is not that ID cannot stand up to scrutiny. The problem is that her objections have been phrased by others many times in the past and answered aplenty. As I already said “if a previously banned person tries to post information that is new and/or relevant I will let that through.” Several other Darwinists has made the exact same assertion she did: that the HIV example somehow defeats the main argument in Edge of Evolution. These Darwinists have asserted, but they have yet to explain why this assertion is true even when asked to. If Maya wants to attempt it that would be great. If she begins to make positive contributions to UD I may even lift her ban.

Thanks but the Dover fiasco didn’t do anything to ID. It was obvious that ID wasn’t on trial and ID wasn’t ruled against.

The only letdown was that the judge never heard a word about ID. He obviously has selective hearing- as does the ACLU and all anti-IDists.

Maybe you’re thinking of another Dover trial?

I would also bet that Gonzalez is a better scientist than any other in his department. I say that because anyone who thinks that sheer dumb luck (the anti-ID materialistic position) is scientific is a whack-job.

Then why bother at all with trying to appeal his tenure denial?

Some of the comments on this blog regarding his peers at ISU are incredibly vicious and petty. If the consensus here is that his co-workers are such lying idiots, why would he even WANT to accept a tenured position?

It’s depressing to see this blog, which should be a shining beacon of truth, turned into a playground for vindictive and petty thugs.

Yes, Joseph, I’m talking about you.

http://groups.google.com/group.....72f0dc0bf1

She’s got a point — are any of you willing to debate with her in a venue where neither of you can censor the other?

Cue the High Plains Drifter soundtrack….

I made 2:

1- Maya, nor any other anti-IDist, would put forth a prediction based on their anti-ID materialistic position

2- Maya would claim victory even when it is obvious she is clue-less.

everybody join in:

Nahnahnah nah, nahnahnah nah, heyheyhey good bye…

c-ya wouldn’t want to b-ya