I belive he is seeking a Ph. D. “with creative dissertation.”

More seriously, I wonder where science stands on the ethics of research in which human subjects are intentionally misinformed. Does this require informed consent? Does it require disclosure to the subjects after the fact about which portions of their education were intentional misrepresentations and which were not? What are the long-term psychological effects of intentional miseducation....

Thane Doss, at 6:07 am EDT on June 10, 2005

burgeoning philosopher?

Forgive me for being reductive, but I fail to see the scientific merit of a theory based in theology, so this whole debate seems to be a ridiculous slide back toward the dark ages. Evolution has been settled upon as the scientific explanation for things; as such, it should be taught in science classrooms. If you want to learn God’s place in the patterns of nature, go to church.

Looking for the reasons behind science is really an exercise in metaphysics—not science. The answer to this problem is therefore simple: restructure the defense so that the project falls under the aegis of the department(s) of Philosophy and Religion.

D. Phillips, at 8:40 am EDT on June 10, 2005

Scholarly Fraud

At Left2Right.com, David Velleman noted a parallel between proponents of intelligent design and proponents of holocaust denial. (He wasn’t trying to say that ID advocates are of the same moral level as Holocaust deniers, just that their methods are similar.)

Three questions: (1) do people think the parallel is apt? (2) Do people think that historians of Nazi Germany who deny the Holocaust should be fired for scholarly fraud? And, (3) assuming the parallel is apt, and assuming that Historian-Holocaust deniers should be fired for scholarly fraud, should biologists who advocate ID also be fired for scholarly fraud?

Robert Gressis, University of Michigan, at 9:33 am EDT on June 10, 2005

Troy,

I believe that you slightly mischaracterize the nature of Leonard’s dissertation. In the education field he would not be proposing or defending a new principle of science (hypothetically assuming for a moment to accept that ID might someday aspire to the level of science), nor seeking to marshall evidence for or against it.

What Leonard was doing was asking, “What does teaching kids ID do to their beliefs about evolution?”

That is not a question that should be researched. It would fundamentally violate all Human Subjects Review procedures.

I would liken it to the notorious ‘blue-eyed students are smarter’ experiments from the 1950s. Teachers were told that blue-eyed student were smarter than other students. Researchers then investigated the results.

While producing highly interesting data, research methods in which subjects are intentionally misled have long been considered anathema.

Until ID has been accepted by the scientific world as a legitimate competing theory teaching students ID should be considered intentionally misleading.

timfc, at 9:58 am EDT on June 10, 2005

Careful

Some typical sleight of hand is going on in how this situation is being described.

The thesis does not advocate ID, nor did it involve teaching ID to the students. Instead, it sought to measure whether students learned evolutionary theory more effectively when they were exposed to evidence contradicting as well as supporting macroevolutionary claims.

And the claim by Rissing and co. that there are no scientific issues with macroevolution is ridiculous. You can’t even say that about big bang cosmology. No one today has a clue how the first self-replicating cell emerged.

Step back and look at this situation...it is the worst kind of anti-scientific censorship against Leonard.

Doug, at 10:33 am EDT on June 10, 2005

I read the page linked above criticizing Paley’s watchmaker argument. What a joke! I teach Philosophy 101 at a major university, and I can tell you that that dribble is not up to snuff. Very weak arguments.

Stephen2, at 11:21 am EDT on June 10, 2005

Evolution doesn’t have anything to say about how life emerged. That’s not what it’s about.

It’s about how life differentiated.

With respect to the claim that ID is a scientific theory; that has been repeatedly debunked at pandasthumb.org. Heck, even Paul Nelson, a proponent of ID says, “Easily the biggest challenge facing the ID community is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological design. We don’t have such a theory right now, and that’s a problem. Without a theory, it’s very hard to know where to direct your research focus. Right now, we’ve got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as ‘irreducible complexity’ and ‘specified complexity’-but, as yet, no general theory of biological design.” (Touchstone Magazine 7/8 (2004): pp 64 – 65).

It is not currently a scientific theory.

timfc, at 11:41 am EDT on June 10, 2005

HOW vs. WHAT

I agree that the review panel was strange, and should be investigated. And I want to thank you for posting this — as it makes for great discussion and hopefully something will be done about this discertation.

However, I am sad that this rant did not include much depth of detail regarding the proposed research itself. It’s as if a catch-phrase or single word set off alarms of fear and prejudice. This is not academic — it’s fearful and propagandic. Let’s not be like the christians who think that the scientific community is out there to try to take over the world with their lies (I know those christians first hand — my mother is one of them).

I have little tolerance for people who are so close minded. We should be careful not to give them ammunition by reacting so harshly when intelligent design is mentioned. Perhaps a post including details about the discertation, and the issues with the committee, etc. would be beneficial.

And lastly — as far as the “ignoring the halocaust” / ID comparison... that’s just in bad taste. And as a side note — the nazi’s used catch phrases and words to symbolize wrongs done to them (the “Jews” made us lose the war — “Jews” are the disease, the final solution is wiping out the “Jews") — and to rationalize a mountain of wrongs done to the world. When one word or phrase get’s us riled up — instead of an informed discussion about the issues- we’re in danger of groupthink and superficiality. Regarding important decisions — like what will be taught to our children — we cannot afford to be as close-minded and superficial as the people we are fighting against.

Let’s teach our kids HOW to think instead of WHAT to think.

Jason, at 11:51 am EDT on June 10, 2005

So ID/Creationism was used in a teaching experiment on science class kids? Seriously?

To study, write about, talk about, read about teach about, even think about ID/Creationism is like studying, writing about, talking about, reading about, teaching about and thinking about angels or the actual location of heaven or hell. Do those Christians who believe in ID/Creationism (and not all do) ever pause to think about how many other religions there are and how many other ‘explanations’ for the origin and variety of life there are?

Rog, at 1:24 pm EDT on June 10, 2005

I.D. dissertation

This whole controversy seems like academic McCarthyism of the highest order. The dissertation is in science education, not science and is about how students react to a particular mode of instruction. His dissertation doesn’t verify I.D., but instead tells us how students react to hearing about the theory. What’ controversial about that?

Hunter Baker, doctoral student at baylor university, at 2:10 pm EDT on June 10, 2005

Reply to Hunter Baker

It is controversial because the method was damaging. These kids will only go through science class once and it is a hurtful insult to their intelligence that they may reflect back on. Would one test them with a ‘theory’ of angels or heaven or hell?

Rog, at 2:41 pm EDT on June 10, 2005

Shoot the Messenger?

I’ve been reading _Inside Higher Ed_ for a couple of months now, and I think I’m about to stop. The problem is articles like this, which seem more interested in generating heat than light.

“Doug"’s comment about the actual subject matter of the dissertation is, I think, the missing smoking gun. If the research project simply presented schoolkids with counterarguments, it may not be unethical, though the embarrassing problem of the stacked committee remains. If the actual research design presented known-false arguments as truths, or actively attempted to teach ID in an affirmative sense — then some of these more acerbic attacks are warranted. In either case, a responsible journalist would have raised the point within the article and provided some evidence to illuminate the question.

I don’t think this *was* responsible journalism; I think it was a fairly cynical attempt to get attention for the website. I reference the similar article a couple of weeks ago on the adjunct prof at SMU who lost reappointment (arguably) due to blogged comments she made about colleagues and students. In both cases (and others I’ll omit for brevity), the ‘journalists’ reported only the two most extreme versions of the story available, with no attempt to even clarify the issues, let alone dig deeper.

What do you want to bet that this story gets more page-hits than any other on the website over the next couple of days? Would it have cost so much to ask the author or someone who has actually read the dissertation to comment on-the-record about its research design? Without that information, is this story anything more than a teaser to generate ad revenue?

CJ, at 3:44 pm EDT on June 10, 2005

RE — shoot the messenger

Excuse me, but you’re overlooking the obvious. The thesis is still confidential information. However, we have access to a good amount of what Leonard himself says is in his thesis from the Ohio “Critical Analysis of Evolution lesson plan, and his testimony at the Kansas kangaroo court. The article was more than adequate. When it says that you should follow the link to Panda’s Thumb if you want to learn more, you should follow it. This just in, the transcript of Leonard’s testimony in Kansas is now available at http://www.ksde.org/outcomes/schearing05062005.pdf for those who follow links.

Mike Holloway, at 4:39 pm EDT on June 10, 2005

What was taught to the test group?

A lot of controversy could be resolved when it is revealed what the fellow actually taught to the control group.

As a matter of law, public school teachers would not be allowed to teach such a curriculum because there is no scientific material that squares with the usual “intelligent design” criticisms of evolutionary theory — the only valid criticisms would be consistent with the objections Darwin himself raised (and answered) in 1859.

A federal district court in Arkansas, in a 1982 decision, McLean v. Arkansas, determined that objections to evolution were religiously based, not grounded in science. In order to get criticism of evolution into the curriculum under that decision (which was ratified by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1987 case, Edwards v. Aguillard, someone would need to perform many experiments whose results provide a firm foundation for such criticisms, and write up the experiments for publication in science journals. Considering the usual number of nearly 10,000 journal articles a year supporting evolution, serious criticism would probably be laid out in several hundred such research reports.

Since 1982 there have been exactly two articles in peer-review journals that purport to support intelligent design, and neither of them involved any research — one was a review of the non-science literature.

So the question is, what was taught to the test group? If the material taught was not out of science journals, there is an additional question about whether such research should have had additional scrutiny from the human subject review group at the school.

This event follows closely on the heels of several other events in which advocates of intelligent design have tried to sneak past the standards review people or the law, in Kansas, in the simple showing of a film at a Smithsonian building in Washington, D.C., and in two obscure publications. One may be alarmed that each advance of “intelligent design” scholarship involves questionable circumstances.

Ed Darrell, at 7:45 pm EDT on June 10, 2005

The best, indeed only, evidence for ID I am aware of is in theoretical physics. I refer to the so-called “fine tuning problem” by which the various constants of nature seem to be “tuned” to each other in such a way as to permit life to evolve. The counter-argument is the so-called “anthropic principle", which is the idea that there are an infinity of universes in which the physical constants vary by chance, and we just happen to live in the one (or few) that permit life.

What is interesting is that there is not a shred of scientific evidence to support the existence of these other universes. Yet this does not prevent discussion of the anthropic principle as a scientific concept; I am sure books have been written about it by reputable physicists.

Perhaps the physics and biological communities should compare notes here. What is the difference between the scientific status of these two concepts, empirically speaking? And should not the lay public be privy to the discussion?

Luke Lea, at 9:45 pm EDT on June 10, 2005

More creationist propaganda bubbles up.

Blogs (or other forums) dealing with issues around evolution are subjected to trolls who repeat their discredited arguments ad infinitum. The comments from “Troy” and “luke Lea” show that insidehighered.com is not immune.

Notwithstanding this, a reading of the “lesson plan” submitted to the Kansas Board of Education about “evidence against evolution” shows the hollowness both of “lesson plans” and of “evidence against evolution.” In the former case, the issues discussed are inadequately presented; in the latter, the information reflects both a misunderstanding of how science works and an unfamiliarity with the recent scientific literature.

frank schmidt, Pfofessor of Biochemistry at U. of Missouri, Columbia, at 11:32 pm EDT on June 10, 2005

RE: Shoot the Messenger?

The author of this article, Scott Jaschik, contacted me offline to respond to my initial complaint (about self-serving sensationalism). He pointed out some important factual errors on my part. Below is a copy of my reply to him. ===========Hi Scott; Thanks for following up. On re-reading the article, I agree with your implicit (and very polite) complaint about my own fairness and accuracy. You make it clear in the story that you attempted to reach the candidate and his committee, without success. I lost sight of that somewhere between the mention in text and the end of the long string of commentaries on ID. I regret that my emotional reaction to those various rants unfairly influenced my evaluation of the story that triggered them.

I still would have liked to know from your story whether the three profs who wrote the complaint letter had actually seen the dissertation or were working from the candidate’s other public efforts. There’s no way to be sure from your text whether they had factual grounds for their complaints about unethical behavior vis a vis educating students, or were merely viewing with alarm. It seems particularly salient because — commentary from spokesperson Holland notwithstanding — OSU almost certainly was very close to passing this dissertation before they intervened. (It would have been interesting to learn from you, as well, what percentage of OSU ScienceEd students had failed dissertation defenses in the past five or ten years: I suspect the number is very close to zero).

I’m not prepared to back off my complaint entirely: there has been a pattern of stories on topics that seem not especially ripe or carefully analyzed, but which are guaranteed to raise emotions among the website’s readership and attract lots of page-hits from various hot-button-issue publics. I welcome competition for the Chronicle, and especially the opportunity for community discussion that your site provides, but I don’t think higher education needs a tabloid rag. I would urge you and your fellow writers and editors to set a very high bar for journalistic standards on the site.

However, using this OSU story as the exemplar for my complaint was a mistake on my part. Please accept my apology. I’m posting a copy of this reply to the commments section of the article, as my own retraction.

Best regards, —CJ

CJ, at 5:11 am EDT on June 11, 2005

Brian wrote “The really frightening thing is how far we have fallen as a civil society. Are we actually comfortable with the government (in the form of a State university) sanctioning what it considers to be official knowledge and what it does not?”

and

“I say down with groupthink! Let the lad defend his dissertation and judge its quality on the basis of his research.”

The Ohio State University has a duty to ensure that the degrees it grants reflect a mastery of the discipline. With no members from Leonard’s discipline advising him during the course of his research, and none with any expertise in his discipline on his defense committee, it seems doubtful that such an assurance could be given.

As I wrote in the last lines of the Panda’s Thumb posting,

“One hopes that in the end, Leonard gets an appropriately constituted committee, one that not only satisfies OSU’s requirements but also has the expertise to help Leonard correct any errors introduced by the old committee and that can knowledgeably evaluate his dissertation so his degree is not tainted and he has contributed something of value to science education.”

RBH

RBH, at 5:12 am EDT on June 11, 2005

An important thing to remember is that macroevolution is not fact. It is a just theory, just as the The Big Bang Theory is just a theory. So often it is taught in schools as fact and not theory. I hope we’re not all so closed minded that we wouldn’t allow a student in major university to defend an other theory. I do however agree that the review panel should be made up members of Science department so the facts in his discertation can be adequately judged.

Andy, at 1:04 pm EDT on June 11, 2005

Azzura wrote “As someone working on a Master’s Thesis, this article scares me. Aside from the possibility that this person set out to try to get a university to rubber stamp his theory of artificial design, let’s consider it from the average graduate student’s perspective: a person finishes his dissertation, which presumably fit his proposal, with a committee approved by his advisor and his department chair, and is not allowed to defend.”

Take note once again that Leonard’s defense was postponed at the request of Leonard’s advisor, not by the graduate school. People who want to evaluate what’s going on might pay a little more attention to the information that is available before dashing off on irrelevant tangents.

Getting to the dissertation defense stage is not a guarantee of being awarded the degree. When I was in graduate school a Ph.D. candidate could (and in a few cases did) fail the final defense, be awarded a terminal Master’s and be sent on their way.

And CJ is skating around the core issue, which is the integrity of the degree-granting process. The content of Leonard’s dissertation is irrelevant to that. Whether he and/or his mentors were illegitimately gaming the system is the core issue, and the question that OSU will have to decide.

CJ worries about whether there were factual grounds for the three professors’ letter to the administration. The very odd (and contra-requirements) composition of Leonard’s committee is prima facie evidence that the process had been subverted. That in itself is completely sufficient reason to wonder about the rest of the process. Nothing has (so far) been said about Leonard’s repeated use of his unpublished and un-defended dissertation research to attempt to influence public education policy in Ohio and Kansas, but that’s an issue worth considering, too.

RBH

RBH, at 7:36 pm EDT on June 11, 2005

Owed to Grad Students

A diploma is not an entitlement like goods or services that one pays for. People with such a sense of entitlement are probably in the same majority that likes to see the privileges but not the obligations that go with a diploma. Of course it is a greater betrayal of ethics when a professor intervenes out of subjective motives.

Similarly, because of academic standards there are ways in which the process must not be democratic. I was surprised to hear that a grad student could select his or her own thesis committee members save one. Only one truly deserving the diploma would choose the members objectively.

Besides recognizing the obligations as well as entitlements of both student and teacher that go with a certain degree and position, consider the following question: what should a candidate have mastered to deserve a certain degree or position, regardless of discipline? Hint: that is what I mean by academic standards and ethics.

Japanned, Professor at Osaka Jogakuin College, Japan, at 4:55 am EDT on June 12, 2005

Jean S. wrote:

“If Mr. Leonard and/or his advisor helped subvert OSU dissertation committee rules, then both need to be reprimanded by OSU. Whatever the circumstances, I believe the advisor did not serve the student nor the University well in this case. Because of his position, the advisor needs to take responsibility for allowing this dissertation process to reach this stage of embarrassment for all involved.”

I agree, though I will mote that the advisor is a junior faculty member (assistant prof) who is not in Leonard’s area of concentration, and that two anomalous members, Needham and DiSilvestro, are both tenured faculty members. They are also the two who have publicly identified themselves with Leonard’s public policy position. In my view they bear as much responsibility as does the advisor. They are not peripheral figures in this mess.

RBH

RBH, at 8:43 am EDT on June 12, 2005

what is really the issue?

First, it seems to me that this scandal is created by various heated issues that have less to do with the actual dissertation than is appropriate. Isn’t this an issue of education and not science? IF the question is about learning scientific theory, then there seems to be little need for experts in science unless the students were not taught science. No theory of origins is strictly science, not even evolution. However, I don’t really care if the controversial dissertation was examining the possibility of students learning evolution better if ID was taught or Sesame Street was recently viewed, the point is about the kids learning evolution anyway right? Isn’t this an educational issue?

Second, I don’t understand the heat generated by this issue (especially from people who are supposed be a part of the free market of ideas). Why not teach the controversy? When I took biology spontaneous generation was considered as the strongest competitor to evolution. I guess I agree with the ID people on this one.

Third, many of the comments label ID folks in the creationist camp (of the sort who actually look for rabbits in the Precambrian layer). However, I think this is a bit misleading because most of the ID adherents are “old earth creationists” that do not fully reject evolution. Also, just because God is at the end of their theory doesn’t mean that the theory is unscientific. If this were the case we would be forced to throw out much of the science from history which has only been recently secularized — even Einstein appealed to God.

Hawthorne, at 2:28 pm EDT on June 13, 2005

Other view points

We should all read Michael Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box” together with Dawkins and Gould’s works. Then maybe we can agree that this whole topic should be open to more scientific study. We should always welcome the skeptics. If then you are still able to read more, try Thomas Woodward’s “Doubts about Darwin”

Jonathan Copeland, citizen at General Contractor, at 9:04 pm EDT on June 14, 2005

Hawthorne wrote[quote]When I took biology spontaneous generation was considered as the strongest competitor to evolution. I guess I agree with the ID people on this one.[/quote]Then you must have taken biology before 1862: http://tinyurl.com/5pvpf.

RBH

RBH, at 2:22 pm EDT on June 17, 2005

Stephen2 wrote: “I read the page linked above criticizing Paley’s watchmaker argument. What a joke! I teach Philosophy 101 at a major university, and I can tell you that that dribble is not up to snuff. Very weak arguments.”

I take it this is an example of fallacious argument—appeal to authority, argument by bare assertion. Interesting pedagogic technique.

Jim Lippard, at 4:36 am EDT on June 28, 2005

Fox Watching the Hen House...

Where the hell was the HSIRB (Human Subjects Institutional Review Board) while all this was happening? Every research project I’ve ever heard of must first pass muster with a team of experts who decide whether the proper procedures have been followed in protecting subjects from harm. It’s unconscionable that Mr Leonard was able to carry out such a study using high school students (minors are one of the most carefully protected groups) when his intent was clearly to persuade them to believe something that is contrary to science. The effects of this experience on these students’ future education causes one to shudder. Shame, shame, and a wagging of the finger to whomever let the fox watch the hen house on this one!

Sheldon W. Helms, Professor of Psychology at Ohlone College, at 8:51 pm EDT on July 13, 2005

a short comment

Just thought I’d point out the paradoxical nature of this statement from a much earlier post: “I have little tolerance for people who are so close minded.”

Perhaps, in your open minded-ness, you could open up a little further to allow room for those who do not see things the way that you see them?

Blake, UT Dallas, at 12:24 pm EST on December 15, 2005