I haven’t blogged much about Intelligent Design since the Dover decision, where ID went down to a rather embarassing defeat. But, one item did catch my eye, Guillermo Gonzalez was denied tenure at Iowa State University. Gonzalez was the co-author of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery basically and Intelligent Design book that argues that the universe is designed based on a number of astronomical obserations and some dubious conclusions based on those observations. I’m sure that this decision will be deemed some sort of discrimination, but I have to wonder about Gonzalez’ publications. Popular books are okay, but they aren’t likely to get one tenure anywhere.
This report by University President Greg Geoffroy indicates that it was a number of factors that were looked at.
I specifically considered refereed publications, his level of success in attracting research funding and grants, the amount of telescope observing time he had been granted, the number of graduate students he had supervised, and most importantly, the overall evidence of future career promise in the field of astronomy.
And the Des Moines Register had this article with an interesting tidbit.
Iowa State has sponsored $22,661 in outside grant money for Gonzalez since July 2001, records show. In that same time period, Gonzalez’s peers in physics and astronomy secured an average of $1.3 million by the time they were granted tenure.
Gee, I wonder if that had anything to do with it?
