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To the heart of it:

Instead, the official tenure standards emphasized the candidate’s publication record.

Which, as I have proven, showed a steep downward trend. Would you promote anyone with a steep downard trend in his work? Even it it were high (only two publications is high?), it's still a downward trend with years of no first authorship.

On that score, Gonzalez published over 350 percent more peer-reviewed scientific articles than the number required by his department to “ordinarily” demonstrate excellence in research.

What was the requirement? 350% more (100% + 350% = 4.5 times) to result in a whole number means a minimum of two for the requirement and nine for his publishing rate. During what period does this requirement apply? Can't be one year. He didn't have nine publications in any year at ISU since his rate had dropped from a high of ten before ISU. For the whole six years? He met that, but a requirement of two publications in six years sounds absurdly low to demonstrate "excellence." He had just over 18 through 2006 so we can say rounding of the numbers and four was the requirement, but four publications in six years also does not exactly show excellence. I call BS.

You give me spin, I give you numbers. I expect numbers back.

The book has the endorsements of top scientists

It also had some seriously harsh criticisms from a scientific point of view. Note that those endorsements were generally not from a scientific standpoint, usually more a philosophical and metaphysical one.

Also Gonzalez’s ideas about intelligent design were NOT, in any event, part of his teaching of students.

Which is why it wasn't a factor.

I know there are those out there who would like to railroad someone for believing in ID even when it does not affect their work. But the fact is that there has not been ONE case to show that was the cause for adverse action. EVERY case has shown the complaintant to be a whiner pulling the religion card. Remember that Sternberg at the Smithsonian who complained he was forced to move offices? Yeah, he forgot to mention that he was one person in a larger shuffle, and was even given a different replacement office he requested instead of the one that had been assigned to him. Horrors! Poor treatment! Remember him being ordered to turn in his keys? That sounds bad! Oops, he forgot to mention that as part of a security overhaul all research associates had to turn in their keys -- to be replaced with access badges (keys don't work well in badge reader doors). Through it all he wants you to forget he was an unpaid guest researcher, not even an employee, and was never actually subject to any adverse administrative action.

Lying whiners. I have no tolerance for card pullers.

But do note that I don't discount the possibility that it could happen in the future. It could even be happening with this thread's case. I just take such claims with a grain of salt given all the past religion card pullers like Gonzalez and Sternberg.

RE: Steep downward trend in his work.

Again, please get your facts straight.

Chronicle of Higher Education had asserted that that “Gonzalez’ rate of publication had dropped off dramatically since he joined the ISU faculty.”

Yet, Dr. Gonzalez has the highest per-capita publication count and highest per-capita citation count among ISU astronomers since 2001, the year he joined ISU. So if there was any “drop off” (note the quotes) in Dr. Gonzalez’s productivity, he still outperformed the very ISU astronomers who voted against his tenure.

Moreover, as Rob Crowther documented, Dr. Gonzalez’s annual publication rate has remained about the same at both the beginning and the end of his probationary period at ISU, so ultimately there seems to be no “drop off”.

Here’s a breakdown of his annual raw publications since coming to ISU according to the Smithsonian / NASA Astrophysics Data System ( SEE HERE : http://adsabs.harvard.edu/default_service.html):

2001: 6
2002: 6
2003: 8
2004: 2
2005: 5
2006: 6

So he peaks in 2003 but ends in 2006 just as high as he was when he started at ISU. Moreover, he outperformed all ISU astronomy faculty in normalized publications during that period.

So, I’ll say that Gonzalez did have a TEMPORARY drop in publications during 2004, but this is because during that year he expended much time co-authoring a peer-reviewed astronomy textbook for Cambridge University Press—a textbook that is now used for teaching in his department!

But Dr. Gonzalez immediately BOUNCED BACK in his publication rate after the textbook was published, and as Crowther shows, when Gonzalez was denied tenure by ISU’s president, he was tied for the highest per-capita publication count among ISU astronomers since January, 2006.

SEE HERE :

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/12/in_further_attempts_to_try004618.html

The very people involved in helping to deny Gonzalez tenure have been known to flip-flop on their statements ( a very bad sign and evidence that they were biased against his personal belief from the start ). This, inspite of the fact that Gonzalez NEVER TAUGHT Intelligent Design IN HIS CLASSES at ISU.

SOME QUOTES :

•John Hauptman, ISU Physicist:

MOST CURRENT: The ISU Daily reports, “Hauptman said his tenure decision was ‘absolutely not’ based on Gonzalez’s research into intelligent design.”

PREVIOUSLY: Last June, Hauptman explicitly admitted that he voted against Gonzalez’s tenure because of intelligent design (ID): “I participated in the initial vote and voted no, based on this fundamental question: What is science? ... It is purely a question of what is science and what is not, and a physics department is not obligated to support notions that do not even begin to meet scientific standards.”

•Eli Rosenberg, Chair of ISU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy:

MOST RECENT: Rosenberg tells the Des Moines Register that tenure documents included “a few words about intelligent design at the end, and that’s it,” and previously told Nature that “intelligent design was not a major or even a big factor in this decision.”

PREVIOUSLY: During actual tenure deliberations in November, 2006, Rosenberg devotes a full 1/3 of his Chair’s statement in Gonzalez’s tenure file to discussing intelligent design, instructing voting members of ISU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy to make ID a litmus test where Gonzalez’s support for ID as science “disqualifies him from serving as a science educator.”

•Hector Avalos, outspoken atheist Professor of Religion at ISU:

PREVIOUSLY: In the summer of 2005, Avalos e-mails ISU faculty, inviting them to sign a statement calling on “all faculty members to ... reject efforts to portray Intelligent Design as science” because of the “negative impact” due to the fact that “Intelligent Design ... has now established a presence ... at Iowa State University.” Guillermo Gonzalez, being the only well-known ID proponent who has “established a presence” at ISU, is the undeniable target of such a statement.

LATER: Avalos asserts publicly in the ISU Daily, “The statement we wrote was in no way targeted specifically at Gonzalez.”

•John Clem, ISU physicist:

PREVIOUSLY: Apparently Clem prejudges Gonzalez’s tenure case because of ID, stating: “Many of us here at Iowa State are embarrassed by the work of Guillermo Gonzalez, who with Jay Richards published the book ‘The Privileged Planet.’ ... I now feel that publication of such a statement might become the most important piece of evidence in a successful court case to guarantee tenure to the person whose scientific credibility we would be attempting to discredit. ... As for the unfortunate publicity we are receiving and the embarrassment we feel as a department, I think the best policy is to just grin and bear it for the next couple of years.”

MOST RECENT: The ISU Daily reports, “Clem said the decision to deny tenure to Gonzalez was ‘absolutely not’ based on ID.”

So, their denial of tenure to Dr. Gonzalez is CLEARLY BECAUSE OF HIS PERSONAL BELIEF, NOT BECAUSE OF HIS PERFORMANCE AS A FACULTY MEMBER AT ISU.

Therefore:

•Dr. Gonzalez’s funding level, high or otherwise, does NOTHING to negate the undeniable evidence of bias and prejudice against him in the department because he supports ID.

•Dr. Gonzalez’s department does not even consider grants as a criterion for gaining tenure.

Yet he has a $50,000 grant from Discovery Institute that allows him to collect more than enough observational astronomy data each year for the next 5 years.

In short, Dr. Gonzalez has precisely the money he needs to have a successful research program at ISU.

Again, to remind you —— 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.”

As a reminder again, 2/3 of the external reviewers who gave an opinion about whether Dr. Gonzalez deserves tenure said he should receive tenure.

•Dr. Gonzalez has more per-capita publications and more per-capita scientific citations since 2001, the year he joined ISU, than all ISU tenured astronomers who voted against his tenure, and he has over 350% more peer-reviewed science articles than what his department ordinarily requires for indicating the type of reputation that demonstrates research excellence.

Moreover, he co-authored a peer-reviewed astronomy textbook with Cambridge University Press that some ISU astronomy classes are now using. These seem like distinct accomplishments that make a tenure denial difficult to justify.

So, why was he denied ? SIMPLE -— He believes in Intelligent Design.

Then why did ISU not say so from the outset ?

SOURCE:

http://creation.com/darwinian-thought-police-strike-again

The Discovery Institute in anticipation and response posted a web article by John West on June 1, 2007, entitled ‘The Truth about Research Grants, Gonzalez and ISU’ as follows:

1.As we have reported previously, outside research funding is not a published criterion for earning tenure in Dr. Gonzalez’s department. Indeed, it isn’t even mentioned in the departmental standards for tenure and promotion.

So if this factor was considered key in his tenure denial, Gonzalez’s department was applying a criterion outside of its own stated standards. (The primary standard according to the departmental policy on tenure and promotion is peer-reviewed publications, and 15 articles are ‘ordinarily’ supposed to ‘demonstrate excellence sufficient to lead to a national or international reputation.’ Dr. Gonzalez has 68 peer-reviewed publications, or 350% more than the departmental standard. Twenty-one of these articles were published since 2002, the year after Dr. Gonzalez arrived at ISU.)

2.Contrary to some reports, Dr. Gonzalez did receive outside grant funding during his time at ISU:

From 2001–2004, Dr. Gonzalez was a Co-Investigator on a NASA Astrobiology Institute grant for ‘Habitable Planets and the Evolution of Biological Complexity’ (his part of the grant for this time period was $64,000).

From 2000–2003, Dr. Gonzalez received a $58,000 grant from the Templeton Foundation. This grant was awarded as part of a competitive, peer-reviewed grant process, and his winning grant proposal had been peer-reviewed by a number of distinguished astronomers and scientists.

Earlier in 2007, Dr. Gonzalez was awarded a 5-year research grant for his work in observational astronomy from Discovery Institute (worth $50,000).

3.Using selective figures provided by ISU, the Register implies that one was expected to bring in an average of $1.3 million in grant funding to get tenure in Dr. Gonzalez’s department. Again, there is nothing in the departmental standards about this, and it is hard to know how accurate or comparable this figure is without seeing the specific data for all of the astronomers in the department, and without seeing comparable data from other departments at ISU. Unfortunately, ISU has thus far stonewalled efforts to get grant and publications data for those considered for tenure during the past several years.

On May 16 Discovery Institute filed a public documents request for the grant and publication data of those considered for tenure in Dr. Gonzalez’s department since 1997 and for faculty in other departments considered for tenure since 2002. Thus far the university has provided no data in response to these requests, nor as of today has it responded to repeated requests about when the materials will be provided. [All emphases are in the original—Ed.]

It is worth pointing out again that 91% of ISU faculty considered for tenure this year received it. Did they all receive more than a million dollars in grants [in] order to get tenure? Did they all exceed by 350% their departmental standards for publications? We are trying to find out, but ISU apparently doesn’t want people to know the answers to these questions.