Hey! My husband is Theodosius Dobzhansky's grandson! Just thought I'd say hi. While I understand the creationist student's position, I don't think a prof should be forced to write a recommendation when he doesn't want to.
Thanks, Kate. Very cool family connection! Now I feel compelled to expand on my previous rant. I feel so unclean. I must purge myself so I can get back to my preferred position of throwing rotten eggs at creationists. (I hope my non-Darwinian readers and correspondents don't take offense. You know I loves ya.)
In the end I do agree that a professor should make the decision about whom he does or does not wish to write a recommendation for, but I was very put off by the sloppy case he made against creationist students - we get lofty talk and hand-waving, implication and assertion without evidence, straw-man construction, and at least one highly dubious and unsubstantiated claim baldy presented as fact. In other words, here is a man posturing as a Noble Supporter of Truth and Science while engaging in the kind of argumentation that sends me straight up the wall when it comes from creationists.
First there is the vagueness of his criterion - exactly what constitutes not "affirming" a scientific explanation for human origins? (Believing that there's something spiritually significant about the human animal? Or are we just weeding out the folks who think Jeebus rode a dinosaur?) Then there is the other question I addressed previously: how realistic is the implied picture of standard pre-medical education? Years ago, in a fit of absence of mind, I acquired a B.S. in molecular biology. Many, if not most, of my classmates were pre-med students, who followed exactly the same track I was following. That is to say, unless they pursued it on their own, they got, at best, only a glancing acquaintance with the meat of evolutionary theory. Evolution is the great explanatory foundation of biology, but lots of people know lots of useful things without having much grasp of philosophical foundations, and are deeply and profitably invested in the "how" and "what" of things rather than the "why". One can accept animal models, and have a profound practical grasp of physiology, without accepting descent with modification. (Likewise I assume I can trust the bridges built by a civil engineer, even if he was never keen on theoretical physics.) A pre-med student may "affirm" evolution (to use Dini's creepy True Believer phrasing), but his understanding could very well be shallow at best, simply because he'll never have time among all his other required classes to sit down and really think it through.
I doubt there's any daylight between what a creationist accepts about animal models, physiological functions, the mechanism of the development of antibiotic resistance, etc., and what one of these "affirming" students accepts and believes. As Mark Byron commented on the previous post, "There are quite a few creationists who will accept microevolution (small changes in existing species) but not buy macroevolution (big, cumulative changes that create entire new species). The idea that bacteria develop resistance to drugs via microevolution wouldn't get one labeled a heretic in most theologically conservative churches." The spouse, whose training is on the evolutionary/population side of biology, taught a lot of pre-med students before he skipped out on academia. I asked him how much evolutionary theory he thought his Darwin-accepting students knew and understood. His reply? "Squat".
He did not at all mean this as a diss on his students, but was merely pointing out the constraints on time and focus imposed by their chosen career path. Unless they stepped off the track and took any courses with "Evolution" in the title, or signed up for his Comparative Anatomy class - which they rarely did - where they'd get a heavy dose, they'd sail on to med school with only the vaguest grasp of the subject. The picture you get from Dini's note (and some of his defenders that I've read) is that of a physician who's sort of like the Professor on Gilligan's Island. Remember him? He wasn't a scientist, he was a Scientist. This Renaissance man had no field; he did Science! There was no scientific or engineering knowledge he did not possess. He was wonderful. Now there was a man who could eloquently explain the subtleties of selection to you while performing open-heart surgery. Off of the Island, however, such a situation rarely prevails, even in fields one might think were far more closely related to Darwinian understanding than surgery. If you read, for example, criticism of the biochemist Michael Behe, the "intelligent design" theorist, by people who know what they're talking about, they criticize him on the grounds that he doesn't know his evolutionary biology - not on his competence as a biochemist, which they are willing to acknowledge.
One might imagine a future where the state of the art in some or all fields of medicine is so firmly linked to, and so much a product of an understanding of Darwinian principles, that a nay-sayer really would be a benighted menace. But in such a time it would probably hardly matter, because it's hard to see how, under such circumstances, he could pass his pre-professional training and entrance tests. And those who did pass would have real understanding and could offer critical acceptance, not some b.s. true-believing "affirmation".
(Guest comment.)
UPDATE: I could have sworn I went looking yesterday to see if Medpundit had blogged on the issue - guess I missed it, 'cause she did. Go to 2 February, "Humble and Grateful Minds Need Not Apply", as permalinks are not working. She makes a point best made by a practicing physician - there are doctors who are scientists in addition to being doctors, but a doctor as a doctor is not a scientist:
And Besides: Dr. Dini makes a mistake when he assumes that the practicing physician is a scientist. We aren’t, really. Sure, our art is grounded in science. We have to understand fundamentals of biochemistry, physiology, molecular biology, and anatomy to practice it well. But, the actual practice of medicine is closer to what a police detective or a mechanic does everyday than to what a scientist does.
UPDATE II: Good debate on the issue over at Electrolite.
UPDATE III: And at Newsrack.