Re: paleonet anti-evolutionism

[Ben Waggoner <benw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dr. Chris Baldwin wrote:
 
> This being said we do have to be a tad more sophisticated than the
> opposition - particularly in these times and (at least for me here in
> the south) in these places. To adopt the sort of stridency and direct
> approach of poor Dr. Dini is to invite all sorts of time consuming
> problems. No matter how much I agree with Dini I think that the more
> indirect approach of Roger Kaesler will have the greatest effect.

Got to agree here. Tactically, it's best to give students as
few opportunities for public martyrdom as possible. In my non-
majors classes, my first statement on evolution is "Look, I get
paid exactly the same amount of dough whether you guys warmly
embrace Darwinism or reject it completely; I genuinely do not
CARE what any of you believe; that's not the issue." Gives 'em
less of an excuse to feel persecuted. Mind you, some do anyway.

As for Andrea's comment that ". . . the professor should have 
based his recommendation letter on whether or not the student 
was a promising candidate for whatever he was applying" -- that
may be, but there are a number of ways in which evolution
affects medicine. I'm thinking of the evolution of antibiotic
resistance in bacteria and other pathogens; the application of
phylogenetics and coevolution theory to pathogen-host relationships; 
the whole field of bioinformatics, which has a big phylogenetic 
component to it. . . heck, there's a growing field of "Darwinian 
medicine" out there. And does anyone remember that Florida dentist
who was accused of infecting several patients with HIV? The same
phylogenetic methods that were used to assess the dentist's degree
of guilt are the ones used to support the notion that we're all
basically lobe-finned fish with an attitude. 

Not all of this is going to be relevant to your average general 
practitioner or internist or general surgeon -- but if a student 
has had a decent exposure to evolutionary biology, and still 
flat-out rejects the whole thing, I suggest that makes him or 
her less of a promising candidate for many "hot" medical fields.

-- 
Ben