Wrongful Firing of a Creationist, or Employment Catch 22?Follow

It really depends. I would have to know if Abraham was not filling the criteria on his research. If he had left stuff out of his research based on his faith, then yes, he was fired justly. I would have liked to see the finish results first, although that would have been wasted time if he did not do his job properly. maybe that was the thought process behind asking him to resign. Either way he said something that alluded to his inability to do his job properly. i can not understand a person who has a set faith going into a profession that teaches what one does not believe in though.

No, not in the general stance. You can be a biologist and be a creationist. There is enough of a spectrum to get away with having said faith and still having that degree. For example, biologists who studies wolves behavioral patterns does not need to specifically believe in evolution to study how they are in the wild. However, if this guys job states that the research he was involved in was indeed founded and needed the thought process of evolution to make it more exact to the study, and he could not in his own consious do that, then he was not wrongfully fired.

This reminds me of the story about the pharmacist who got fired for refusing to sell birth control.

As far as I know it would be illegal to ask someone if they believe in evolution in a job interview even if it were for a position as a staff biologist. I can only imagine how surprised his boss was by that "casual conversation".

Kittens are nice and they make a nice purring sound.

*Ahem*

"developmental biology"? And there's me a-thinkin' that only the Lord Bob can do that. As you point out, the guy was a dumbass.

ETA - re-read your post and realised your revised and enlightened position

Edited, Jan 14th 2008 6:40pm by Nobby

First off, DSD is right, there are *huge* amounts of biology that have nothing at all to do with evolution in any way

The number of subjects you're not qualified to discuss is starting to strain the boundaries of finite mathematics.

Oh. Implies. I thought we were going off of known facts before declaring constitutional violations.Honestly, that's a filmsy argument, even for you. Sadly, I have a class to get to so you can write lengthy rebuttals at your leisure.

Anthropology, ironically enough.

So what you're saying is that the government can't/shouldn't provide funding to scientists who want to prove a hypothesis that disagrees with any modern religion?

That's what your argument boils down to. Look, it's a hypothesis. Would it be nice and pretty if every researcher based their studies on a null hypothesis? Yes, but that is not reality. Researchers generally have a bias towards proving their hypothesis, and disguising this fact by using a null hypothesis accomplishes nothing. Ultimately it doesn't matter if the research is trying to prove that there is evidence of evolution or if it's trying to prove whether or not there is evidence of evolution. If the scientific procedure is valid, the results will not be biased by the intentions of the researcher.

That fact however, doesn't do Abraham any bit of good if he is simply refusing to do his job because he disagrees with the hypothesis.

Yes. Researchers will certainly have their own bias, but the criteria for funding shouldn't. You see that, right? If the government funds only research that aims to prove one "side" of a hypothesis, then the resulting research is not going to reflect what's actually "true", but what the government wants to be true. It's bad science. Kinda like what's going on with Global Warming. Sadly, however, there's no restriction in the first amendment against this sort of thing based on ideologies other then religious ones. Doesn't make it any less wrong though...





See. The problem is that he didn't refuse to do his job. He conducted the research. He did the tests. He collected the data. He presented his results. He tested what he was asked to test. It was only when he was told that he must present his results specifically in the context of a hypothesis that wasn't part of the original research he did and that happened to violate his own religious beliefs that he refused.

Basically, he was told to "spin" his results to support a macro-evolution model. Presumably, his research wasn't actually in that area, or this would have become an issue much much earlier then the publishing phase of the project.

No. But it might get itself in hot water because an astronomer collecting data and doing research on it is unwilling to write a paper that violates his "new-earth" religious beliefs. That's the case here IMO. There's no indication that the researcher was unwilling to do the research he was hired to do. He was unwilling to co-write papers using the results of that research to support an idea that he disagrees with on religious grounds.

That may seem odd to you and I, but clearly he *is* able to separate the research from his religious beliefs on evolution somehow. I can only assume (from reading the link you provided since I didn't feel like looking up the terms myself) that he believes that these relationships show common features of different species based on genetic patterns, but that this does not mean that one evolved from the other, or both from a common ancestor. Perhaps God decided that mice and rats are pretty similar animals, so he made them with similar genes?

Dunno. I'm not him. I don't know what rationalization he uses to do work in that field. And ultimately, it's not my understanding of his reasoning that matters. It's his. And IMO, the issue comes down to what sort of wording was in the grant and the offered position when he was hired.


I could believe that my computer runs on mana from heaven instead of integrated circuits on a silicon chip. That may not impede at all my ability to write code, debug problems and otherwise work with the technology though. And if someone tried to fire me because I believed that computers were magic machines created by God (or something equally silly), they might also have some kind of discrimination issue to deal with.

What matters is whether he had the skills he claimed to have when hired, and whether he performed the tasks which he was hired to do. Period. If he can somehow manage to work in a genetic research field while not believing in evolution, then that's his business. If the guy hiring didn't state, "we're going to write a paper together showing how these species evolved based on the data we gather", then he kinda doesn't have grounds to fire the guy.





*cough* Missing the point. You don't fund the research saying: "Ok. We want you to produce results proving X...". You fund research saying: "We want you to figure out X". And let the data and research produce the results that it produces. Period. That's how you do good science. Basing funding on the expected results generates bad science since you effectively end up with the state deciding what's true and what's not. Or worse, allowing a political ideology to use the funding of science to provide "proof" of what it already believes is true while ignoring alternative explanations (ie: Global Warming).


Look. I've already stated that the first amendment violation is contingent on the Directors claims about NIH funding requirements being valid. I honestly don't think they are though. I think that's the paper *he* wants to write, in which case he should have been more careful about hiring someone who had the same take on the science as he does (or be less dogmatic about the application of a set of smaller data to a larger whole at this case appears to be).

Does that mean he can't fire the guy? Again. It depends on the terms of his hiring. The fact that there's government money involved makes it a more interesting case though.


I think we can both agree, however, that the director was pretty stupid for actually writing down that his reasons for firing the guy had to do with his religious beliefs. It's not like it's hard to fire people for other reasons if you really want to. Which either means he really is an idiot, or the researcher actually did a really good job and couldn't be fired for some other reason. Which IMO only makes his charge of discrimination more powerful. If he did the work, why fire him? Again. It comes down to how the job was defined when he was hired...

On what basis are you presuming that the research has anything to do with religion? This is the problem with your argument. Providing supporting evidence for evolution in itself has nothing to do with any religion. It is a purely scientific endeavor. If you're trying to say that it isn't, then it's as others have already pointed out-- you wouldn't be able to explore any hypothesis because it might attempt to disprove someone's religion.



In response to this general point you're making, I've already explained this. What you're talking about is using a null hypothesis. Ok, but it doesn't really matter what the hypothesis is, whether it's the researchers or the criterion for funding. It simply doesn't matter. The end result will be the same if the scientific method is appropriate. If it isn't, then all the rest is irrelevant anyway. Yes, it is "bad science" if you want to get right down to it, but the end result is the same regardless, and in the scientific world, you can add zero to a problem as many times as you like. It may not be relevant, desirable, appropriate, or any of the above, but it will not change the outcome. =0 or = +1 + -1 is all the same. What you call bad science, is in every practical realm an argument in semantics.

I'm afraid the only way Mr. Abraham has a case is if he can offer a very convincing explanation as to how the data does not support the hypothesis. Unlikely.

Well, in the cases I'm thinking of, it was Walgreen's, who does sell the product, and at issue was employees who refused to sell it.

We can find differences but I think the basic point is the same -- don't take jobs which go against your beliefs and then refuse to do them.