A Letter of Recommendations to Dr. Michael Dini

Earlier this year the United States Justice Department opened an investigation in response to allegations of religious discrimination by Texas Tech associate professor of biology Michael L. Dini. The allegations stem from Dini’s publicly stated policy of denying letters of recommendation to students who do not properly respond to his question regarding “the evolution of humans from non-human ancestors.” Dini slightly reworded the criteria, and the Justice Department dropped its investigation. Dini’s revised criteria for letters of recommendation are set forth on his site at http://www2.tltc.ttu.edu/dini/Personal/letters.htm.

Having reviewed Dini’s revised site, however, I thought it might be instructive to examine his criteria in more detail. I originally penned an email letter to Dr. Dini, but it was returned undeliverable to the address listed on his site. I have prepared a modified version below for more general distribution.

August 12, 2003

Dear Dr. Dini:

I recently reviewed your revised criteria for writing letters of recommendation and hoped I might request your thoughts on a couple of items.

First, I was wondering if you might be able to provide some further insight as to “how physicians who ignore or neglect the Darwinian aspects of medicine or the evolutionary origin of humans can make poor clinical decisions.” There might of course be a few unfortunate cases of zealots making poor clinical decisions based on religious beliefs about appropriate modes of treatment. It is unclear, however, how this relates to evolutionary theory or what relevance this has to an otherwise competent physician who questions Darwinian theory. This is particularly true, as Darwin provided no specific insight about medical treatment in articulating his evolutionary theory, as I am sure you are aware.

Are you suggesting that a physician who believes in human descent from a non-human species is endowed with some special insight that will help her prescribe a particular medication or more competently set a broken arm? Or perhaps you are positing something more metaphysical: that it is a widespread acceptance of Darwinism that generally keeps most physicians on the right track, rather than competent medical training?

Whatever your hypothesis, one is then led to ask how it is that medical schools have universally missed the point. It must require a great leap of courage to take it upon yourself to determine, in part, the appropriate criteria for admission to medical school, when you have not attended medical school yourself, and when medical school admissions personnel are presumably competent to decide which criteria should be used for admission. Have the medical schools so wholly failed the public trust in not requiring applicants to profess their belief in evolutionary theory that you have come to the public’s rescue?

Second, you also indicated on your site that scientists “do not ignore logical conclusions based on abundant scientific evidence and experimentation because these conclusions do not conform to expectations or beliefs.” I certainly agree that this should be the case. Thus, should not scientists, including yourself, at least have the courage to ask the hard questions about how your “expectations or beliefs” in a Darwinian mechanism stack up against realities of consciousness, specified complexity, irreducible complexity, aesthetics and other evidence?

More noteworthy, apparently you are aware of some “abundant” evidence regarding human origins based on “experimentation,” as you imply with the wording of your criterion? If you personally believe that a sparse smattering of fossils or the near-tautologous inferences of homology are good enough for you, then so be it, but this is a far cry from empirical experimental evidence. If, on the other hand, you do possess abundant experimental evidence, this would indeed be a powerful argument in your favor, and would undoubtedly garner you the Nobel Prize to boot, as no-one since the days of Darwin has been able to provide any experimental evidence whatsoever of human descent from non-human ancestors, much less “abundant” evidence.

Within the limits of the Constitution and relevant laws you can no doubt write letters of recommendation for whomever you please, but based on the criteria listed on your site, Criterion 3, even as revised, looks a lot less like a scientific criteria designed to save the world from poor physicians, than a thinly-disguised statement of your personal philosophy and belief.

Respectfully,

Eric Anderson