There is a controversy at the California State University where scientist Mark Armitage claims that he was fired for his creationist beliefs as an evangelical Christian. Armitage recently published a paper where he suggested that soft tissue that he found in a triceratops suggested that the animal died no more than 4000 years ago rather than the common view putting extinction at 65 million years ago. The school is investigating his claim of religious discrimination.
In his lawsuit, Armitage details his publications and research including the heralded discovery in 2012 of the largest triceratops horn ever recovered from the world-famous Hell Creek Formation in Glendive, Montana. The fossil then revealed an even more exciting discovery, soft tissue with what appeared to be live bone cells or osteocytes.
Armitage argued that the cells show would have long ago “decayed into nothingness” if it was millions years old. For creationists the point could not be more significant to suggest that the Earth is only a few thousand years old as stated in the bible. However, just days after the article was published, Armitage was fired.
While the university claimed that his temporary position was eliminated due to a budget shortfall, Armitage says that his superior, Dr. Ernest Kwok, was hostile to his religious beliefs and even once allegedly “stormed into” his lab and shouted, “‘We are not going to tolerate your religion in this department!!”
While I have long been a critic of creationism and frankly I am a bit surprised to see a scientist clinging to such views, this does raise concerns over academic freedom unless the school can prove the budgetary claim. He is obviously an active and accomplished academic. His paper was published to express his view on the possible meaning of the find. (Note this is not the first such find and scientists have found such cells and, after prior find in fossils of a Tyrannosaurus rex, scientists concluded that the iron in the fossils had preserved the tissue from decay).
The controversy raises an interesting question of when such views are legitimate grounds for termination. For some scientists, a faculty member espousing creationist views is objectively unqualified. However, that would depend on how those views affect his teaching and research. Armitage is clearly functioning at a high level in this field, including the discovery and study of rare fossils. He is simply reaching a conclusion based on those findings that reflects a very small percentage of scientists. At what point does such minority views impact the status of an academic?
Armitage has a BS in Education from Liberty University and an MS in Biology (parasitology) at the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, CA. He later graduated Ed.S. in Science Education from Liberty University
He is currently listed as part of Creation Ministries. The site confirms what many would consider the distortive impact of faith on science:
“The scientific aspects of creation are important, but are secondary in importance to the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Sovereign, Creator, Redeemer and Judge.
The doctrines of Creator and Creation cannot ultimately be divorced from the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
(B) BASICS
The 66 books of the Bible are the written Word of God. The Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant throughout. Its assertions are factually true in all the original autographs. It is the supreme authority, not only in all matters of faith and conduct, but in everything it teaches.”
Oxa – if you actually expect people to be qualified, then half of the professors on any university campus would be gone. I took education classes from professors who had never set foot in an elementary or high school class room. Still, they were telling me how to teach.
I do not know whether he is right or wrong, but he is not the first to come to these conclusions. There are academics who work outside the mainstream at their own risk. I went to a talk by an archeaologist who was finding human remains that pre-dated the Clovis people by about 5000 years. It did not conform to the current ice bridge theory of migration so she just kept quiet about the dates, hoping someone else would speak up first.
For clarity:
1. California State University has 23 campuses. Armitage was let go from the Northridge campus.
2. Armitage’s work was published in Acta Histochemica, an international, open access journal published by the International Federation of Societies for Histochemistry and Cytochemistry, whose editor is a biology professor from Cal State-Northridge who studies cancer. Although the journal is refereed, submitters recommend their own referees.
3. Armitage’s article on the triceratops was co-authored by a professor from Arkansas State University.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0065128113000020
4. Armitage was fired in February 2013. His paper was published in July 2013.
7. Armitage was not a professor or instructor at Northridge. He was the Manager for the Electron and Confocal Microscopy.
5. The Institute for Creation Research is not an accredited institution.
Considering Armitages’s background, it’s questionable whether he was qualified to be working at his position and to be publishing on applied paleontological chemistry. Further, he was not on the faculty, so academic freedom does not apply here. Even if budgetary constraints was a ruse to fire him, incompetence is not.
The institute for creation research?? Why not just state he got is divinity degree? I am with leejcaroll. Why was this suspect scientist hired in the first place at any respected non-religious institution?
A question, and an observation:
Q. How did Prof. Armitage get this gig without a doctorate? This lends strength to the administration’s claim that he was a temp.
O. The episode with Prof. Kwoc may well have had to do with proselytizing, from which faculty are generally proscribed.
Jim, I somewhat agree w/ your last sentence. Any new discovery should be applauded if you are a true scientist, whether it comports w/ your theory or not. True scientists care only for the truth, not their egos or grant money.
Jim, I did not call it “junk science.” My point was I do not believe climate change is going to end the world as we know it as is the “settled science.” When people use the term “settled science” you know they are ignorant. No science is ever SETTLED. I did not call climate changet junk science either. I don’t believe either theory. It’s just interesting to me how politics influences science and there are some politically correct theories and some not deemed politically correct.
Why was he hired in the first place? His education shows that his science will most probably be skewed towards the beliefs he learned when he got his degrees.
Paul Broun is an MD and believes the same thing about the 6000 years and yet he sits on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Chairman, Subcommittee on Oversight
Member, Subcommittee on Environment.
This pseudo science has become way too mainstream and it has nothing to do with one’s religious beliefs. It has to do with the science.
Nate,
How do you know what he did was “junk science”? Did he make up his discovery? Did he just report was he observed? How do you know?
Nick, As a PI, what evidence do you see that this guy did “junk science”.
Again, what is sad is you would think this research would be embraced as a really cool find and now how do we explain its existence.
Thanks for the retrieval. It is always appreciated.
How does anyone with this guy’s academic background (degrees from Liberty and ICR??) get involved in significant research or work of any kind at a reputable institution? It’s clear that even if he wasn’t truly fired for budgetary reasons, there was a more than sufficient basis for firing him for junk science.
I, I , I , I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I .
I am not a creationist. Like MkeA, although educated primarily by religious people, creationism was not taught. A Jesuit would die first! I am also not a chickenlittle the sky is falling climate changer either. I am someone who listened and observed for a living. I’m pretty good @ it. I was taught to have an open mind and to listen to ALL people. I was taught to embrace that wide diversity and taught the skills to analyze it, separating the wheat from the chaff. I never saw myself as a PI when I was in school until late. I studied history and was going to be a teacher, something I also have done. What has changed dramatically in colleges and universities in the 40 plus years since I matriculated has been the intolerance. I thankfully was educated during a tolerant era. When I returned to college to get my teaching certification in 1999 I saw, first hand, how colleges have changed. The university of Wi. where I attended is one of the worst PC, doctrinaire, speech code, intolerant schools in this country. It took my breath away to see it firsthand.
I don’t agree w/ this professor. But, you don’t cast away people w/ whom you disagree. You engage them. There are some people who are very liberal here w/ whom I am able to engage. Free thinkers loathe a world where they are always in agreement w/ those around them. Liberals crave and demand that conformity.
“For creationists the point could not be more significant to suggest that the Earth is only a few thousand years old as stated in the bible.”
This phrase could use some nuance. :p No where does the bible state the age of the earth. Some people impose a (mis)use of the genealogies to (impose a) dating that gets them to that age. It’s debatable at best, a minority view in any case, and certainly not “stated in the bible).
He should have kept it quiet while teaching on campus. Or argued problems with carbon dating and data reliability.
Example: Isaac Newton. He entered Cambridge University in 1661; he was elected a Fellow of Trinity College in 1667 and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669.
He remained at the university, lecturing in most years, until 1696.
Optics, mathematics, calculus, mechanics, gravitation, alchemy and chemistry.
Newton also wrote on Judaeo-Christian prophecy, whose decipherment was essential, he thought, to the understanding of God. His book on the subject, which was reprinted well into the Victorian Age,
represented lifelong study. Its message was that Christianity went astray in the 4th century AD, when the first Council of Nicaea propounded erroneous doctrines of the nature of Christ.
The full extent of Newton’s unorthodoxy was recognized only in the present century: but although a critic of accepted Trinitarian dogmas and the Council of Nicaea, he possessed a deep religious sense,
venerated the Bible and accepted its account of creation. In late editions of his scientific works he expressed a strong sense of God’s providential role in nature.
Diane – “Why do we continue to give these childish beliefs such standing?
It isn’t discrimination to say his nonsense religious belief is science, it isn’t
it is nonsense
But we contort ourselves because bugga bugga it’s a “sacred” religious belief It is nonsense, he can believe what he wants but the school is being reasonable-fire his ass it is bad science we don’t have to include bad science based in fantasy -that isn’t discrimination
we don’t have to include this religious nonsense in the secular world keep it in your fantasy Jesus land”
Diane, How do you know “it is bad science” did you read his research? Did you find out how he came to his conclusions? How do you know?
Dave – “If a history professor wrote a paper on the existence of unicorns in Atlantis right before Joseph Smith found his golden plates, I think the history department would have legitimate reason to part ways.”
Dave, this is just bad logic. The history teacher in your analogy is just flat out lying (unless they have found something that supports their unicorn story). Did Armitage flat out lie? If so, how do you know this?
I am not a creationist (I actually have a Geology degree) but what is sad to me is you would think scientists would be excited about this discovery and how it challenges the current view. It should open an avenue of research to explain how the soft tissue stayed around.But instead, we turn it into a firing. How many scientific discoveries where due to accidents?
Good for you ‘California State University….. You should have fired this ‘creationist’…. His views reflect poorly on an ‘institute of higher learning’……!
@Frankly
Oh, that boss passed the bucket on that, going way beyond the pail.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reported
The reason Armitage was hired was to teach Microscopy, not any biological science (Complaint).
His expertise as a microscopist gives him no say in the field of dinosaur evolution.
WordMess is censoring valid scientific data this morning.
My comment was lost in messy space.