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Creationist Graduate Students

Tue, 2009-03-24 18:40 — duxorw
Question:: 
I am a graduate student in a molecular genetics department. In the past, our department graduated a student who now works at the creation museum in Kentucky, and is a huge embarassment to our program. Recently, I discovered that one of our most promising graduate students is a young-earth creationist. I don't feel like it is my place to tell her committee members, yet I feel like I have a moral obligation to prevent my department from granting degrees to these science-denying kooks. What should I do?
Atheist Answer: 

I wonder which is worse, that your graduate in Kentucky is an embarrassment to your program or that their graduate from your program is an asset to the museum.

There are no grounds for holding the current student back based on beliefs as long as he/she is actually doing good work in molecular genetics. There's even room in the field proper for a young-earth creationist, because such a person might still contribute to our understanding of short-term processes while avoiding the long-term ones.

At the first attempt to use the science or the qualification to support creationism, however, things change. The moment young-earth or design "evidence" comes through in a paper, project or thesis, that's when every molecular geneticist in the vicinity needs to come down on your wunderkind like a ton of bricks - firstly by answering the claims themselves, of course.

If that happens while the student is still in the program, great, you might be able to keep it in the family. If it happens afterwards, rebuttals and refutations from your own academics need to be right on top of the pile. The message needs to be that the science of molecular genetics itself does not support these claims, and therefore this graduate is not applying it correctly because of separate beliefs.

One way or another, keep an eye on this person.

- SmartLX