Armitage settlement: Nuclear chemist Jay Wiles’s thoughts
Last evening, we learned frm College Fix:
A creationist scholar recently received a six-figure settlement from California State University Northridge, a payout that resolved a 2-year-old lawsuit that alleged the scholar had been fired after discovering soft tissue on a triceratops horn and publishing his findings.
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The lawsuit contends that’s why Armitage’s employment at Cal State Northridge was terminated, with one professor allegedly storming into his office and shouting: “We are not going to tolerate your religion in this department!” More.
Here’s some of Jay Wile’s further information from his blog:
According to Mr. Armitage, his discovery was well-known in the department long before he and Dr. Anderson published their scientific paper. Indeed, the biology department wrote about it in their newsletter long before the scientific paper was released. As a result, there were a lot of people interested in the discovery. Students would come down to his lab and ask to see the dinosaur cells. They would talk to Mr. Armitage about his discovery and ask him what he thought it meant. He would tell them that he thought it meant the Triceratops fossil couldn’t be millions of years old. He is convinced that’s why he was fired. The university didn’t want him telling students what he concluded based on his original scientific research.
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He also says he is very pleased with how most people react to his discovery. He says that when he has the occasion to tell people that he discovered a dinosaur fossil, most of them are intrigued and want to learn more. He says that he describes the Triceratops horn to them and then pinches the skin on his arm and tells them that he found soft tissue and cells in it. He then goes on to tell them what he thinks this indicates about the age of the fossils and the age of the earth in general. He says that this kind of discovery is an easy-to-understand piece of evidence for a young earth.
Armitage says he will continue his research even though he no longer has access to a U lab.
Whatever one thinks of the evidence base for young Earth creationism, it speaks very poorly of Cal State Northridge that their response to one such piece of evidence was simply to fire the guy who found it. It makes one wonder whether they are suppressing other information – information that they have control of.
But then, as noted here earlier, science is becoming more and more uncomfortable with evidence these days. Otherwise, there would not be a war on falsifiability, demands for prosecution of climate change skeptics, and claims that objectivity in science is just a male domination thing. These types of causes are likely to do more harm than young Earth creationism, given the in-group power of those who espouse them.
See also: Creationist scholar receives big settlement. It sounds like Armitage’s religion had come up with some evidence the U didn’t want to face, let alone rebut. Perhaps he can use the money wisely.
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