Friday, September 08, 2006

Fire Him

BYU places '9/11 truth' professor on paid leave

"Professor" Stephen Jones has been placed on leave. But he should jsut be fired. Not because he is critical of the govenment, but because he is a nut!

From the D-News: Last fall, BYU faculty posted statements on the university Web site that questioned whether Jones subjected the paper to rigorous academic peer review before he posted it at physics.byu.edu. Jones removed the paper from BYU's Web site Thursday at the university's request.

Stephen Jones: Utah's Ward Churchill

6 comments:

Rob said...

Anyone with a differing opinion, or their own opinion at all must be a nut.

Anonymous said...

Have you read his paper? Have you read the cold fusion paper?

Have you attended one of his lectures? He has been proven wrong.

Rob said...

Proven wrong? Everybody is wrong about something.

Scott Hinrichs said...

The eccentric professor's employer is in an unenviable position. If it cans him, it is stifling academic freedom. If it doesn't, it allows its image to be tarnished, resulting in fewer and/or different applicants, diminution of its prestige among its strongest constituent group (and collateral diminution of prestige of its other professors), and reduction of direct contributions to its programs and endowment fund.

Even if the university had employed more stringent up-front screening that would have prevented the professor from being hired, it would still be criticized for stifling academic freedom. It's a classic Catch-22. No matter what BYU does, it will be viewed as the wrong thing.

No employer can be expected to tolerate every kind of behavior by its employees. Employers clearly must be allowed to establish limits. Of course, employees need rights as well. In a free enterprise system, the right and ability to go elsewhere protects both the rights of the employer and the employee.

Rob said...

Your post assumes that he has done something wrong. All I see is that he has stated something unpopular.

So stating an unpopular belief is grounds for termination?

Anonymous said...

Have *you* read his paper on "cold fusion", anonymous? If you had, you would know that he but coined the term "cold fusion", and that the related paper on muon-catalyzed fusion, which provided evidence that nuclear processes can occur in room temperature experiments, was never debunked.

The scientists that peer reviewed P&F 'cold fusion' and castigated Pons and Fleischmann didn't have any criticism for Jones. In fact, the reviewers stated he was a "careful scientist."

There is no doubt that it puts BYU in a bad position, and personally, I understand them not wanting him to be there - but let's not pretend it's prettier than it is.