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| Response letter from SSHRC |
Letter to SSHRC
Prof Stan Shapson 6 April 2006 Dear Professor Shapson, I am writing as President of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution, which represents about 600 NSERC-funded researchers from all parts of the country. You can find information about the Society at its website, www.ecoevo.ca. Several members of the Society have brought to my attention a letter addressed to Prof Brian Alters of McGill University in which a request for funding by SSHRC was rejected. I have nothing to say regarding the merit of the application itself, but I understand that the letter from SSHRC explaining the reasons for its rejection contained the following paragraph. "The committee found that the candidates were qualified. However, it judged the proposal did not adequately substantiate the premise that the popularization of Intelligent Design Theory had detrimental effects on Canadian students, teachers, parents and policy makers. Nor did the committee consider that there was adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of Evolution, and not Intelligent Design theory, was correct. It was not convinced, therefore, that research based on these assumptions would yield objective results. In addition, the committee found that the research plans were insufficiently elaborated to allow for an informed evaluation of their merit. In view of its reservations the committee recommended that no award be made." (my underlining) This seems an extraordinary point of view for a reputable academic panel to express. There is no credible scientific alternative to evolution as the process by which diversity and adaptation arise, and there has been no credible scientific opposition to it for a century. It is the subject of normal scientific research in hundreds of laboratories throughout the world, and provides the framework within which the latest discoveries in molecular genetics, development, palaeontology and other disciplines in biology and the earth sciences are interpreted. Intelligent Design, on the other hand, is the latest version of creationism, which requires that all kinds of organisms were abruptly brought into being by divine fiat and have not changed substantially since. This is a religious account of nature that lacks any scientific justification. It is shocking to see evolution and creationism placed at a level and treated as credible alternatives by a panel representing a much-respected federal funding agency. I am sure that this affair has already caused a great deal of embarrassment to SSHRC and to limit the damage I would respectfully suggest that you move quickly to dissociate the agency from the panelŐs report in strong and unequivocal terms. Yours sincerely,
G.A.C. Bell FRSC |