I don't believe in my own Ph.D!

PZ Meyer has a further look at the story of Marcus Ross...excuse, I should say Dr. Ross...but he spits on his entire field and holds it in utter contempt...so it is hard to imagine why I would bother to give him the honor.

Marcus Ross, just received his doctorate in geology. The rub? The guy is a young earth creationists! See the problem. He believes, firmly, that the planet is about 6,000 years old. And...well, why even go further? Geologist, like he is suppose to be, uniformly agree this planet's age is in the billions of years. To partially misquote and not quote Sagan, BILLIONS!!! That is quite a variance. Now did he fight and argue that evidence supported his 6,000 year faith=based opinion, and still got a degree?

No.

He lied. At least to his mind. He did things as he is supposed to and gave the response that he knew were wanted (i.e. By actually doing the real science.). But the entire time, outside the lab and when not before the committees, he was bad mouthing the work and the science.

For this he got a doctorate.

Now, you may wonder, since he did the work, he deserves the degree.

PZ Meyer

Some people are spinning this as scientists demanding a litmus test for irrelevant religious beliefs, and insisting that we can't judge a student for his beliefs. It's true that we shouldn't and I don't evaluate my students now or my grad students in the past on the basis of their beliefs. But that's not what's being said here. Ross was a two-faced liar who would say one thing to his committee, and another to the public. I might be able to forgive that if he were lying about personal matters that are not part of his committee's purview—but he was lying about the science he was doing. That isn't forgivable.

If I'd been on his committee, I would have directly asked him to defend his public statements about the age of the material he was studying—not his statements to his committee alone, but to the public at large. I would have insisted that he defend those comments scientifically. And when he failed to do so, I would have voted to deny him his degree.

Although, more realistically, if I'd been in that department, the rejection would have occurred at the admission step, or in the preliminary exam. Apparently, the university knew he was a young earth creationist at the time he admitted him, which is simply appalling. I would expect new grad students to have some basic knowledge of the discipline—professing something so stupidly at odds with the science ought to disqualify him immediately, and his slot in the graduate program given to someone more deserving and more teachable.

Ross obtained a degree by lying about it's content. I don't consider him deserving of the doctorate, any more than Kent Hovind and his fake degree.

Sound argument.

Science relies on honesty. What this guy did is lie in his work. He knew that he held that his and the rest of the fields work, results, and methods were wrong and false, but used them to humor superiors. And now that he has his degree, he will attack his field and use the complacency of this university to savage it and the public's understanding of science.

The doctoral process is complex and hard, and it is more than what you put on paper, it is about how you accomplish your work as well. This man fails on almost all accounts.

So the University of Rhode Island didn't fail him, they failed all the rest of us.