Intelligent design dude is denied tenure

This is interesting. Guillermo Gonzalez, an assistant professor of astronomy and physics at Iowa State has been denied tenure. He is also a Fellow of the Discovery Institute, a "think tank" that supports intelligent design. He says he has met the requirements for tenure at Iowa State.

According to ISU's policy on promotion and tenure, evaluation is based "primarily on evidence of scholarship in the faculty member's teaching, research/creative activities, and/or extension/professional practice."

In addition to that criteria, Gonzalez's department of astronomy and physics sets a benchmark for tenure candidates to author at least 15 peer-reviewed journal articles of quality. Gonzalez said he submitted 68, of which 25 have been written since he arrived at ISU in 2001.

On the face of it, 25 publications since 2001 is a lot. I don't know about Astronomy/Physics, but in Engineering, it takes at least a year for an article to go from submission to publication: you submit an article to a journal, it gets reviewed by two or three anonymous experts picked by the journal's editor, you respond to the reviews, make revisions and re-submit, and the article is usually re-reviewed to make sure the reviewers' concerns are addressed. Assuming the article is then accepted by the editor, it is sent to the publisher who puts it in the pipeline and when it is your turn, the publisher sends you the proofs, you proofread it and send it back, and then when it's your turn, the article finally shows up in print.

So, yeah, peer-reviewed publications take a while. What I'd like to know is how many of Gonzalez's 25 articles since 2001 are peer-reviewed. Gonzalez does not list any of his publications on his Iowa State web-page, but on his Discovery Institute web-page, we find a list of publications, none of which I would consider peer-reviewed (Philly Inquirer, Ames Tribune, Discovery Institute, etc.) Without looking at the CV and other evidence he submitted to the University, it is hard to say why he was denied tenure.