2761 W. 21st Avenue
Vancouver, BC V6L 1K4
26 April 2006
Stan Shapson, President
SSHRC
350 Albert Street
P.O. Box 1610
Ottawa, ON K1P 6G4
Dear Professor Shapson,
I am writing with regards to the recent controversy about the rejection by the SSHRC of a
grant application by Dr. Brian Alters to study the "Detrimental effects of popularizing
anti-evolution's intelligent design theory on Canadian students, teachers, parents,
administrators and policy makers". This controversy has gathered national and
international attention in the media. The rejection notification is a damning statement that
defames the SSHRC and Canada as a whole, and I am surprised that the SSHRC has not
already taken measures to distance itself from the matter.
The rejection notice is fairly simple and straightforward. It consists mainly of two
statements:
 It (i.e., the grant selection committee) judged that the proposal did not adequately
substantiate the premise that the popularizing 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.
Followed by a conclusion:
 It was not convinced, therefore, that research based on these assumptions would
yield objective results.
Plus a qualifier:
 In addition, the committee found that the research plans were insufficiently
elaborated to allow for an informed evaluation of their merit.
The conclusion follows naturally enough from the statements if the statements are indeed
correct, which I dispute. The qualifier I would not dispute if I thought the committee was
indeed being fair, which I do not. The controversy, then, comes from the two statements.
The first statement can be interpreted in two ways. The first is nonsense, in that the
committee is asking the applicant, Alters, to demonstrate that the popularizing of
Intelligent Design (ID) is detrimental before he receives the grant in which he proposes to
conduct a study to determine if the popularizing of Intelligent Design (ID) is detrimental.
This interpretation is laughable because of its twisted logic, and is not what you would
expect of a peer-review process, which meets the highest standards for academic
excellence. The second interpretation is more disturbing. It states that the committee does
not consider that the displacement of the theory of Evolution with that of ID as being
necessarily detrimental and requires from the applicant substantiation of this matter
which the applicant did not supply. This is troubling. No committee, which meets the
highest standards for academic excellence, should need such substantiation. ID is
pseudoscience, and any displacement of a tested scientific theory, such as Evolution, with
pseudoscientific nonsense is detrimental, and the committee, if indeed it was composed
of members who meet the highest academic standards, should have been well aware of
this fact. Needless to say, neither interpretation places the committee in a good light.
The second statement is the most damning. Taken in context or out of context it states,
without other possible interpretations, that the committee takes Evolution and ID as
equivalent viable scientific theories. This statement cannot be allowed to stand. No
Canadian government agency can tolerate to issue such a statement or stand by it.
Evolution is a scientific theory, it is testable, and it has been substantiated many times
since it was first formulated 147 years ago. ID is not a scientific theory, it is not testable,
and has never been substantiated. The theory of evolution continues to make testable
predictions, and discoveries continue to support the theory. It hypothesized the existence
of a vertebrate intermediate between fish and amphibian. A report on the discovery of
such a fossil was published in “Nature” about the same time as the applicant received his
rejection notice. In contrast ID makes no predictions, and there are no discoveries to
support its claims. ID is a political doctrine put forth by the religious right and other
ideologists to further their own agenda and who are attempting to use legal procedures,
popularization, and coercion to force ID to be taught as science. However this should not
have to be explained to the expert group of academicians who formulated the rejection
notice especially in the light of the legal decision of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School
District.
To illustrate the monstrosity of the statements, let me relate the matter to another
equivalent polemic that is not only understandable to academics from the social sciences
and humanities, but also to the layperson on the street. The Holocaust is an accepted
historical fact in that the Third Reich systematically exterminated over 6 million Jews,
non-Aryans, and other targeted people. Survivors, eyewitnesses, film, archaeological
remains, affidavits, Nazi documents, and many more pieces of evidence have extensively
documented the calamity. The prevailing consensus is that the evidence is overwhelming,
and that it proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the Holocaust occurred. However there
is a faction known as Holocaust Denial (HD) that denies that the Holocaust ever occurred
and maintains that the Holocaust is a Jewish plot. HD has no concrete corroborating
evidence for its beliefs. It has an agenda to use legal procedures, popularization, and
coercion to force HD to be taught as history. This faction has raised enough of a concern
that HD is a crime in some Countries, and in others it has been prosecuted as a form of
racial hatred. In terms of Evolution and ID there is a logical connection. ID is to
Evolution as HD is to the Holocaust. This is a logical mapping known as an
isomorphism.
Now if the two statements are rewritten using the above mapping we get:
 It (i.e., the grant selection committee) judged that the proposal did not adequately
substantiate the premise that the popularizing of Holocaust Denial 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 Holocaust, and not the Holocaust Denial, was
correct.
The statements now become unacceptable howlers that cannot be defended. No official
agency at the Federal, Provincial, or municipal level would ever allow such statements to
be issued on its behalf. If by chance such statements were issued, they would be
immediately retracted. However both sets of statements, the one concerning ID and
Evolution, and the other concerning HD and the Holocaust, are logically equivalent. They
are both unacceptable, and both would have to be retracted.
There must be more than just a retraction. The SSHRC should also examine its peer
review process and who sits on the committees in judgment of the applicants. The
SSHRC should also stop defending the statements by the committee. It only makes
matters worse in the world forum. I refer you to an article in the Vancouver Sun
published April 22, 2006 by Peter McKnight who makes fun of statements made by Janet
Halliwell and Larry Felt and rightfully so as they produced howlers of their own. On the
SSHRC website there is a statement in defense of the Alters’ decision which states “the
committee was not convinced that it met the necessary threshold conditions of quality of
approach and methodology”. This is the qualifier of the rejection, and not the main
statement. To offer this as an explanation of the decision ignores the howlers in the rest
of the decision. This statement is taken out of context and belies the claim that “SSHRC’s
decision on this proposal was the outcome of an internationally-recognized peer-review
process, which is used to ensure that all funded projects meet the highest standards for
academic excellence”.
Sincerely,
Patrick Walden,
Patrick Walden B.Sc. (U.B.C.) Ph.D. (Caltech)
Research Scientist
TRIUMF Cyclotron Laboratory
4004 Wesbrook Mall
Vancouver, B.C. V6T 2A3
Canada.
phone: office: 604 222 7340
FAX: 604 222 1074
email: mrspi@triumf.ca