Nicholas Drapela, PhD was fired after teaching chemistry at Oregon State University for 10 years. He has published textbooks, received a promotion becoming Senior Instructor, and won an award for being an "outstanding and inspirational teacher."
As reported by Fox News, "On RateMyProfessor.com, Drapela received mostly positive ratings by OSU students. In 133 ratings, he rated 4.3 out of 5 in overall quality on the site. In a challenging subject like chemistry, such a high rating is unusual." Typically, one would think that well-liked professors who win awards and promotions would be praised and not fired, but not in this case.
Drapela was "blindsided" when he was told by the department chair that his services were no longer required. "He read a prepared statement and took my key," he said. The Chair of the Chemistry department did not give Prof. Drapela a reason for his termination. Understandably confused, the professor started asking people at the university if they knew anything. He was bounced around from person to person and finally was able to secure an interview with Human Resources, which cancelled the meeting an hour before it was scheduled.
Was Nicholas Drapela, PhD Fired for His Skepticism?
The speculation at the university among students and staff is that Drapela was fired for his views on man-made global warming. Notably, Dr. Gordon Fulks, a physicist and critic of man-made global warming, has supported Drapela.
On his blog, Fulks criticizes the university:
Transgressors who dare to be different are eventually weeded out so that the campus maintains its ideological purity.
What could possibly have provoked the OSU administration to take precipitous action against one of their academics who has been on their staff for ten years, just bought a house in Corvallis, and has four young children (one with severe medical problems)? Dr. Drapela is an outspoken critic of the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, the official religion of the State of Oregon, the Oregon Democratic Party, and Governor John Kitzhaber.
Was it Drapela's intelligence? One recent study published in the journal Nature Climate Change found that man-made climate change skeptics scored higher in tests asking about general science than their believing counterparts.
A local news story interviewed Vice President of University Relations Steve Clark, who denied that Dr. Drapela was fired for his stand on man-made global warming, but would not comment on the actual reason for his termination.
Watch the interview here:
It would be understandable, of course, if the professor was doing a poor job or if he could not fill up his classes, but despite his man-made global warming scepticism, by all accounts he was a good professor. His personal views certainly should not be grounds for his termination, particularly since many professors have extremely radical perspectives.
Sometimes it seems that the more radical, the better! Ward Churchill (who regard the Islamic terrorists as freedom fighters), Hamid Algar (called for armed jihad against the West), and convicted terrorist Susan Rosenberg (an Mumia Abu Jamal supporter), are all professors or have been at some point. The list goes on and on.
This is not a new phenomenon, as professors have been marginalized for their views and squeezed out of the conversation (and their careers) before. A brilliant documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, by Ben Stein exposes this ugly secret.
In the movie, Stein cites case after case of professors being demonized by their peers, simply for questioning evolution as the starting point of life. Many professors found themselves in situations that forced them to be quiet about their actual beliefs or suffer the consequences.
Watch the trailer here:
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Comments: 116
@Pro_Communist
We will achieve our goal of worldwide communism through the environmental and conservation agenda!
Is it a joke? Interestingly, when I tried to find the tweet, I put "Pro communism" in the search engine and came up with the Daily Kos and Media Matters. Go figure.
Eco-socialists advocate the dismantling of capitalism and the state, focusing on common ownership of the means of production by freely associated producers and restoration of the commons.
Interesting.
When I got my master's degree, I originally went with gusto, sooo excited to explore ideas and have intelligent conversation with brilliant professors. Oh man, I learned quickly that if I wanted to graduate, I better keep my real, sincere questions to myself. They taught me to toe the party line. That is when I switched from Democrat to Republican (a few years later, in 2010, I switched to independent, being disillusioned with RINOs).
I see you do this every so often. Somebody of whom you have no personal knowledge will say something about their own experiences and you contradict them.
Don't you realise what an ignorant ill mannered clown it makes you look?
Here's something for you to watch that may help you overcome this problem of yours, namely your habit of assuming that because all liberals conform to stereotypes everybody else does as well. Monty Python - The Argument Clinic
Good to know. :)
It does seem strange doesn't it that this professor was terminated and no one will tell him the reason why very strange indeed. However, an institution like this does not get rid of an extremely well versed intellectual well-liked by students for no good reason.
Was he fired for his views on Global Warming? We can only guess at the reason can’t we? If no one opens his or her mouths then speculation on this matter will bounce around like ball at a basketball game. However, we can all see when a person in a position like this does speak out on manmade Global Warming then the Global Warming fraternity are very quick to marginalize that person and besmirch his or her name. In this case, it seems that they do not have to besmirch his name all they have had to do is keep their big mouths shut.
What a bunch of mealy mouthed looser cowards the manmade Global Warming fraternity are. They see they are losing the high ground on this subject and the World is sticking two fingers up at them as the World has suddenly awoke to the fact that it’s been lied to on an enormous scale they kick and squeem and stamp their feet and sack people for having the audacity to say look you bozos your nuts and insane and belong in a lunatic asylum if you believe that it’s all down to man.
That last part is me saying that they are nuts and belong in a lunatic asylum by the way, just thought I would mention that fact in case everyone thought that this eminent professor had said it although I am sure at some point in his life he has thought along those lines.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/9347888/Rio20-Nick-Clegg-blames-China-for-disappointing-text.html
They just cant get it through their thick heads that no one wants to know about Global Warming any more we have all seen through the large tissue of lies. well the more sane of us have anyway, the more stupid of em will still carry on fighting the bad fight.
If no one opens his or her mouths then speculation on this matter will bounce around like ball at a basketball game. However, we can all see when a person in a position like this does speak out on manmade Global Warming then the Global Warming fraternity are very quick to marginalize that person and besmirch his or her name. exactly. It is just a matter of putting 2 and 2 together.
“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed
–if all records told the same tale–then the lie passed into
history and became truth. “Who controls the past,” ran the
Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present
controls the past.”…George Orwell, “1984″
Goodbye
I wonder how many at OSU that subscribe to tenure will come to this professors defense or do they simply give it 'lip service'?
In many States there is the rigth of the employer to treminate employment without cause. There are many lawyers that are willing to sue simply with the idea of getting a settlement so the employer will avoid the cost of defending themselves.
This is a test for Oregan's university, the politicians, even the citizens of Oregon and whether 'political correctness' is the 'rule' in colleges and the State.
It is unfair in two ways, it prevent the employee from finding what they need to do to change to be more employable and it discourages employers to help the public understand what is necessary for companies to compete in the world.
In Michigan there are over 80,000 jobs that are goign unfill for three primary reasons, lack of necessary skills, lack of respect (person deecorum, language, dress, and respect for coworkers) in the work place, and a lack of work ethic (showing up on time, working a full shift, and giving a full days work [not phone texting or using the internet for personal reasons]). Employers are willing to say that in general, but if they say that to an indvidual the are likely to a a civil lawsuit. It is easy to bring a suit, it is expensive to defend against one.
To have an indication you have to be willing to hear what is being said. An individual who has a bad work ethic are usually self center and really don't care about others so they don't want to hear it. They are the ones who are fertile ground for the plantif lawyers. Remember the person suiting has little risk, the person being suit can loss everything. Who is more likely to be closed and protective of their actions. The lawyers have no risk no matter what happens. Who has the deeper pockets is the more likely to be suited.
That is quite a shame, isn't it. That is a whole can of worms, right there...an interesting topic to be picked at, for sure....
I will give you a practical example. I was working for a former employer when one of the employees sued a local grocery store claiming he had slipped on a broken egg, he claimed head injury and nerve damage. He lost the suit. Shortly after that he had an accident, that was unobserved, claiming the same symptoms. The accident was fully invesitageted, medical testing was provided by the company, and in the end he was denied Worker's Compensation insurance. He got a lawyer challenged the employer's decision. It was in a small town so everyone knew about his orginal suit, and an overwhelming majority of employees were upset that the company went to all that effort to deny the claim. The reality was the employer had to be prepared to defend itself against what turned into legal action. The adminstrative jusde for the case agreed with the employer. This whole process cost the employee little money for the intial lawsuit and no money for the action against them employer. The attorney may have lost some time since he was on contigency, but that was the most he risked.
The reality is that in the majority of lawsuits the intial phases cost the person suiting no or very little with no risk of having to pay more then that initial filing of $50 or $100. In the case of the employer the lost wold have been in the thousands it not tens of thousands. And the lawyer only risked some time.
And in Australia and New Zealand it is called Killing The Earth To Save It: How Environmentalists Are Ruining The Planet, Destroying The Economy And Stealing Your Jobs. Bit of a mouthful that, but a bit of watermelon will help it slide down.
The book is full of interesting and references to scientific publications showing how much environmental damage "sustainable" energy really does, how much land had to be switched from food crops to make a ton on biofuel and how much precious water they consume. And of course how many species are likely to threatened because their habitat will be disrupted by construction of solar and wind farms.
All that is speculation of course, but then so is the entire case for Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Ocean. The documentary took the viewer to Madagascar not the part they usually show all nice and cozy with cuddly little animals, but the whole island that has been ruined by cutting down the forests to make way for Green environmental projects. These people are the worst people on this earth for ruining the planet and they have the audacity to turn it all around and blame everyone else.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/rio20-earth-summit-results-in-nonbinding-declaration-with-moderate-goals/2012/06/22/gJQA7kpMvV_print.html
What a waste of time, just like the last one they had in 92. twenty years later the world is still the same nothing has changed except that we all have paid out a small fortune in taxes to all the green environmentalist ideas that do not work.
And it never will until country's such the many country's in Africa start to spend the money that they are given in an infrastructure to deal with famine and lack of water in those country's.
When you look at the many country's that exists in Africa that are underdeveloped and are going around like they were three century's ago living in mud huts no electricity and scraping a living its a scandal of gigantic proportions. And these people who go to these sort of conferences should jolly well be ashamed of themselves. All talk and hot air and a jolly good knees up.
Nicholas Draper is an enzymatic chemist. He has ZERO research publications related to climate change. He was merely one of many people with ZERO expertise who decided to voice his ideological opinion in blogs on a subject in which he has ZERO actual knowledge.
He can, of course, bloviate all he wants on his blogs. That's his right. Meanwhile, he taught a type of chemistry that is unrelated to climate science.
There are two trends here in common with most other climate deniers.
1) They have zero research publications in climate science. [i.e., they have no relevant expertise on which to base their opinions, which are purely ideological anyway]
2) The denialist industry/conservative lobby swings into action to fabricate a story line that has no basis, just because they need it to fit their narrative. It also makes a good martyr complex scenario. [But then, it's fake, so who really cares about facts anyway]
Gee, Maybe Drapela was fired for the same reason that most professors get fired - lack of publication record, lack of grant approvals, and lack of tenure. Gee, maybe they got rid of him because he couldn't seem to graduate from being an "instructor" ("senior instructor" for the last four years) instead of a real professor (not even an assistant or associate professor, never mind a real tenured professor).
Nah, couldn't be those things. Had to be because he wasted his last 5 years writing ideological blogs on topics he has no research expertise instead of - get this - actually doing research in his own field.
I continue to be amazed that Gather pays people to write such completely fabricated story lines. Every factoid has been manipulated to create a story that feeds a predetermined narrative.
The administration is not allowed to discuss reasons publicly for not renewing a contract (His title, as David says, was not actually of faculty rank, and he was probably on a year to year teaching contract). Assistant Professors, who have not yet gotten tenure, are usually entitled to one year's notice when they are being let go. This does not apply to Instructors.
I am not claiming that this had nothing to do with his stand on Global Warming, we dont know that. But the fact that students thought he was a good teacher is irrelevant in a modern research university. It is just as likely that he was let go for budgetary reasons, or they found someone with a better chance at getting tenure. All else is speculation.
I'm sure they did. He's not being honest with us, or himself, about that.
Gee, Dr. Drapela, an avid climate denialist (i.e., someone prone to distort and ignore facts) claims no one at the University told him why he was getting fired.
No lawsuit by him. No complaint to the teacher's unions. Nope.
He runs straight to the denialist industry lobbying machine and helps create a fake storyline about how his blogging about a topic he has no experience in is somehow the reason for his dismissal.
Dr. Drapela knows exactly why he was let go, be it lack of research productivity, cutbacks in funding caused by the recession, or sleeping with his students. The school would have told him, but the school is barred from telling the rest of the world.
Would you like the world to know why your contract with Gather was not renewed? I doubt it.
But lying about it and saying the school didn't give him a reason makes for better press for the denialist lobbying industry.
Which of course you will continue to repeat over and over. After all, it fits your ideological narrative. Who needs facts anyway.
Possibility? Vanishingly small.
Likelihood? No.
What a bunch of mealy mouthed looser cowards the manmade Global Warming fraternity are. Graham L.
they kick and squeem and stamp their feet and sack people for having the audacity to say look you bozos your nuts and insane and belong in a lunatic asylum if you believe that it’s all down to man. Graham L.
That last part is me saying that they are nuts and belong in a lunatic asylum by the way, Graham L.
Ahhh and here come the personal attacks. Renee Nal
Honesty is a virtue. Dishonesty is obvious.
Goodbye
Dr. Drapela knows exactly why he was let go, be it lack of research productivity, cutbacks in funding caused by the recession, or sleeping with his students. The school would have told him, but the school is barred from telling the rest of the world.
See what I meant Renee when I said the Global Warming fraternity come out to besmirch names of people who speak out against what they believe in? Here we have a typical example of what they do. In this case the person who has come out with these words up above is actually quite irreverent and the only people who would see what he has written are us.
lack of research productivity.
sleeping with his students.
Just those insinuations besmirches a good name as this writer who wrote them jolly well knows. Just think what it would do when the people who are going to give him another job see these sort of things. Like I have said before and will continue to say COWARDS everyone.
And Renee I see you were not disappointed in your assessment about the personal insults :-)
As Simon noted... all the rest is speculation - including the post.
God forbid one wonders if it was God who created life and not, as Ben Stein says "lightening striking mud".
I sat through a class (squirmed through) an entire class where the professor put "pro-life" on one side of the whiteboard and "pro-choice" on the other side. He took it upon himself to put under pro-life "redneck", "uneducated", "do not care about their kids", "have too many kids" etc., and under "pro-choice" he wrote, "educated", "cosmopolitan", "marries later" "career oriented", etc.
As I wrote above, many professors are actually dangerous radicals, and that is not an exaggeration. College kids have been handed over to them and parents pay quite a bit for their indoctrination.
During Climategate, we saw professors attempting to suppress critics. So, I do not give these institutions my blind devotion, as many do.
"I continue to be amazed that Gather pays people to write such completely fabricated story lines. Every factoid has been manipulated to create a story that feeds a predetermined narrative." And I am amazed at your reference to lack of facts with a comment that speaks of merely your biased opinion, without facts, or even speaking of anything remotely related to the actual science in question.
Personally, I am not going to support a hoax that has not, nor will be based on anything other than what ifs, guesswork, and predictions. There is no proof that we are creating changes in weather, nor is it known how we would change it if we were. Global warming is a money making scheme and you need to look no further than Al Gore and Generation Investment Management to see just how true that is. Buying a specific light bulb that can only be produced by a specific company (General Electric) that is funneling money through Al Gore's G.I.M. project is not a cure for the fabricated, exaggerated hoax of Global Warming. It is merely a method of making money off of the junk science. That is all that Global Warming is, or will ever be. If global warming legislation is passed, you will see much more mention of money and taxation than you will of the science, itself.
"Nicholas Draper is an enzymatic chemist. " Does that mean he doesn't have enough education to understand the physical properties of CO2 and how it is to work so he is not allowed to have a position on what you taut as a solely scieintifc issue?
"He has ZERO research publications related to climate change." Are you suggesting that if a 'sceintist' does not publish on your a specific issue then he should not be allowed to speak on that issue?
"Gee, Maybe Drapela was fired for the same reason that most professors get fired - lack of publication record, lack of grant approvals, and lack of tenure." That suggests you feel that the function of higher education is not about teaching students and developing new 'free' thinkers it is more about the self engrandisement of the university and the authors.
If only it would be that universities and the the people that put so much value on 'scientists' were more interested in the students and the free thinking and than the politics of the issue. I worked with chemists, phsyists, and engineers of all trypes (even some that were Phds) and they were about the science and 'free' thinking and questioning. There was a couple from one university who told about a 'professor' that was so preocuppied with being 'green' that rather then focus on the course subject he turned into 'green' issues. They weren't please with the 'professor', the class did not prepare them on the prescribe topic, but the 'professor' was 'green' so he stayed employed, the Dean was 'green'. 'Green' politics has nothing to do employment in academia, right. Recalling some of the comments those 'scientists' said, academia politics seemed to be so much more important then about the reason students (univeristy customers) attended compared to anything I saw or have heard of in private industry.
"The denialist industry/conservative lobby swings into action to fabricate a story line..." Univeristy instructors/assoc. professors/professors losing their jobs to academia politics is soley a fabrication of the 'denialists' lobbyists. I have learned something new, academia and 'green' are pure of heart and politics is never in their thoughts or deeds.
How would you define a research univeristy? Is it true that to recieve a Phd the candidate must do their own small pice of research and publish it, if so would that mean that any univeristy that has a Phd program is a research university?
Would you consider when a university recieve a major portion of its budget from student fees and governement support for educating those students should they be considered a research univerity?
If a univeristy is a research univeristy and holds that to such a priority that they will disregard the quality of education the instructors/ assoc professors/professors are providing to the students as fair and honest in being considered a quality univeristy and provideing a quality education?
Do you belive that the employer should consider the univeristy graduates as having a quality edcuation when the unveristy holds reseearch at so important a leevel that it will terninate quality teachers simply because they have not published?
I wonder how private industry survives when not all of their reseach people do not create ideas that end up as patents? I wonder how many researchers were educated by people that were not published? I wonder how much quality of information has been provided by the frequent publications of researchers.
I wonder how much time it takes to develop enough research to jusitfy publication and how much time those researchers are spending in the classroom, how much time they are spending with the students, how much time they are investing in the learning of the students.
"One paper in the last 12 years is not enough to keep anybody employed in a University like OSU." As much as you seem to accept that this is approapriate, I question whether that is meeting the poublics expectations of univeristies. We in Michigan are hearing a lot about the reduced funding of our colleges and univeristies, you have help me decide on the side of the Legislators. If the univeristies, even the research ones, are place more value on the publishing by those hired to instruct students (if they teach classes then that is their justification) then they have lost sight of what we need. I will say a lowly instructor that help 300 or 400 or a thousand students a year to better understand chemistry is much more valuable to society than a person that is weedling a unique sperstective on a know piece of inforamtion so they can publish and make the Dean and the President add a checkmark to their list.
Remember when we had SSTs, think of the value the research on their impact has today versus a classroom of students who had a 30 or 40 year career applying what they learned from one of those 'instructors'.
Believing in academic freedom sounds good, but accepting 'publish or perish' as an appropriate practice for removing quality teacher at any univeristy doesn;t seem to meet the practical test.
I wonder if in the world of academia of politics entered into the education of Phd candidates and if that had an impact on the quality of their education.
David is one of those who has a great internal struggle, he truly believes but he does listen to those who disagree. I challenges every point of disagreement, but he does avoid those he has not found the answer to. He does think about his position.
What I have found is that those who are closed to hearing what others will say even though it is in disagreement of what they believe are prodominetly driven by emotion and that gradually dies and it is soon followed by disolution of the movement. A symptom of this has raised its ugly head in Rio, the 'greenies' are meeting in Rio and they mention every ill known to man, yet they find no common ground to change current practices. Ther emotion is losing steam.
It makes you wonder how many others with excellent credentials stay silent to avoid being attacked by their militant peers who will not tolerate dissent. It certainly does, Ken, thank you.
He was merely one of many people with ZERO expertise who decided to voice his ideological opinion in blogs on a subject in which he has ZERO actual knowledge.
Well so long as those many people include Phil Jones and Mike Mann you may have a point
The fact that you are totally dedicated to withdrawing the right of free speech from those who disagree with you is something on which "the science has been settled" for a long time. On that the climate science cult is
no different to any other crackpot religion.
Now, how is it that he said he wasn't? He didn't like what he heard, so he decided it wasn't true. He was really fired for his Global Warming denialism, and all the rest of it was a trumped up lie to cover up their conspiracy to fire him for his beliefs. Since they lied to him, he can say guilt-free, that he wasn't told why he was fired. That's the narrative in HIS head.
How do I know all this? Well, unlike most folks on this thread, I understand about "publish or perish." I also understand about "student-friendly" instructors who do a wonderful job entertaining the students, but don't really teach them much. Based on those two things I DO know... I built a logical narrative in my head out of no other facts at all. In other words, I made it all up. After all, I had two more facts than the rest of you, so...
Possibility? Vanishingly small.
Likelihood? No.
There may be some connection between green chemistry and global warming, but if there is, it is philosophical and political, not scientific. Green chemistry is more related to reducing toxic pollution (not the kind that is related to global warming). Again, I doubt we will know any of this, unless someone makes a statement, which is not likely.
Is a 'denialist' one that denies 'global warming' or denies that CO2 released by man though the burning of fossil fuels is the sole cause?
"For this honest doubt and skepticism that the highly complex global climate models are correct you have the temerity to socially stigmatize them in a scientific journal with a catch-all term that implies that they are as morally reprehensible as those that “deny” that the Nazi Holocaust of genocide against the Jews?"
I never understood how any scientific discovery could be deemed a "scientific consensus", there was at one point, the widespread belief that the earth was flat, just because everyone believed it, didn't make it true.
I always think about Einstein's statement when his theory of relativity was bashed. "If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!" --Albert Einstein, commenting on the book 100 Authors Against Einstein
Global Warming: Guess work and predictions
For many years, we have been warned by threats of global warming, but in truth most of it is coming from politicians, which is more of a political agenda than scientific evidence. As stated in Time Magazine, February 27, 2006, “There is little doubt that humans are heating up the planet, the questions of how much, how quickly, and leading to what consequences are fiendishly difficult to pin down. That’s because the actual climate is still far more complicated than any existing computer model can accurately reflect, making predictions iffy at best.” This statement seems to be almost like an apology for not being able to supply accurate facts. The statements we hear seem to be geared at scaring us into believing the worst possible situation is almost inevitable. When I hear statements such as, if all the ice in Greenland was to melt and slide into the ocean, sea levels would rise by 20 feet, it does not scare me. It makes me angry that we are expected to panic because these radicals are presenting the worst-case scenario to try to make their beliefs to seem more desperate. If the world as a whole was to come together in an effort to intentionally melt all the ice in Greenland, we would not be able to do so with anything short of a well-planned air strike, and even then we would be trying to destroy 677,855 square miles with some of the ice being 2 miles thick.
There are actual scientists that have come forward labeling the global warming crisis as nothing more than a political hoax, so who are we to believe? I am a firm believer in protecting the environment, but the radical extremists have always based their beliefs on myths, hypothesis, and scientific predictions that simply are lacking facts to back up these beliefs.
One of the main concerns of those that seem to think we are destroying the world is the fact that large areas of ice are breaking off and falling into the ocean. This is a perfect example of why I choose to discredit many of their beliefs. There are cracks in the ice, and by cracks, I am not talking about small cracks like in a windshield of a car. Some of these cracks may be as much as several miles long. This is where simple physics comes into play, which is the part they have not really explained. When ice melts, the water flows into these cracks and fills them. When water freezes, the actual volume will increase as much as 9%, which acts as a wedge and pushes the ice away from the main body and sometimes slips into the ocean. There is nothing we can do to prevent this from happening. If you really want to see how this works, take a bottle of water and place it in your freezer. Open your freezer the next day and you will understand that what I have just stated is true.
Has anyone other than myself not noticed that these same scientists speak of earlier ice ages millions of years ago? Why did the ice melt millions of years ago? There were no automobiles, no oil refineries, so why would we believe that based on a myth, that we are able to stop something that obviously has a history of taking place without what these scientists are saying we are doing to cause this to happen?
I firmly believe that we need to minimize the polluting of our air, not destroying rainforest, and continuing to do research on how we are able to protect our environment, but we need to use reason and stop basing all we do on predictions of what may happen in the next million years. The science behind these predictions is at best, uncertain, which to me makes the statements that anything that these radicals are telling us we should do, as prevention is also uncertain. These scientists are spending so much of their time looking into the future that they are ignoring the present.
By the way, global warming is now called “climate change.” The conservatives call it weather.
I firmly believe that we need to minimize the polluting of our air, not destroying rainforest, and continuing to do research on how we are able to protect our environment, but we need to use reason and stop basing all we do on predictions of what may happen in the next million years. You are SO in my head.