It's because HE IS NOT A SCIENTIST and UMM does not have developmental biology program. They do get grants in other biology areas, but Myers does nothing in science. He just teaches some undergrad courses in basic developmental biology in a cow-town university that is, frankly, one step up from a community college.H. Korban wrote:
I think Benson is going berserk with the "I am under attack" bit as she is a (I use this term with great hesitation) professional blogger and has nothing else to do all day long, except scrub for mentions of her name. A classic malignant narcissist.
Talking about aspiring scientists: in my university tenure is not the end of ones worries. If one wants to have graduate students and post-docs work for one, then one must write proposals (many, many of them) to keep the money flowing. Things are highly competitive and I often loose sleep when I come to the end of a grant, specially if I have students or others funded off them. I do not understand how PZ manages to keep himself going, specially in the summer. Perhaps he cleans a lot of fish tanks. I have written on an average two or three proposals each year in the last six years since graduating from school. If I were to jet-set around the world giving ridiculous talks at atheist conferences and writing absolutely worthless junk on a blog, my university would kick me out ASAP.
On a totally unrelated topic: does anyone here watch tennis? I have been watching the French Open and enjoyed the women's games this week. The men's games are much faster and involve more power play, but the women's games (and the women) are also fun to watch.
There's nothing wrong with that, not everyone gets to go to (or teach at, or conduct research at) a Top-100 (world-wide) university. But it's hardly an elite institution.
In fact years ago he used to put his UMM faculty position listings on his old Science Blogs blog... One day I mentioned, to my wife, that it might kind of neat to get out research and go into the much easier position of teaching and there was a job at UMM with one of her old graduate school mates being a professor there...
Before I mentioned I thought Myers might be able to give her a leg up, she about ripped my head off and let me know in no uncertain terms what a third-rate piece of crap UMM was... Since then I have just kept all job-seeking/grant-writing advice to myself...