Dr. Ralph Seelke

MILD Case: Cancelled research opportunity (regained)

Note by Kevin Wirth: I interviewed Dr. Ralph Seelke in November of 2008, and he shared with me his experience working at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. According to Seelke, he discussed a proposed research project, designed to provide an experimental test to the limits of evolution, with Dr. Charles Yanofsky, professor emeritus at Stanford. Dr. Yanofsky recommended that he do his sabbatical in the laboratory of another scientist at Stanford (Dr. Yanofsky was in his early 80’s at the time) and in collaboration with a second Stanford scientist. These two Stanford scientists agreed that Seelke’s proposed experiments had merit, and agreed to sponsor his sabbatical at Stanford. . When one of the professors learned of Seelke's ID sympathies, he pulled the plug on the agreement, leaving Seelke stranded (he had already entered his sabbatical and had rented an apartment near Stanford). Seelke went back to Yanofsky, who recommended an alternate professor, who agreed to let Seelke in, based solely on the merits of Seelke's proposed experiment. In January of 2004, Seelke began his experiments and concluded them successfully by June 2004.

Dr. Seelke's daughter offers her explanation of what happened to her Dad.

I have decided that it's about time to use Facebook to shamelessly promote a movie that has an interesting personal connection for me. My father, Ralph Seelke, was interviewed for Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and appears in about two seconds of the Super Trailer for the movie. If you watch the trailer, there is a montage of “other scientists [who have] faced similar persecution,” and my dad is the last one before a picture of Origin of Species is shown. (My mother's response to seeing the clip: “Had I known he would be interviewed for this, I would have made him wear a nicer shirt.”) Unfortunately, the rumor is that he did not make the final cut of the movie. I was, of course, disappointed not to be able to claim to have a movie star for a father, but I suppose it makes sense: Dad is not really a very big deal. He's a small scientist at a small school who happens to get a few big opportunities to show that God can be glorified in the realm of microbes.

Dad's interesting story of mild academic persecution began around Christmas of 2003. He was about to do a research sabbatical in an evolutionary biologist's lab at Stanford when he got a disappointing phone call from this evolutionary biologist. Apparently, this man had visited Dad's website and discovered that Dad is a Christian and that his research had implications for the Intelligent Design movement. The evolutionary biologist was not tenured yet, so he felt that he could not have such a person work in his lab. It would be too much of a professional risk to have the possibility of his name being associated with Dad's work. Three weeks before my parents were set to leave for California for five months, they found themselves all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Unlike a lot of the stories in Ben Stein's movie, Dad's story has a happy ending. After some desperate emailing, he was able to find a tenured microbiologist who didn't particularly care about the ideological ramifications of Dad's research. The science was good, so he invited Dad to his lab. Dad had a grand old nerdy time out at Stanford. His happy ending is a testament to the benefits of tenure and the open-mindedness of microbiologists.

I find it funny when biologists claim that letting a divine foot in the door will shut down scientific inquiry. In my father's case, the exact opposite was true. That was the ridiculous thing about the whole affair: Dad's research was Stanford-level acceptable in the mind of the evolutionary biologist until he found out about Dad's sympathy with Intelligent Design. Of course, this evolutionary biologist was in a tough spot professionally, so I do not blame him for not wanting to take a risk for something he didn't believe in. But the fact that there exists such hostility against Christianity within the biological sciences is disturbing. Ben Stein's movie will bring this hostility to light, and perhaps the “freethinkers” in the Ivory Tower will become inclined to allow for more free thinking after viewing this movie. And that's why you should all go watch it (even if my dad didn't make the final cut and isn't a movie star).