The Scientist: NewsBlog:
Dutch evolutionary biologists fired
Posted by Elie Dolgin
[Entry posted at 28th January 2009 04:50 PM GMT]
Evolutionary biologists are the latest victims of the global economic downturn. In a move that has generated a worldwide outcry, Leiden University in the Netherlands is firing nine evolutionary biologists, half of its total evolution-related staff.
Leiden officials say the layoffs are in response to a smaller annual science budget, following the Dutch government's reallocation of €100 million ($133 million) last year to fund the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research.
"We are under pressure," Frietson Galis, the president of the European Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology and one of the Leiden staff given the pink slip, told The Scientist. The dismissals will eliminate Leiden's research in population biology and theoretical modeling because there will no longer be any researchers working in these fields, she added. "It's not possible anymore to have masters and PhD students who work at the population level, but that's necessary to study natural selection." "We're losing knowledge," Bastian Reijnen, an associate researcher at the Naturalis National Museum of Natural History in Leiden and a former Leiden University student, told The Scientist. "That's what you have to give to the new students, and when [the staff] are gone, they'll probably retire or go to foreign countries." Galis said she expects to be paid through until February 2010 but she's been told that her lab and her office will be shuttered by March 1st. She and her colleagues, however, have hired a lawyer to protest the move. "We hope it will be stopped," she said. Targeting only evolutionary biologists "is sad for the people affected," but it's better to cut deep in one field than to spread the financial woes around, Sjoerd Verduyn Lunel, dean of Leiden's Faculty of Sciences, told ScienceInsider. Related stories: [4th December 2008] [6th March 2006] |
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I am not surprised
by Ivan Kelly
[Comment posted 2009-02-02 02:10:02]
[Comment posted 2009-02-02 02:10:02]
It just shows Evolution's true place in the sciences. When financial pressures arise, evolution is the first to go!
Well done Holland!
Well done Holland!
What exactly is Evolutionary Biology?
by Ruth Rosin
[Comment posted 2009-01-31 11:48:53]
[Comment posted 2009-01-31 11:48:53]
I believe I am a biologist, though I'm not quite sure what Evolutionary Biology means, unless it is biology that takes the Theory of Evolution for granted. And I do not recognize any other kind of Biology.
However, if the Dutch Evolutionary Biologists that were fired are "Evolutionary Psychologists", that practice their psedoscientific "trade" based on Wilson's "Sociobiology", which is, in turn, based on the general approach to Behavior co-founded in 1935 by Lorenz & Tinbergen, (with its belief in the existence of genetically predetermined traits, known as "instincts" in Behavior), I fully applaude the firing!
However, if the Dutch Evolutionary Biologists that were fired are "Evolutionary Psychologists", that practice their psedoscientific "trade" based on Wilson's "Sociobiology", which is, in turn, based on the general approach to Behavior co-founded in 1935 by Lorenz & Tinbergen, (with its belief in the existence of genetically predetermined traits, known as "instincts" in Behavior), I fully applaude the firing!
Evolution 101
by JON DE RIEL
[Comment posted 2009-01-29 21:01:59]
[Comment posted 2009-01-29 21:01:59]
The environment changes, new selective pressures arise, populations crash, only the fittest survive. Omigosh, universities evolve too!
Same everywhere.
by Mike Noren
[Comment posted 2009-01-28 18:04:35]
[Comment posted 2009-01-28 18:04:35]
It's the same everywhere - basic science is reduced or eliminated, applied science is untouched. Evolutionary research doesn't pay (in grants and industry cooperation), molecular biology does.
What style of management is this?
by Bradley Andresen
[Comment posted 2009-01-28 14:39:16]
[Comment posted 2009-01-28 14:39:16]
Sjoerd Verduyn Lunel, dean of Leiden's Faculty of Sciences, said ??it's better to cut deep in one field than to spread the financial woes around?. That is the worst management philosophy I have ever heard of! First, the best thing to do is see if you can get an early retirement. Now this may be tricky in Europe where the retirement system and mandatory retirement are very different than the USA, where I am writing from. However, the second way to cut staff is to look at those that are the least productive, which should include teaching and mentoring (that is after all a core mission of a University). Additionally, one must determine a cost benefit ratio for the faculty. What is the draw of the evolutionary biologists on the university budget outside of salaries?
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