Re: [asa] O'Leary to ASA: Disgrace!

I've left several posts on this thread in the past 24 hours, simply
addressing some aspects of Jeff Schloss' review and the very capable reply
by Richard Weikart--both of which are on our website partly on the basis of
my recommendation.

I have declined to make a direct reply to Denyse's latest trashing of the
ASA--were I to do so it might be deleted and my access to UcD terminated,
and I'd like to be able to drop in there from time to time. I see no point
in responding yet again to this type of thing, in that venue--what would it
accomplish? She isn't going to change her extraordinarily low opinion of
us, regardless of any facts that I can share (not even the fact that an
author of the first ID book, IMO the very best one, is our current
president). And I don't need to reply to her (again) here--if you shared
her view, you probably wouldn't be interested in the ASA anyway.

The best response, frankly, is for each member to continue to remain a
member, and for each member to help bring new members into the ASA. Like
many other "intellectual" organizations (Sigma Xi is a prominent example),
we have gone through a long period of declining membership--which can't be
tagged to ID, since it began long before ID existed. The current generation
of students and post docs are not the joiners that my generation was, and
even those who do join a scientific society have little or no time to read
our journal or come to our meetings. The absence of an official support for
(or opposition to) ID on the part of the ASA as an organization is not being
given as a reason for this; it seems to be just the same sort of career and
family pressures that most younger scientists are facing. We are
implementing some ideas to help attract them to us, and thus far we've seen
encouraging results: overall (factoring in deaths, lapsed subscriptions, new
members, and retention), we are up 5% over last year in full members
(students aren't counted), and we have reasons to think this may continue as
new local sections are forming and old ones reviving.

But your role in this is crucial. Please do think of one or two friends
who would probably find ASA membership valuable, and consider introducing us
to them through a gift membership--or, better yet, lend them some back
issues of PSCF and persuade them to join on their own. I can't
overemphasize the importance of reaching out to those folks who are likely
to appreciate us.

Ted

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Received on Mon Aug 11 13:34:01 2008