A Massachusetts federal court judge last week (April 22) dismissed the case against a researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who allegedly fired a postdoc in his lab because of the postdoc's creationist beliefs. The postdoc, Nathaniel Abraham, was dismissed from his position in the lab of molecular toxicologist linkurl:Mark Hahn;http://www.whoi.edu/science/B/people/mhahn/hahnm.html#Interests in November, 2004, after revealing that he believed in the literal truth of the Bible and considered evolution to be not a fact but a theory. Hahn's lab studies the evolution of molecular mechanisms of chemical signaling and adaptation to chemical exposure. Abraham filed a discrimination complaint against Hahn, which was rejected by the Massachusetts Commission against Discrimination. He then linkurl:filed suit;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53976/ against Mark Hahn and the institute last November, arguing, according to court documents, that he had been hired to work in Hahn's lab because of his expertise in zebrafish developmental biology, toxicology, and programmed cell death,...

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of

Receive full access to more than 35 years of archives, as well as TS Digest, digital editions of The Scientist, feature stories, and much more!