I'd have to agree to that- knowing the labels and technical terms and
understanding the underlying principles should not be treated as the same
thing.
> I basically agree, but wanted to point out an additional issue. I have
> studied chemistry and got my Ph.D. in a biology department (working on
> biophysics/physical biochemistry/however you call it). While I think
> that I grabbed most of the important biological concepts during my
> Ph.D. thesis that are behind the questions you asked, I would fail with
> some of the questions, especially in Evolution, simply because I never
> was confronted with the technical terms (like cladogenesis/anagenesis,
> Hardy-Weinberg, or epistasis) or with the discussions underlying some
> questions ("Is evolution progressive?" - No idea what the question
> means, whether it's trivial or whether there is a subtle point as what
> "progressive" means).
>> In other words: Only admit students with a proper undergraduate
> education, as Dima suggested, but don't care too much from which field
> they com. You'll profit from having a good mixture of special fields in
> your groups, even if some don't know what cladogenesis is, or even never
> heard of Lamarck and thus cannot answer question 31.