Now who would ever accuse “spiritual” types of being inflexible????

actually there are many that aren’t. you can be spiritual and not religious-it’s the religion part that’s inflexible.

that being said, maybe this study is true on the average, but from personal experience, when I was going through college and grad school I was not only spiritual but quite religious, and I did very well academically. and I’ve had several religious friends who have done quite well in law school.

Now who would ever accuse “spiritual” types of being inflexible????

I skimmed through the paper. He got his results by comparing predicted first-year gpa with the actual first-year gpa. The predicted gpa comes from LSAT scores and the gpa in previous undergrad programs. Higher spirituality actually positively correlated with undergrad gpa. But it also correlates negatively with LSAT scores. As a result, the predicted first-year gpas are about the same accross all the groups. But the highest spirituality group had significantly poorer actual first-year gpa.

It seems to me that undergrad gpas are positively correlated with spirituality because such people are more likely to come from religious universities, where they perhaps have inflated gpas. That’s why predicted first-year gpas are inflated for the high-spirituality group. The only question that remains is why the high spirituality group has a much lower gpa. The paper itself suggests that is because of the law school’s “religious affirmative action”. This also would have shown up in the predicted gpas if it weren’t for the inflated undergrad gpas.

Sounds reasonable to me! The fact that the author, Scott Taylor, already suggested this possibility in the paper tells me that he’s on the ball, scientifically speaking.

Sounds like a lot of grasping at straws…

Why?

They all seem like plausible reasons to me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer were “a little of all of the above”. In particular, the second and third one seemed most likely to me.

A spirituality index measured 1) frequency of attendance at religious worship, 2) frequency of discussion of religion with others from different faith traditions, 3) the presence and strength of the connection between God and morality, and 4) the presence and strength of the view that entry into the legal profession is a divine calling.

It seems pretty arbitrary to me to define “spirituality” in these terms. It’s a superficial view, and a decidedly Catholic one at that (“divine calling”). A mystic would define it differently, and a practitioner of an Asian religion might not even acknowledge the concept.

I can’t be bothered to read the paper, but does he consider the possibility that the non-”spiritual” students are simply smarter?

Occam, put down the razor.

Sounds like a lot of grasping at straws…

Actually not. A good scientist must consider all competing explanations, at least all the ones that she can think of and that might be even marginally plausible. Further experimentation can decide between them.

See Cargo Cult Science, by Richard Feynman.