{"id":379,"date":"2009-07-11T22:29:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-11T21:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/07\/are-american-scientists-getting-more-religious.html"},"modified":"2014-12-06T02:13:42","modified_gmt":"2014-12-06T01:13:42","slug":"are-american-scientists-getting-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/07\/are-american-scientists-getting-more.html","title":{"rendered":"Are American scientists getting more religious?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Razib at Gene Expression<\/span> has the lowdown on a new survey<\/a> comparing social, political and religious attitudes of scientists with the general public. Unsurprisingly, there\u2019s a huge gulf between the two groups. While 41% of the scientists said they didn\u2019t believe in god or in a high power, just 4% of the general public said the same.\"Pew_2009_scientists_religion\"<\/a>There\u2019s one statistic that is rather unexpected, however. As you can see in this table, younger scientists are more <\/span>likely to be religious than older ones. That\u2019s the reverse of what you see in the general population.<\/p>\n

A similar thing was seen in a study published back in 2007 by Elaine Ecklund at SUNY. In a survey of of 1,500 academics, she found that those aged under 35 were 50% more likely to say that they believed in god or attended religious services compared with those aged over 45.<\/p>\n

Ecklund thinks that this might indicate a trend towards increasing religiousness in academics. After all, adults don\u2019t often change<\/a> their religious beliefs. So as the younger academics get older and the older ones retire (or die), you would expect the number of believers to increase. But I have one niggling doubt.<\/p>\n

Ecklund also thinks (and she\u2019s probably right) that the reason academics are less religious is because academia attracts freethinkers. It\u2019s not so much that the facts you learn as a professional biologist tease you away from religion, it\u2019s more that people who aren\u2019t that wowed by religion are more likely to become biologists (see Matt Young\u2019s recent post<\/a> on this over at Panda\u2019s Thumb).<\/p>\n

So I wonder about the age effect. Could it simply be that there\u2019s a selective process at work here? Perhaps religious scientists simply don\u2019t stay in the profession after their PhD and maybe one or two post-docs.<\/p>\n

For this to be true, however, you would expect there to be fewer older academics than younger. Stats on that are hard to come by. The NSF publishes comprehensive stats<\/a> on just about everything other than the age of university-employed scientists. Ecklund doesn\u2019t break down the age demographics in her survey. The Pew Survey does (p 95<\/a>), and over half of the scientists they surveyed (selected from members of the AAAS) are actually over 50!<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m not sure what can be concluded from the age profiles of non-religious scientists. Evidence that scientists are bucking the general secularizing trend, or an interesting insight into workplace peer pressure?<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________________________________________________
\n\"ResearchBlogging.org\"<\/a><\/span>
\nEcklund, E., & Scheitle, C. (2007). Religion among Academic Scientists: Distinctions, Disciplines, and Demographics Social Problems, 54<\/span> (2), 289-307 DOI: 10.1525\/sp.2007.54.2.289<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Creative<\/a><\/span>This work by Tom Rees<\/a> is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Razib at Gene Expression has the lowdown on a new survey comparing social, political and religious attitudes of scientists with the general public. Unsurprisingly, there\u2019s a huge gulf between the two groups. While 41% of the scientists said they didn\u2019t believe in god or in a high power, just 4% of the general public said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAre American scientists getting more religious?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Razib at Gene Expression has the lowdown on a new survey comparing social, political and religious attitudes of scientists with the general public.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/07\/are-american-scientists-getting-more.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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