Even in a heightened state of cynicism, this isn’t something I would have guessed. In comments to the Santorum post, Becky Stanek points out that most medical doctors believe that evolution should be taught in schools. That brought me up short — “most”? Shouldn’t it be “essentially all”?
Actually, no. The poll results are, from my perspective, horrifying. Some lowlights:
- 37% of physicians do not agree that the theory of evolution is more correct than intelligent design.
- More than half of Protestant physicians (54%) agree more with intelligent design than with evolution.
- 35% of those Protestants believe that God created humans in their present form.
- Half of all doctors believe that schools should be allowed to teach intelligent design.
- When asked whether intelligent design has legitimacy as science, an overwhelming majority of Jewish doctors (83%) and half of Catholic doctors (51%) believe that intelligent design is simply “a religiously inspired pseudo- science rather than a legitimate scientific speculation,” while more than half of Protestant doctors (63%) believe that intelligent design is a “legitimate scientific speculation.”
Don’t doctors have to, you know, go to college? I could imagine noise at the 10% level, but this kind of widespread superstition among purportedly educated people is appalling. What is going on?
August 1st, 2005 at 12:52 pm
Wow. Then I take back the last sentence of the comment I just made on the preious thread!
August 1st, 2005 at 12:54 pm
I was just going to comment on this. Becky was presenting this in an optomistic light, but ugh. This survey is really shocking. You mentioned most of the statistics above, but there’s also this: while “half of Catholic doctors (51%) believe that intelligent design is simply ‘a religiously inspired pseudo- science rather than a legitimate scientific speculation,’ they also find that “more than half of Catholic doctors (62%) feel that schools should be allowed (not required) to teach intelligent design”. So that means that at least 11% of Catholic doctors know it’s crap, but still want to teach it to children.
I agree, Sean, I’m going to start asking my doctors whether they believe in evolution.
August 1st, 2005 at 1:24 pm
Sean wrote:
“What is going on?”
Simple. The notion that anyone with a brain in their head and a decent education will automatically choose darwinism is clearly misguided.
Apparently there are large numbers of highly intelligent people with rigourous scientific training who think darwinism is a bunch of horsepookey.
August 1st, 2005 at 1:27 pm
Read “A Scientific Case for Intelligent Design” here:
http://www.charliewagner.com/casefor.htm
August 1st, 2005 at 1:33 pm
While these findings are surely surprising, I’m not sure if belief in intelligent design as opposed to evolution should be a major consideration in choosing a doctor. Doctors are in the business of healing sick people, and in my opinion they can be just as good at it irrespective of which side they are on in some philosophical/paleontological debate.
Choosing your doctor according to his irrelevant belief in evolution is just not rational.
August 1st, 2005 at 2:05 pm
It’s coming for the astronomers, too! In a new bible-studies cirriculum being taught in public schools around the country (312 districts so far):
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/01/education/01bible.html?
I can’t actually bring myself to type out the story that’s being presented as fact, but you can find it here:
http://snopes.com/religion/lostday.htm
August 1st, 2005 at 2:16 pm
What is personally acceptable to someone as an explanation varies widely it seems, and may be culturally determined. E.g. if “God created us as we are” is an acceptable explanation in a culture, perhaps people of that culture won’t pursue certain areas of biology with the intensity that people of some other culture. Perhaps that helps determine who will dedicate themselves to a career in science, and perhaps that helps explain the 26% of the Nobel Prizes in physics and the 29% in Medicine whose winners are Jewish.
It may be very similar to the answer to the question – why do liberal predominate in the university science departments?
August 1st, 2005 at 2:21 pm
My mother was having some heart issues, which fortunately turned out to be quite benign. The back-up beat regulator (or something like that) was sometimes firing when it shouldn’t. Her doctor told her that it just shows how well God designed the heart, that it has built-in backups which don’t work against each other. When she told me this story, I pointed out the strangeness of his attitude, though apparently it is to be expected.
I do agree though, that doctors should be picked based on how good they are at diagnosing and treating health issues, not on their religious beliefs.
August 1st, 2005 at 2:28 pm
Back in my days as an undergraduate physics major tutoring students in introductory physics courses, there was nothing more frustrating than trying to get some pre-med students to actually think independently. For one reason or another, there was always a sub-population who were very good at memorizing and regurgitating information, without ever apparently thinking, in any way whatsoever, about what it meant. Repeatedly, I would work with students who could not identify from a word problem what variables were given to them and which they were solving for, merely because they would not stop for a second and think about it.
I am not sure myself if this would even hinder them seriously in medicine, since I can imagine there is a place for people who can deal mechanically with a great deal of information. I can even see how the approach might be useful for dealing with the vast range of topics covered by the MCAT. But it does cause a great doubt as to whether one can really consider all doctors as having “rigourous scientific training”. Some do, yes, but some treat the sciences like places and dates in a history book, to be catalogued rather than understood, and I think this is a mainfestation of that,
August 1st, 2005 at 2:32 pm
Part of the problem is with the (doubtless deliberate) ambiguity of the phrase “intelligent design”. On the face of it, all it means is that some features of life are the way they are because God wanted them that way. That’s pretty much implied by any remotely traditional form of theism, it’s perfectly consistent with acceptance of evolution, and any number of good scientists could honestly sign up to it. But what the Discovery Institute loons mean by “intelligent design” adds to that the claim that there’s a scientific theory of intelligent design, and good evidence for features of life that couldn’t have arisen without divine intervention, and so on. Which is a different matter entirely.
(I’ve said “God” and “divine intervention” even though the party line of the ID folks is that the designer could be, um, aliens or something. Who do they think they’re kidding?)
Some of those poll results are pretty scary even with the most charitable interpretation I can come up with, though.
August 1st, 2005 at 2:36 pm
A few reasons:
i) Doctors dont really get any training in evolution.
ii) Much more important: on a daily basis doctors come face to face with the incredible complexity of the human body. Many simply “cant believe” that this is all a result of chance. Also, they face on a daily basis our vast ignorance of the actual working of the body. A vast amount of medicine is simply guesswork.
Thus a natural tendency to attribute the complexity and unknown to “God”.
Its worth pointing out that the most commited evolutionists tend to be zoologists – on a daily basis they constantly see the deep similarities between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom, which makes evolution so apparent.
August 1st, 2005 at 2:37 pm
as i stated in a previous post, i believe sean’s confusion comes from the assumption that physicians are scientists. no, i don’t believe they are. their training is rote and intended to shape their diagnostic abilities. again, just like a mechanic. i believe it’s a stretch to claim medical school trains them as scientists. this isn’t intended to be disparaging since a good medical practice is certainly rational.
August 1st, 2005 at 3:01 pm
A quite interesting — and in some ways horrifying — story. Actually, the theory of “intelligent design” sounds as scientific as astrology, remote healing or the like. But it is even worse — this “theory” can never be tested in any emperical way, i.e. falsified, and obviously violate Occam’s Razor. It is as good an idea as the idea that the universe is way it is, since it is way it is. The “theory” also fails on another account — it does not seem to be any form of intelligent design behind the fact, that a great deal of people think that they originate from some kind of intelligent design
However, the problem that quite a few doctors believe in this idea should not be underestimated: if they can believe in this kind of stuff, then how can they judge if some theory in medicine is based on good scientific research — or just junk-science?
August 1st, 2005 at 3:15 pm
I would like to ask the bloggers about a hypothetical scenario: Let’s say you are sitting on a faculty search committee in your astrophysics group. You come across someone who has several dozen ApJ papers, and their research is generally well cited and well respected. In other words, they have excellent qualifications. Yet, you somehow discover that this same person is dubious about evolution, or maybe even writes articles which defend the teaching of ID in schools. Would this affect your decision whether or not to hire this person as a tenure-track astrophysics professor?
Zero
August 1st, 2005 at 3:24 pm
As someone who teaches a lot of undergraduates who aspire to be doctors, this is not at all surprising. The motivation to become a doctor is almost never to understand how life works, but to help people (admirable) or make money (not quite so admirable). Pre-meds can be quite disciplined and good at rote memorization, but asking them to think about the information or develop hypotheses to relate different pieces of information is often an uphill battle.
August 1st, 2005 at 3:29 pm
Hmmm… Zero. If I were a suspicious individual, I’d be tempted to think that you were trying to set us up for an attack from the ridiculous David Horowitz. Surely that can’t be true can it?
August 1st, 2005 at 3:39 pm
The thing is that people can apply different standards of scientific rigor when confronted with different problems. Doctors can accurately diagnose an illness using the scientific method, and then completely screw-up their own brains when asked to apply the same method to distinguish the virtues of Intelligent Design or evolution
The best hospital in my hometown Penang is the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital, which has many Adventist doctors who will fix you up in a jiffy while professing a belief in Adam and Eve. (I’ve met many of them…since my fiancee is an Adventist herself who used to work there as an RN. )
August 1st, 2005 at 3:50 pm
And engineers aren’t, typically, interested in learning how the universe works either. I wonder how many engineers don’t believe in the Big Bang, but I doubt, however many they are, that it affects their ability as engineers.
But not believing in evolution, while in itself only tenuously related to the practice of medicine, probably correlates with other beliefs that may affect the care you receive. Gene therapies, stem cell-based treatments, … are all things that your creationist physician might have reservations about.
For that matter, I gotta wonder whether a physician, who doesn’t believe in evolution, takes seriously the issue of acquired antibiotic-resistance in bacteria. Do you want someone, who believes that some bacteria were “designed” for penicillin-resistance, prescribing your meds?
August 1st, 2005 at 3:58 pm
If you’ve ever taught one of those physics for premeds courses, you shouldn’t be so surprised.
August 1st, 2005 at 4:44 pm
Actually, more important than the doctor’s belief or lack of belief in evolution, is their philosophy on the value of human life.
E.g., “Your mother is old. These complaints and this pain simply has to be endured. You’re wasting my time asking for anything else”.
versus
“Your mother is old, but we can certainly do some things to improve her health. We will try a number of different therapies to see what works for her”.
In my experience, it is the second kind of doctor who has made a real difference. It seems to me that to one type of doctor, the patient is merely a collection of decaying parts, and to the other, the patient is a person. Secondly, the human body is too complex for medicine to be entirely scientific. A patient is interested in what works for him or her, whether it be scientific or not. The good doctor therefore may step beyond the boundaries of what is scientifically known.
August 1st, 2005 at 4:49 pm
I think it would be interesting to see the breakdown of what specialties the IDers were in. I would hazard a guess that general practioners are more likely to believe in intelligent design than surgeons and specialists, but the results of that survey above have me a little off guard, so who knows? Maybe they should add something like a physical anthropology section to the MCAT so the premeds are confronted with human evolution head on.
August 1st, 2005 at 5:21 pm
My optimism was because the percentage of doctors who accept evolution/want evolution taught in schools is much higher than that of the general population. (I realize I’m grasping at very sad straws when it comes to science education in this country.) It’s the split by religion that’s interesting, and I’d also like to see a breakdown of numbers based on medical practice.
Do you want someone, who believes that some bacteria were “designed” for penicillin-resistance, prescribing your meds?
Exactly. Maybe doctors are more likely to overprescribe antibiotics because of drug advertising, rather than their personal doubts about evolution, but it’s certainly an unnerving thought.
August 1st, 2005 at 5:49 pm
I tend to think that all these surveys really show is that people by and large do not think about large issues. This seems crazy to those of us who study something like cosmology, but I think that to most people the world consists of what we see and feel and the rest doesn’t hold our interest. How many creationists actually know much about the theology of creationism? I’m sure you could start cross examining these people and their answers would start to break down in
August 1st, 2005 at 5:50 pm
Charlie Wagner
I read your case for. Please make sure that any science you produce is thoroughly checked by independent third parties, particularly if it is medical science likely to affect people’s health!
August 1st, 2005 at 5:50 pm
August 1st, 2005 at 5:52 pm
um, well the rest of that didn’t seem to show up.
August 1st, 2005 at 6:00 pm
It is probably not just physicians who have this mix of opinions on evolution. I think the causes are buried in growing insecurity, and the increasing flood of poor quality logic that passes for informed debate in many forums. Like the sophists, many people find that debating tools win debates, not logic, and pretty soon many people believe the warped logic is actually reasoned, and start believing it. Pretty soon they can believe anything they want, and believe it is rational because they can produce a fair seeming argument to support it.
I guess people need to feel secure. As long as they don’t start burning our books and leave us free to keep questioning, then we will be ok.
August 1st, 2005 at 7:12 pm
GrahamC wrote to Charlie Wagner:
“I read your case for. Please make sure that any science you produce is thoroughly checked by independent third parties, particularly if it is medical science likely to affect people’s health!”
Thank you for taking the time to read my paper.
May you have warm words on a cold evening,
a full moon on a dark night,
and the road downhill all the way to your door.
August 1st, 2005 at 7:26 pm
Mark: You are right… I was planning to discuss this matter with Mr. Horowitz during our semi-weekly conference call. Seriously though, do you not want to respond to my question? If you answer honestly, I promise I will never again post to this forum. Is that enough to entice you?
Zero
August 1st, 2005 at 7:44 pm
Zero – It seems off topic and I’m not really interested in getting into it. Also, we’re not in the business of encouraging serious people not to post here
August 1st, 2005 at 7:57 pm
I’m not Mark, nor am I on the Cosmic Variance team, nor do I work in a university, but: I would be affected in two ways by the discovery you describe.
1. I would be concerned that her appointment would be used by the ID crowd as some sort of vindication of their ideas. (And that her non-appointment would be used by them as evidence of an Evil Darwinist Conspiracy, of course.)
2. I would regard her support for the ID movement as evidence of poor thinking, to be weighed in the same way as any other evidence of poor thinking outside his field.
The first of these clearly cuts both ways. Also, if (as seems to be an assumption) she’s a genuinely good scientist within his field, somewhere decent is likely to hire her, so the pseudoscientists get their little publicity coup anyway. The second can’t be a very strong consideration; lots of good scientists say dumb things outside their fields.
So, if this candidate were (ignoring her apparent biological blind spot) the best person for the job, sure I’d recommend her. But I’d be a little worried, just as I would if I learned that someone looking for a biology post believed in astrology.
If we change the scenario a bit and say that what I discovered is that she believes that God sometimes plays a role in the evolutionary process, then the discovery would provoke no misgivings whatever.
August 1st, 2005 at 9:32 pm
Sean:
Like you, I believe the theory of evolution is a better theory than intelligent design. But unlike you, I am a MORE believer than you are, in beliving the theory of evolution.
Why, because on the issue of how doctors are educated, you look like an intelligent design believer, in the sense that you believe that once colleges are designed to properly educate future doctors, then the educated doctors will automatically become a believer of evolution. In that sense, you believe in intelligent design in socialogy.
But I believe the evolution theory works in human society just as well. as far as survival of the fittest is concerned, it does not help a doctor with his her career if he/she believes in evolution. Actually on the contrary, if a doctor chooses to believe a little more on the intelligent design side, he is more likely to find some common language with his patients and so that helps his profession as a doctor, who needs to interact with people.
Doctors are just those who survived the natural selection rules. But so are every one who lives in human societies.
Quantoken
August 1st, 2005 at 11:37 pm
Everybody! Please! Will you stop saying “believe in evolution”?!? You can believe in the tooth fairy, but you need to understand evolution. (And, gee, I sure hope my doctor does.)
August 2nd, 2005 at 1:54 am
Well, Sean, the first thought to pop into my head was an uncourteous “Come off it!” But that’s both pointless and rude. Instead, may I ask why it is that, as always, people refuse to believe that other people, even other educated people, may choose to “believe” something other than you do? Just because someone has seen the same things and come to a different conclusion than you does not mean that they are stupid or unthinking. Different axioms may lead to different conclusions.
And picking a doctor based on belief in evolution is just stupid. It ignores how doctors are trained, what they do, and how good at it they are, which are so much more important as to render one’s view of evolution irrelevant. Not to mention that their stance on things like Medicare billing are much more relevant.
August 2nd, 2005 at 2:17 am
What is dangerous about creationism and ID is that it undermines the rationalist philosophy behind science. It’s not just a matter of different conclusions, but of the steps taken to reach it. I.D. assumes:
1. Irrational arguments are reasonable.
2. Appeals to undefined external variables are reasonable.
3. The correct attitude to open questions in science is not deeper investigation but to just leave it as an irreducible, unexplainable entity.
If we accept that, then there is no point doing ANY science at all.
August 2nd, 2005 at 3:38 am
Hi Arun,
I totally agree with you that bedside manner is absolutely critical to being a good doctor, but I don’t think bedside manner and a scientific approach are incompatible. A compassionate doctor still approaches patients as people while acknowledging that, for example, echinacea doesn’t cure colds. In the end, I think it is independent of your approach: it comes down to what a doctor considers a successful treatment. It could be eliminating a set of symptoms or improving quality of life. (Of course the concept of the scientific approach is that effective treatments that eliminate negative symptoms will typically improve a sick patient’s quality of life.)
Andre
August 2nd, 2005 at 4:19 am
Hmmm, you guys all have a really inflated idea of what doctors are. I was raised by a creationist orthopaedic surgeon, and I’m still pretty proud of my dad’s doctoring abilities, but he’s just not remotely scientific. The nearest comparison is a carpenter (and yeah he even gives patients a lovely little leaflet telling them what they’ll go through in surgery and adding something about “another carpenter who lived 2,000 years ago…”). I don’t think it makes him a worse doctor, though it makes scientific discussions with him pretty amusing. Don’t get your politics from artists, and don’t get your science from doctors. Grow up people.
August 2nd, 2005 at 5:32 am
From what I have been reading in the comments here, most are all based upon the results of the questionnaire being accurate. I know from past experience that many queries can be biased in one direction or another by simple changes in phrasing of a sentence.
However, on the other hand, in the face of Death a doctor might face every day, and the lack of, or apparent lack of “how’s and why” of any given death. Religion may be the only anchor a doctor may have to keep his/her sanity.
August 2nd, 2005 at 9:35 am
My concern with regards these results is not that this would interfere with these doctors doing their jobs. Rather, it’s something of an indictment of the US scientific educational system that people who have seen the highest quality of education available fail apparently to understand the basics of what science and the scientific method is about.
August 2nd, 2005 at 9:54 am
Yes, I’m with Fzplus on that. We do try extremely hard to get across not just the facts of science, but also the methodology. Still, we’re clearly not succeeding as we might wish.
August 2nd, 2005 at 3:00 pm
Anybody wonder why the differences are so great between the religions? Why are Jewish doctors so less likely to believe in ID?
August 2nd, 2005 at 5:45 pm
Is anyone worried that this seems to be an internet poll? I can’t find any explicit methodology, but the same people did a “End of Life” study (http://www.jtsa.edu/research/finkelstein/surveys/schiavo.shtml) where they say what they do. It appears that the method is as follows: they have a file of 500 000 doctors that they invite to participate in their survey; for that survey they got 851 responses (for the one discussed here the number is 1472).
I’m no polling expert, but I’m not convinced that the 0.3% of the people that responded were totally representative of doctors everywhere.
August 2nd, 2005 at 5:48 pm
well as has already been adverted to, medical doctors are in general not scientists. I recall an essay by Peter Medawar saying that the scientific method in medicine, in the sense of double-blind clinical trials, was first used in the 1950s. Certainly in my experience, the medical students in my statistics and physics classes were interested mostly in passing the class, not in understanding the material.
August 3rd, 2005 at 11:29 am
Was it Mario Puzo who said that if you want to eat well, stick with the Italians, but if you want medical care, go to the Jews, because they don’t believe in God the way the Italians do, and they’ll keep on fighting even after a good Catholic doctor would have called for a priest?
Actually, relatively few doctors are good scientists or engineers. Because of the law of large numbers, the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to follow the bell curve. This means that learning a probably correct treatment for each set of symptoms is good enough. Until very recently it has been standard practice to dispense anti-bacterial drugs for viral infections.
If you look around, most medicine, as practiced does not require verified diagnoses and verified treatments. Now and then one finds a doctor who is willing to think logically about the symptoms and develop a treatment and test plan, but this is surprisingly rare and always has been.
Why should doctors accept evolution and the big bang when so many of them cannot handle simple causality or Bayesian statistics?
August 3rd, 2005 at 11:34 am
This is a really good point Gil. Looks a little sketchy. Hadn’t noticed this.
August 3rd, 2005 at 2:24 pm
Gil Holder brings a very strong point to light.
But I’d like to comment on Michael Kircher’s question: Why are Jewish doctors so less likely to believe in ID?
It could be that Judaism (with the exception of extreme sections) is built on the idea of asking questions. There are tomes written on arguments between great Jewish teachers. These books are used for study and not taken as unquestionable fact (two Jews, three opinions). This is not present in many of the religions that were polled.
Don’t forget, to be Jewish only requires that your mother is Jewish (or you convert, which entails the person to question why they are converting not once but three times. Jews are not missionaries) therefore it is possible to be an atheist and Jew at the same time.
Where else can you find that kind of juxtaposition?
August 3rd, 2005 at 3:26 pm
Thanks Ivy for the thoughtful response. Christians have been trying desperately to find an answer to Darwin’s theory for over a hundred years; first utter denial and threats, then creationism science, and along the way the idea that god’s days are actually millions of years each–you know, six days equals a couple hundred million years!(?), then of course Intelligent Design! Why can’t they be content to accept that their practice of their religion is not bothered by scientific discoveries…unless, of course, they feel the need to convert every last soul on…OH! I get it! (In Emily Latella’s voice) Nevermind.
August 3rd, 2005 at 5:26 pm
Michael, I think that everyone is desperately trying to find the answer to Darwin’s theory…it is flawed.
Which maybe the reason that so many intelligent people fall for ID. Einstein once said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
When someone comes up with a flaw in a theory all of a sudden it is announced that the theory is wrong. What they don’t understand is that this does not negate the facts that supported this theory. The whole throwing out the baby with the bathwater syndrome comes into play.
I’ve found myself having to explain (sometimes prove) what a theory is before I can go on with the conversation (or argument).
I think that the more complicated science becomes the more people will turn to an answer that makes sense to them, even if it is illogical. People like neat and tidy and science tends to be a ball of questions that, when answered unlock more questions.
August 3rd, 2005 at 6:39 pm
You guys crack me up. The average doctor is a little better than a good nurse, IF the doctor makes rounds each day and takes calls while they’re on vacation.
In about 1995, Frontline reported that about 70% of the medical techniques being used had never been proved to be of value. If you worked in the field for a few decades, you could verify this by comparing what you do now with what you did then.
The medical field is loaded with mumbo-jumbo and deep bows to the swami doctor. Don’t be surprised if a lot of them are faith healers.
August 3rd, 2005 at 10:28 pm
Actually when you read something like this, you really need a psych major to parse the answers, and really, there should have been some follow up questions to define the parameters. Were the MD’s specifically thinking of ID as expressed by the official organizations? Or were they thinking of the concepts of Chaos vs. Cosmos?
Without that piece of knowledge you don’t know if they were commenting on an ultimate source of existence, or just saying that they believed in thunder gods.
And philosophically, isn’t that distinction relevant? I have, over the last few months met a number of pro-evolution people who assert (a number of them biologists with doctorates) that evolution proves the random (chaotic) nature of the universe, to which I replied….”run away, run away…”
Well anyway, I worked at a big Pharma co. for three years in R&D. Frankly, the actual knowledge of the MD’s worried me…they had none, no thinking skills, no ability to reason…zip. I think it had to do with the severe indoctrination into authority driven social systems that they experienced in med school. To demonstrate I used to ask MD’s if the student could ever be smarter than the teacher. Without reservation they almost all answered no…at which point I asked them where they kept the leeches.
Personally, I only see NP’s for day to day medical needs. They focus on accurate research, rather than a false hubris attempt at memorizing everything.
August 4th, 2005 at 11:36 am
[...] In the discussion about the post on doctors below, some commenters pointed out that doctors aren’t really scientists at all. But the point was never that doctors are scientists; it was simply that they were people who went to college, where presumably they even took some biology courses. How is it possible for people to go through college and come out not appreciating enough about how science works that they can’t appreciate the metaphysical distinction between science and propaganda? [...]