Pew has a new survey out, Public Praises Science; Scientists Fault Public, Media. Lots of interesting facts, though most are not too surprising. Scientists accept evolution at a far greater rate, are less religious and more liberal, than the general public. This is all known. But the report is worth reading, there’s a lot of data. One point which might surprise some, young scientists are much more God-believing than older ones. I think one explanation for this might be that older scientists are selection biased.We know that NAS members are far more godless than the general scientariat, so I wouldn’t be surprised if those who leave science are disproportionately religious (one could suggest that these are individuals who are also more psychologically normal and rational in their life choices). Though I do find it ironic that the current scientist in the news, Francis Collins, is a white evangelical, when that group is incredibly underrepresented in science (3% of scientists vs. 19% of the general public).
Below the fold are a bunch of figures that I thought were of particular interest. But here is the sample size for the scientists:
Razib Khan’s degrees are in biochemistry and biology. He has blogged about genetics since 2002, previously worked in software development, is an Unz Foundation Junior Fellow and lives in the western US. He loves habaneros.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:36 am
Interesting how older scientists are less likely to believe in God than younger ones. The trend goes in the opposite direction amongst the general publics.
July 10th, 2009 at 7:11 am
An interesting survey, I was somewhat surprised at the figures for public vs scientist support on “controversial” issues, and I wonder to what extent the levels of support among the general public reflected the “cold question” nature of the survey, i.e that the questions did not come with any information or context.
There certainly seems to be a lot of work still to do for scientists and science advocates, on these issues.
Given the amount of publicity given to anti-vaccine campaigns in the past few years I was rather surprised to see that 69% of the public support mandatory vaccination. Perhaps this is a reflection of the fact that vaccination is the only one of the 6 topics with which the majority of those questioned would be expected to have had direct personal experience. Might the lesson be that scientists need to find a way to make these issues more immediately relevent to non-scientists?
July 10th, 2009 at 7:32 am
According to that last table, the verdict is,
“Scientists are Godless liberals, but we like them anyway.”
July 10th, 2009 at 8:28 am
Interesting. John Hawks has a related post up with the information that scientists are half again as likely as the general public to think that government programs are well run.
Are scientists just that ivory-tower insulated from common life? Or are the sorts of things scientists are concerned about just better run than the things the public has to deal with day by day?
I suspect that since scientists tend to be pretty smart, they have less problem believing in a society run in a top-down fashion, that would benefit them more than it would a more average person.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Razib: Can you give a definition of “..psychologically normal and rational in their life choices”?
July 10th, 2009 at 11:06 am
NIH is perhaps the most important civilian U.S. science agency; it is certainly is the one with the largest Congressional budget. The NIH director is a public spokesperson for science and a role model. Would you support a person as NIH director who publicly announced her or his deep belief in unicorns? Well, Francis Collins is a religious fanatic. When he speaks about his religious beliefs he makes no sense. His religious fanaticism irreparably damages his credibility as a scientist. He is not an appropriate choice as NIH director.
July 10th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I see Geoscientists are the lease religious of all. Hmmm. No wonder they don’t trust the stability of the climate system.
July 10th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Half Sigma has some opinions regarding AAAS and the “scientists” polled.
July 10th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Interesting the way you just skip right to trying to decide why they’re wrong (and come up with “they’re self-serving”) without even considering the possibility that they might hold that opinion for good and valid reasons.
July 10th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
“Half Sigma has some opinions regarding AAAS and the “scientists” polled.”
*shrug* there are plenty of polls. all show scientists are godless liberals. you can even look at donations to political parties. in the archives. AAAS isn’t a liberal organization, it’s an organization of liberals. sigma has the arrow of causality off.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Tom Bri has it backwards. It’s corporations that are top-down. Government programs, while they have corporation-like hierarchical structures, are ultimately answerable to the demos instead of to the oligos. The same is true of labor unions and community organizations. Science itself has usually been a “government program” that is largely bottom-up. The only bottom-up conservative organizations are some churches and the majority of initiative/measure/referendum campaigns.
CW’s also right about the petitio principii involved in asking the “why” of something not proven to exist.
July 10th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
CW, I did posit that perhaps organizations scientists are concerned with ARE run better than the average government program, which would mean scientists are right where they are concerned, and the general public is right about the things that concern them.
I am thinking public schools in big cities, for example. I doubt that many scientists send their kids to run-down urban-center schools.
To Marion Delgado. Do you really believe that government programs are answerable to the ‘demos’? It seems to me that the new ‘oligos’ is the educated managerial class that runs government programs. Public teacher unions, for example. Corporations are falling right and left, but government programs seem to live on forever.
July 10th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Using animals for research and forced injections for children sound so liberal, don’t they?
And, #10, you have some serious delusions about government.
July 11th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Regarding the sample rates of the different science sectors, how were they weighed? Are those representative of the percentage of scientists in those fields? (notice that Bio / med is sampled nearly 12:1 vs. Geo science)
July 11th, 2009 at 10:20 am
“One point which might surprise some, young scientists are much more God-believing than older ones. ”
I was wondering when it would start to show up. Larger pool to draw from. It will be interesting to see what the trend is 10 and 20 years from now. It may be as you say that the more religious leave. In 2008 10% of students were in private school but 20% of SAT takers were from private schools. I don’t know what percent of those private schools are religious but it is safe to say it is more than zero. No public schools are religious. It would be interesting to see religious orientation of college freshmen with Math SAT over 750. Seems many future scientists would be drawn from that group.
July 11th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Razib, you said…
Out curiosity, does the definition of “Scientist” in these other polls include engineers? (Or just people in academia?)
July 11th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Tom Bri, there is a difference between programs “being run well” and programs “not being run at all”. Much of what the government does is work that no one else wants to do on a guaranteed, equal-access basis. This is good because it provides services (like schools for poor urban kids), but bad because it isn’t necessarily a competitive market.
OT, I noticed that the question “does science conflict with your religious beliefs” could have different interpretations. Many people refuse to accept the science, simply call it “bad”, and therefore find no conflict with the “good” science!
July 31st, 2009 at 6:54 pm
The more you know, the less religious you are. So it is not surprising that younger scientists are more religious than older scientists. Give them a few years and they will shed the shackles of religious indoctrination.