The sociologist Elaine Ecklund is on a mission, one funded by Templeton: to show that scientists are more religious than most people think, and that the general perception of a conflict between science and religion is overblown. I don’t care so much about the perception of conflict (though according to a recent Pew poll, 59% of American adults see religion and science as conflicting), but I do care about how, using lots of Templeton money, Ecklund produces paper after paper claiming that scientists are basically religious. And that, she thinks, proves comity between science and faith.

I’ve written about Ecklund’s crusade several times on this site (for a compilation of posts, go here), and I and others have called her out for saying things that simply aren’t supported by her own data.

For example, in her book Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think, Ecklund claimed that nearly 50% of “elite scientists” (those at the universities Ecklund deems “elite”) are “religious in the traditional sense.” But her data showed no such thing. As Jason Rosenhouse pointed out on EvolutionBlog, Ecklund’s data showed that 72% of scientists were nontheistic (compared to 16% of the general public), while only 23% of scientists said they had either no doubts about God’s existence or believed in God but sometimes had doubts. (Ecklund didn’t ask scientists about being “religious in the traditional sense,” so Jason did a generous estimate). Overall, the data in that book showed a stark difference in religious belief between scientists—particularly ones at “elite” universities—and “regular” Americans.

Ecklund has also claimed that “the majority of scientists at top research universities consider themselves ‘spiritual'”, but the real figure is not a majority but 26%! And if you look at her paper on this, you’ll see that even many of these “spiritual” scientists are nonreligious and see contemplating science itself as a spiritual experience.

Ecklund has twisted her data repeatedly, producing a message amiable to the public and much welcomed by Templeton. After all, who but a captious nonbeliever would actually look at the data?

Now, according to Rice University’s publicity website—a university where Ecklund’s osculation of faith has earned her a named professorship and directorship of a “Religion and Public Life” program—she and her colleagues are at it again, of course supported by Templeton.

Her New Big Finding: if you survey scientists all over the world, you get the surprising result that most of them are not atheists!  (Ecklund and her colleagues surveyed scientists in France, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Turkey, the US and the UK; I can’t find the paper on this survey on her c.v., either in press or submitted, so I’m not sure whether or where this has been published.) Well, in the US most scientists are nonbelievers, and I suspect they are in the UK, too, but this is what the Rice University blurb says:

While it is commonly assumed that most scientists are atheists, the global perspective resulting from the study shows that this is simply not the case.

“More than half of scientists in India, Italy, Taiwan and Turkey self-identify as religious,” Ecklund said. “And it’s striking that approximately twice as many ‘convinced atheists’ exist in the general population of Hong Kong, for example, (55 percent) compared with the scientific community in this region (26 percent).”

The researchers did find that scientists are generally less religious than a given general population. However, there were exceptions to this: 39 percent of scientists in Hong Kong identify as religious compared with 20 percent of the general population of Hong Kong, and 54 percent of scientists in Taiwan identify as religious compared with 44 percent of the general population of Taiwan. Ecklund noted that such patterns challenge longstanding assumptions about the irreligious character of scientists around the world.

I’m a bit curious about the Hong Kong/Taiwan result, and perhaps readers would have an explanation.

All I see in the data is a >50% claim for the religiosity of scientists in 4 of the 7 countries; and of course India, Turkey, and to a large extent Italy are religious countries. This is not a global generalization, though the puffery makes it seem like one.

And pardon me if, given Ecklund’s history of playing fast and loose with her categories, I take even these results with a grain of salt. I’d like to know what she means, for instance, by “identifying oneself as religious.”

Because Ecklund can’t show (with the possible exception of Taiwan and Hong Kong) that scientists are even close to being as religious as nonscientists, she has to sell her results as being surprising because, she claims, they overturn the impression is that most scientists are atheists. Well, in fact that’s probably true in most developed Western countries, so showing that most scientists aren’t mostly atheists in 4 countries (three of them religious) is hardly a stunning result. But this is the way you must sell your data to get Templeton dosh.

To make her results seem even more important, Ecklund claims that they have IMPORTANT IMPLICATIONS for the conduct of science and how we structure the relationship between science and religion. Here’s an “implication” for ethics:

In addition to the survey’s quantitative findings, the researchers found nuanced views in scientists’ responses during interviews. For example, numerous scientists expressed how religion can provide a “check” in ethically gray areas.

“(Religion provides a) check on those occasions where you might be tempted to shortcut because you want to get something published and you think, ‘Oh, that experiment wasn’t really good enough, but if I portray it in this way, that will do,’” said a biology professor from the U.K.

Well, besides the phrase “nuanced views” (always a red flag for a bad argument), this is pure nonsense. As if scientists have to rely on religion to keep them from distorting their data! (It hasn’t worked for Ecklund.) Since most scientists are honest, and most are atheists, at least in the U.S., there must be something else keeping them honest. Could it be . . . secular morality? And really, isn’t it better to rely on your own sense of the right thing to do rather than fear of retribution by a Celestial Dictator? It’s a sign of Ecklund’s desperation to soft-sell religion that she even uses quotes like this.

Oh, and there’s this:

Ecklund said that the study has many important implications that can be applied to university hiring processes, how classrooms and labs are structured and general public policy.

“Science is a global endeavor,” Ecklund said. “And as long as science is global, then we need to recognize that the borders between science and religion are more permeable than most people think.”

This is also bogus. She brings in the phrase “science is a global endeavor” because she wants to claim that although Anglophone scientists aren’t as religious as ones from, say, India and Turkey, we have to effect general changes in things like “university hiring processes, classroom and lab instructions, and public policy.” And what exactly is she recommending here: hire more religious scientists? Talk more about religion in the science classroom? The mind boggles.

As for “the borders between science and religion being more permeable than most people think”, what the data show—if she’s representing it correctly—is that in some countries most scientists are religious. But that doesn’t show that religion somehow oozes into science, or vice versa, although science has caused some of the faithful to abandon untenable dogma (e.g., creationism).

I’ll await the paper by Ecklund et al., if there is one, before commenting further. I wrote the Rice PR site to get a reference, but they haven’t answered me. Just let me show you the kind of money Ecklund’s raking in from Templeton for this stuff:

Ecklund’s current grant support from Templeton:

2012-2015 Ecklund, Elaine Howard, PI, “Religious Understandings of Science (RUS),” John Templeton Foundation ($1,087,000).

2012-2015 Ecklund, Elaine Howard, PI (Kirstin R.W. Matthews, Steven Lewis, Co-PIs), “Religion among Scientists in International Context (RASIC) – A Supplement Request for Including Scientists in India,” Templeton World Charity Foundation ($366,714).

2012-2015 Ecklund, Elaine Howard, PI, (Kirstin R.W. Matthews, Steven Lewis, Co-PIs), “Religion among Scientists in International Context (RASIC),” Templeton World Charity Foundation ($2,057,000).

Got that? It’s $3,510,714! Real scientists would kill for that kind of funding! Note that the Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF) differs formally from the John Templeton foundation, with the TWCF being more philanthropic and religious.But all the dosh comes from Sir John’s legacy. Here’s part of the TWCF’s aims (my emphasis)

TWCF supports projects with a positive outlook, and does not fund projects with a substantially negative focus. For example, TWCF is interested in projects studying love, forgiveness, and generosity; it is not interested in the study of hatred, grudge-bearing, and cruelty, except where such study is done in order to bring added dimensions to the development of the positive qualities put forward by Sir John.

Showing that science and religion are in conflict is, of course, a “substantially negative result,” at least in the eyes of Templeton.

Note this, too:

TWCF typically does NOT fund:

• advocacy of any particular religion or dogma;

• proselytising activities that seek to curtail freedom of belief and open-minded inquiry;

• projects that only involve the study of religious texts;

• projects aimed at hostility towards religion, or that promote reductionist materialism

Sounds like a pluralistic version of the Discovery Institute.