Rice University sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund joined Nature’s career podcast “Working Scientist” to share her research on religion among scientists and discuss her book “Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think About Religion.”
Host, Adam Levy, noted that science and religion are typically pitted against each other. Ecklund was invited to share just how accurate or inaccurate assumptions around religion and scientific research actually are.
“So we do talk about them as if they’re polar opposites,” Ecklund said. “And I think that’s why it’s really important to bring the social sciences in here and where we can actually study people. Our team at Rice University has studied scientists in eight different national contexts. And in the U.S., about 50% of scientists at universities identify as being part of a religious tradition. In the U.K., it goes down significantly to less than 20%.”
Widespread public and academic stereotypes often portray scientists as irreligious or hostile to faith; these perceptions are reinforced by popular narratives rather than data, Ecklund said. This dynamic can lead scientists who are religious to hide their beliefs or feel unwelcome in academia. It can also disproportionately affect scientists from minority religious groups and ultimately pushes talent out of academic science.
“We found that in the United Kingdom broadly, but in England in particular, where there are the most research universities,that Muslim scientists had a particularly difficult time,” Ecklund said. “That they did not feel like they could go into science, that they felt sometimes not very welcome. And I think some of their ideas about how Muslim scientists, that is, some of Muslim scientists’ ideas about how they will be treated in science, are kind of accurate.”
“We did find stereotyping among the science community, especially at research universities and top research universities. Concerns about Islam, concerns that the tenets of Islamic faith would not allow scientists who are Muslim to check their experiments or repeat experiments. We did not find that these concerns were valid when we interviewed and surveyed Muslim scientists themselves. But there still is that culture of fear in the scientific community when it comes to Muslim scientists. In the U.S., on the other hand, there are those same sorts of attitudes towards evangelical Christian scientists, and so there are those kind of attitudes, even if they’re not actually based in truth.”
As the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences and director of Rice’s Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance, Ecklund’s work explores how individuals and groups bring their values and religious commitments into their work and public lives. Her research is widely recognized for revealing how pluralism — when understood and supported — can be an asset rather than a liability in professional life.
“From the academic side, I’ve always been interested in how competing ideas are actually lived out in real, everyday people’s lives as a kind of sociological question,” she said. “Sociologists study group behavior. Scientists seem to have stereotypes about religious people, and religious people have stereotypes about scientists.”
Empirical data was the answer to the perception question, Ecklund explained. The research in her book showed that the conflict between science and religion is mostly a Western invention. India, for instance, sees religion deeply intertwined with daily life and it is not viewed negatively in the scientific workplace. The research also found that many Western scientists, including those who identify as atheists, find a sense of wonder or awe in their scientific work.
Ecklund argues that the reality of the conflict between science and religion is complex and nuanced across different cultures. To learn more about Ecklund and the Boniuk Institute’s work understanding religion’s impact in the workplace, academia and culture, click here.