Science Gurus
April 4, 2022
As a member of the
baby boomer generation, I witnessed the surge in interest in
Eastern religions starting in the
1960s, such as the
pilgrimage of
The Beatles to
India for
enlightenment under
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918-2008). Some of the
youth of that era sought guidance more often from one
guru, or another, rather than the
ministers of their
parents' religion. That was the same
decade that
John Lennon (1940-1980) made his notorious statement that
rock music might outlast Christianity.[1]
The
1970s saw a merger of Eastern
spiritualism and
physics in two
books.
The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism was a 1975 book by physicist,
Fritjof Capra (b. 1939). This book entwines the
mysteries of
theoretical physics with
Eastern mysticism. 1979 saw
publication of
The Dancing Wu Li Masters by
Gary Zukav (b. 1942). This was a
popular exposition of physics, and
quantum mechanics in particular.
American physicist,
Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019), named his organizational scheme for
hadrons that led to the development of the
quark model the
eightfold way, a reference to the
Noble Eightfold Path of
Buddhism. Earlier, we have the example of
J. Robert Oppenheimer(1904-1967) recalling the
Hindu god,
Vishnu, at the
Trinity nuclear test. When he was was elevated to the
Danish Order of the Elephant, the equivalent of
knighthood, in 1947,
Niels Bohr (1885-1962) incorporated the
yin yang symbol as part of his
coat of arms (see figure)
Coat of arms of Niels Bohr incorporating the yin yang symbol. This symbol from Ancient Chinese philosophy incorporates the complementary properties of dark and light, negative and positive, male and female.
Bohr, who created the Bohr model of the atom, was awarded the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics for his "investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them." He also originated the concept of complementarity in physics to describe quantum phenomena in which objects have certain pairs of complementary properties, such as position and momentum, which cannot be observed or measured simultaneously. I wrote about the Bohr model in an earlier article (Bohr Model of the Atom, January 3, 2012).
(Wikimedia Commons image. The Latin motto translates as "The Contrary are Complementary." Click for larger image.)
Science has had its own gurus, the most notable of which is
Albert Einstein (1879-1955). More than half a
century since his
death he is still the
image that most people evoke for high science. This leads to the question of whether people value advice more from scientists than spiritual gurus. A team of
psychologists and other scientists has just
published results of a study that demonstrates that scientists are more credible than spiritual gurus. The results of the study are published in a recent paper in
Nature Human Behaviour.[2-3]
The huge international
research team was comprised of members from
University of Amsterdam (Amsterdam, The Netherlands),
Victoria University of Wellington (Wellington, New Zealand),
Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia), the
University of London (Egham, UK), the
Institut Jean Nicod (Paris, France),
Aarhus University (Aarhus, Denmark),
Vilnius University (Vilnius, Lithuania), the
University of Haifa (Haifa, Israel), the
University of Padua (Padua, Italy),
Babes-Bolyai University (Cluj-Napoca, Romania),
Brunel University London (Uxbridge, UK), the
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany), the
University of Oxford (Oxford, UK),
Rikkyo University (Tokyo, Japan),
Adolfo Ibáñez University (Santiago, Chile),
Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), the
Universidade de Bras&iacut;lia (Bras&iacut;lia, Brazil),
James Cook University (Singapore), the
Catholic University of Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium), the
University of Connecticut (Storrs, Connecticut), and
Leiden University (Leiden, The Netherlands).[2]
A diverse
cross-cultural sample of 10,195
participants from 24
countries was used for the study, of which 340 participants (3.23%) were excluded because they failed the
attention check for the
online questionnaire.[2] The participants were presented with
obscure,
meaningless statements that were attributed to either a spiritual guru or a scientist.[2] It was found that across all 24 countries and all levels of
religiosity, scientists held greater authority than spiritual gurus.[2] More religious people held spiritual gurus in greater authority.[2] Similar
data across 143 countries indicated the same effect, and the
overall assessment is that across cultures science signals the reliability of
information irrespective of one's religious beliefs.[2]
Whom do you trust?
This illustrates that scientists enjoy greater trust than traditional healers in a majority of the 143 countries in the study.
The 95% confidence interval of the data is about 0.05 on the horizontal scale.
(Created using Inkscape from data in fug. 4a of ref. 2.[2] Click for larger image.)
The participants were asked to evaluate the credibility of two two meaningless but profound-sounding statements, one of which was attributed to a spiritual guru, and the other to a scientist, as shown below.[3] I'm personally happy that none of my writing sounds like this! The participants were asked rate the credibility of these on a 7-point
scale.[3]
"We are called to explore the cosmos itself as an interface between faith and empathy. We must learn how to lead authentic lifes in the face of delusion. It is in refining that we are guided."
"Yes, it is possible to exterminate the things that can confront us, but not without hope on our side. Turbulence is born in the gap when transformation has been excluded. It is in evolving that we are re-energized."
There were interesting differences between countries.
Dutch participants were the most
skeptical about any claims, and the difference in credibility between the scientist and the guru was greatest in
Turkey and smallest in India,
China and
Japan.[3] This study comes at a relevant time in which scientific and
political claims about the
coronavirus abound. However, the
advertising world has always thought that science
sells products, with
cosmetics sold as
clinically proven and
recommended by dermatologists.[2] There's even the
historical advertising campaign based on the
claim that "more
doctors smoke Camels than any other
cigarette."[2]
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Vintage Camel cigarettes lighter.
Tobacco products historically have been heavily advertised, but the 1970 Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act in the United States banned cigarette advertisements on radio and television.
It also required the cigarette package notice, "Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined that Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health." This shifted advertising to point-of-sale at convenience stores and the Internet.
As for smoking physicians, I remember one of them in our corporate medical department in the 1980s being advised by his senior colleague that he should stop.
(Wikimedia Commons image by Joe Haupt,)
References:
- Who would believe that there's such a thing as The Journal of Beatles Studies, an open access journal started late last year by the Liverpool University Press.
- Suzanne Hoogeveen, Julia Haaf, Joseph Bulbulia, Robert Ross, Ryan McKay, Sacha Altay, Theiss Bendixen, Renatas Berniünas, Arik Cheshin, Claudio Gentili, Raluca Georgescu, Will Gervais, Kristin Hagel, Christopher Kavanagh, Neil Levy, Alejandra Neely, Lin Qiu, André Rabelo, Jonathan Ramsay, Bastiaan Rutjens, Hugh Turpin, Filip Uzarevic, Robin Wuyts, Dimitris Xygalatas and Michiel van Elk, "The Einstein effect provides global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity," Nature Human Behaviour, February 7, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01273-8.
- Scientists carry greater credibility than spiritual gurus, University of Virginia Press Release, February 8, 2022.
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