Science and Religion: The Case of George Washington Carver

I have written in my evolution blog about my immense admiration for George Washington Carver as the model scientist. He is also a very interesting example of the meeting of science and religion.

Throughout his life, but less subtly in his later years, George Washington Carver considered his work to be God’s little laboratory, and that God was revealing the secrets of nature to him.

Carver apparently meant this literally, as when, in 1924, he gave a speech in New York City. The New York Times editorial was highly critical of his religious approach to science.

At first the editorial just seems racist, even though the writer might have meant well (saying that a hocus pocus approach to science makes blacks, who are quite intelligent, look like they are not). But this brings up an interesting point: at what point does religion interfere with a scientist’s quality of work?

I am not talking just about creationism. I have written extensively about how creationists use their pseudoscience as a tool to advance a political agenda. It is really bad science and used to promote a really bad goal. Instead, I am talking about deep religious convictions of scientists that motivate them to pursue scientific research as a holy calling—scientific research that might be just as good as that of any other scientist.

This remains a current issue among scientists. The religious convictions held by Francis Collins were the basis for Sam Harris to claim that he should not be the director of NIH. And the religious faith of Kenneth Miller caused some controversy in the Society for the Study of Evolution when Miller received the Stephen Jay Gould Award in 2011. While, in this link, Jerry Coyne is undoubtedly right that a person who publishes books about science and faith open themselves up for public criticism, I have to wonder if Coyne’s opposition to Miller’s professions of faith is entirely fair.

Is it true, then, that real scientists don’t, or shouldn’t, talk the way George Washington Carver did? To me, this is not a very important question to answer. The real anti-scientists are causing so much trouble that we shouldn’t pick fights with real scientists who happen to be religious. A fair percentage (though of course we keep no records of it) of members of the Oklahoma Academy of Science will describe themselves as people of faith. And if they keep doing good work (such as getting students to look closely at the natural world, which may or may not be God’s creation), I am their enthusiastic colleague. I admit I have problem with some religious institutions, such as Oral Roberts University, whose administration uses every opportunity to promote the belief that God directly told Oral Roberts what the truth was, and that settles it for all time. This resulted in a really disquieting moment at the AAAS Southwest and Rocky Mountain Section meeting in Tulsa in 2012 (which I described in my blog). My first reaction is always to distrust religious scientists, based on my Oklahoma experiences, which have been mostly negative. But in many individual instances, I have found my religious scientific colleagues to be really fine people.

Some of you might, however, have different views. I encourage comments. I will be posting this essay on the Oklahoma Academy of Sciences blog and, later, on my evolution blog.

Stan Rice, OAS President

Science Ethics and Tobacco Corporations

I heard a report on All Things Considered yesterday. Nearly everyone has heard that stress causes numerous health problems, including heart attacks. The scientific research behind the stress-heart disease connection is excellent. But the earliest major researcher who studied the physiology of stress—Hans Selye—got most of his funding from tobacco corporations. The reason is actually quite simple. Numerous things cause heart attacks. Stress is one of them. Smoking is another. Others include poor nutrition and genetic factors. All of these factors interact with one another. And what the tobacco companies wanted to claim, although Selye never actually said this himself (as far as I can tell), was that stress, not smoking, caused heart attacks. What Selye did not say, the tobacco companies were eager to say. Their advertisements openly proclaimed that you should smoke to relieve stress. Tobacco corporations wanted to blame stress and avert criticism of smoking.

And Selye went right along with this. Mark Petticrew, Director of Public Health for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and his colleagues examined thousands of documents that were made public as a result of the “tobacco settlement” of the late 1990s. They found that tobacco corporations vetted the content and wording of Selye’s papers (see hyperlink above). Says Petticrew, “tobacco industry lawyers actually influenced the content of his writings, they suggested to him things that he should comment on.”

Hanse Selye was certainly a famous scientist, author of thousands of papers and 39 books. Was Selye a liar? It does not appear so. But tobacco companies paid for his research and used his results to lie to the American public. Blood is on their hands, and Selye was their, apparently willing, tool.

You see, some scientists will say whatever you pay them to say. I am happy to know my Oklahoma scientific colleagues, for whom such unethical practices are practically unthinkable.

Stan Rice, President