Are scientists biased against Christians? Exploring real and perceived bias against Christians in academic biology
M. Elizabeth Barnes ,Jasmine M. Truong ,Daniel Z. Grunspan,Sara E. Brownell
Published: January 29, 2020 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226826
Source/Fonte: Dicio
Abstract
Christians are one of the most underrepresented groups in science, and one potential explanation is that scientists have a bias against Christian students, which could discourage and actively prevent Christian students from becoming scientists. Although there is a general perception in society that there is bias against Christians in science, we do not know whether science students, who frequently interact with scientists, perceive this bias. Further, no researchers have attempted to experimentally document the existence of bias against Christians in science. To address these gaps in the literature, we designed three studies. In the first study, we found that college science students report a perceived bias against Christians in science and that evangelical Christians perceive greater bias than Catholic and non-Christian students. Then in two studies, biology professors evaluated Ph.D. program applicants and we examined whether the professors rated a student less favorably when the student revealed a Christian religious identity. We found no statistically significant differences in how biology professors rated a student who was President of the Christian Association compared to a student who was President of the Atheist Association or a student who was President of the Activities Association. However, in Study 3, biology professors did rate a Christian student who went on a mission trip with Campus Crusade for Christ as less hireable, less competent, and less likeable than a student who did not reveal a Christian identity. Taken together, these studies indicate that perceived bias against Christians in science may contribute to underrepresentation of Christians but actual bias against Christians in science may be restricted to a specific type of Christianity that scientists call fundamentalist and/or evangelical.
Citation: Barnes ME, Truong JM, Grunspan DZ, Brownell SE (2020) Are scientists biased against Christians? Exploring real and perceived bias against Christians in academic biology. PLoS ONE 15(1): e0226826.
Editor: Jonathan Jong, Coventry University, UNITED KINGDOM
Received: August 31, 2019; Accepted: December 5, 2019; Published: January 29, 2020
Copyright: © 2020 Barnes et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: All data will be submitted as a supplemental information file upon acceptance of the manuscript.
Funding: M.E.B received funding support for this study from the National Science Foundation (https://www.nsf.gov/) grant DGE-1311230, M.E.B and S.E.B. received funding for this study from the National Science Foundation (https://www.nsf.gov/) Grant I-USE-1818659, and D.Z.G. and S.E.B. received funding for this study from the National Science Foundation (https://www.nsf.gov/) Grant #1712188. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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