Balancing Belief and Bioscience Can Religious Belief Really Be Reconciled with a Life in Science? Gene Russo Contemplates the Contradictions

CAREERS NATURE|Vol 460|30 July 2009

PROSPECTS Balancing belief and bioscience Can religious belief really be reconciled with a life in science? Gene Russo contemplates the contradictions.

The recent nomination of Francis Center, found that figure to be 33%. Collins to direct the US National But in a second survey3, Larson Institutes of Health does more than and Witham asked a slightly raise the question of the agency’s different question. Do leading future direction. It poses another scientists have religious faith of question. Can a scientific career equal measure to scientists in go hand in hand with religious general? They used members of the belief? Put another way, can a great US National Academy of Sciences DELOCHE/GODONG/CORBIS P. scientist be deeply religious? for their so-called “greater scientist” Collins is well known as one subgroup. Just 7% of respondents of the architects of the Human professed a belief in God. Genome Project. He has also University of Oxford chemist achieved notoriety as a highly Peter Atkins assessed the Larson respected scientist with deep- and Witham survey results in seated religious beliefs. An this way: “You clearly can be a evangelical Christian since the age of 27, that “defy evolutionary explanation and scientist and have religious beliefs. But I Collins detailed his views on reconciling point to our spiritual nature”. And in a 2006 don’t think you can be a real scientist in the religion and science in his 2006 book The Time magazine debate with noted atheist deepest sense of the word because they are Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence and evolutionist Richard Dawkins1, Collins such alien categories of knowledge.” Eminent for Belief. suggested that God could on rare occasions Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker, The obvious reply to the suggestion of choose to “invade the natural world in a way in criticizing the Collins nomination, said conflict is that religious belief can coexist that appears miraculous” — a peculiar outlook much the same thing4. They may be right. Or perfectly well with scientific laws and for a biologist. perhaps it just takes a rare person to advance methods — God simply exists outside nature. How rare is a ‘dual practitioner’ such as a scientific career while balancing belief and In Collins’s book, for example, he calls himself Collins? In 1997, University of Georgia history bioscience — without corrupting either. ■ a believer in “theistic evolution” — which professor Edward Larson and journalist Larry Gene Russo is editor of Naturejobs. espouses, in part, that “once evolution Witham reported survey results suggesting got under way no special supernatural that 39% of scientists believe in God2. A 1. www.time.com/time/magazine/article/ intervention was required”. 9 July 2009 survey, conducted by the 0,9171,1555132,00.html. 2. Larson, E. J. & Witham, L. Nature 386, 435–436 (1997). Yet theistic evolution, writes Collins, also American Association for the Advancement of 3. Larson, E. J. & Witham, L. Nature 394, 313 (1998). implies that humans are unique in ways Science and the US non-profit Pew Research 4. Nature 460, 310–311 (2009). California scrambles to find money for pay

With draconian budget cuts already accept more out-of-state students. the reputation and calibre of UC, according driving out top researchers at the “We have to cut loose from the state to Faber. “The faculty will evaporate and University of California (UC), senior of California and come up with a new the university will collapse,” she says. “The scientists are scrambling to find revenue model,” she says, pointing university has one year’s grace period. After new revenue sources in the face of to the University of Michigan as a that, these [early- and mid-career] people will a university plan to impose unpaid successful example of an institution leave, and replacing them with people of the leave and cut pay. that does not rely overwhelmingly on same calibre is hopeless. We will have lost our On 16 July the UC board of in-state students for tuition revenue: brand name.” regents voted to empower university about a third of that university’s Despite the departures of faculty members, president Mark Yudof to force employees to undergraduates came from outside Michigan. some say things could be worse. “Recruitment take unpaid leave. The furloughs would range Conversely, in the 2007–08 school year, and retention would be more of a concern if from 11 to 26 days and amount to salary cuts 91% of UC students were from California, the rest of the world weren’t also in a terrible of 4–10%, intended to accommodate cuts in according to university website data. economic recession,” says Kevin Woolfork, state funding. The university expects these George Blumenthal, chancellor of the budget policy coordinator at the California cuts to total US$813 million, thanks to the University of California, Santa Cruz, suggests Postsecondary Education Commission, the state’s $26-billion budget deficit. At press raising in-state student fees as a means planning and coordinating body for higher time, several faculty members were known of boosting revenue. “To the extent we are education in the state. to be leaving as a result (see Nature 460, 441; supported by the state, we have an obligation UC receives about $3 billion annually from 2009). UC has 108,000 full-time employees. to provide access [to in-state students],” he the state and earns much of the rest of its Solutions, however, are hard to come says. “To the extent that support is drying up, revenue from its research grants and hospitals. by. According to Sandra Faber, chair of the we have to [change that model].” Its total annual budget is about $19 billion, astronomy department at the University of Continuing with the current funding according to the university website. ■ California, Santa Cruz, the university could strategy for more than a year will imperil Karen Kaplan