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Science and religion present two paradoxes in the United States. On the one hand, the u.s. is the undisputed world leader in science. Yet, the u.s. is also the wealthy industrialized country with the most widespread skepticism about science, most notably regarding climate change, vaccines, and evolution.1,2-3 How can those two seemingly incompatible facts be reconciled?
The other paradox is that both in the u.s. and in Europe, people's adherence to religion has an average tendency to decrease with their income and with their educational level.4,5'6 Yet the u.s. is the most religious wealthy industrialized nation, despite its high average per-person income and educational level.7 How can those two seemingly incompatible facts be reconciled?
Are those two paradoxes somehow linked? Does one paradox help to explain the other? Now more than ever, these are urgent questions. For example, denial of evolution is widespread in the u.s., at a time when rapid evolution of coronaviruses has already killed a million Americans, most of whom rejected scientists' advice to protect themselves by using masks and getting vaccinated.
What's distinctive about science in the u.s. when compared against the most nearly similar countries in Western Europe?
Comparing the United States and Europe
Since around i960, the u.s. has been winning far more Nobel Prizes in science than any other country, and even more than the rest of the world's countries combined. Young foreign scientists come to the u.s. for training. However, you may be surprised to learn how recent is that u.s. domination. In the 18th and 19th centuries, science was entirely dominated by Europe. The great founders of modern chemistry, physics, biology, and medical science were all Europeans: Darwin, Newton, Faraday, Helmholtz, Maxwell, Pasteur, and others. Of course, already then, the u.s. was beginning to contribute to applied science, engineering, and invention: think of Eli Whitney's cotton gin, Robert Fulton's steamboats, and Thomas Edison's many creations. Still, the U.S. barely figured in basic science. European scientists did not then come to the U.S. for training-instead, American scientists went to Europe for training.
Nobel prizes in science offer a simple measure of u.s. science's trajectory. From the first Nobel awards in 1901 until 1930, Americans accounted for only four of the 95 Nobel science laureates. (All but two...