Fernando Hoces De La Guardia writes:
Last night we did the traditional first year econ phd student’s skit nite @ Penn.
One particular thing that I noticed was that we had less public that what the upper years told us to be prepared for.
Somebody suggested that it was due to Passover and Good Friday. My immediate reaction was “science & religion don’t go usually together”. By this I meant a prior of mine that the fraction of religious people is a lot less within a scientific discipline than among the rest of the population.
Two things pop out of my head this morning:
– in which data base can I check that prior?
– if true, are economists more religious than other scientists?
My reply: Usually people look these things up at the General Social Survey, which has a convenient web interface. Good luck!
The GSS is a good all-purpose data source, but the sample sizes are too small for fine distinctions like economists vs. other scientists.
But there is a recent survey of American professors by Neal Gross (Harvard) and Solon Simmons (George Mason) that asked about religious belief. I don't know if the original data have been released yet, but here's a summary from an article in Harvard Magazine (July/August 2007): "They found that more than half of the academics believe in God and less than a quarter are either atheist or agnostic." That's still a much lower level of belief in God than the general public. "A professor’s field of research or discipline is also predictive, he adds: psychologists and biologists are most likely to be nonbelievers (61 percent are atheist or agnostic), followed by mechanical engineers, economists, and political scientists. The most likely believers are professors of accounting (63 percent have no doubt that God exists), followed by professors of elementary education, finance, art, criminal justice, and nursing."
Hearing about surveys of professors immediately brings to mind mathematician Serge Lang's "The File", in which he takes on Lipset and Everett Ladd. Come to think of it, I first read it working on the GSS!