From Wendy Cadge, a professor of sociology at Brandeis University:

Every day, doctors have to decide whether and when to ask patients and their families about religion and spirituality—but research studies on this topic often rely on hypothetical situations, rarely asking physicians what they actually do. With my colleagues, sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund of Rice University and Nicholas Short of the Baylor College of Medicine, I interviewed 30 pediatricians and pediatric oncologists who work and teach at top American medical centers. Instead of asking them what they think about religion and spirituality, I asked them how they act.
As a group, these physicians received almost no formal training about religion or spirituality during their medical education. About a third described learning about religion and spirituality through informal conversations with colleagues during medical school or their residency, or by getting to know hospital chaplains. Usually, these conversations would focus on specific topics, such as death and dying, decision making, or how to respond to particular religious groups. Rather than asking patients and their families direct questions about religion and spirituality, the majority of doctors told us that they prefer to ask broad, open-ended questions or —more commonly—wait for patients and families to bring up these issues themselves. Several describe religious topics as “personal,” saying they do not want to “pry.”
The majority of the doctors I spoke with see religion and spirituality as most relevant when families are making difficult medical decisions or when a patient is dying. Rather than talking about how religion and spirituality might shape decisions for Protestants, Muslims, or Catholics, doctors focused on Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Orthodox Jews, and other traditions that have historically existed in some tension with biomedicine. Many perceive religion as acting as a barrier to medical care for members of these groups.
Most commonly, physicians talk about death when they’re asked about religion and spirituality. As one pediatric oncologist explained, religion usually comes out “early in the course of diagnosis, families that feel devastated … or later in the course when a patient takes a turn for the worse or … the disease comes to a point that, as their providers, we can longer provide curative means.” At each of these points, physicians say, families draw from their religious or spiritual traditions as they try to answer the “why” questions—why their child is ill, why something so rare hit them, why there has been a reoccurrence of the disease, why they are faced with this crisis. It is in these situations–especially in end-of-life situations—that physicians see religion and spirituality acting as a bridge, helping patients and families make sense of illness, adjust to difficult news, and answer questions that medicine can’t.
Overall, the doctors interviewed see religion and spirituality as relevant to their work at its fringes. They decide how to act around religion and spirituality not based on formal training, but by watching the patients and families with whom they work. They see religion and spirituality as a barrier when it inhibits medical care for members of particular groups and as a bridge when it helps patients and families make sense of things, especially when physicians have no more medical options—or explanations—to offer.

From Elaine Howard Ecklund, a professor of sociology and associate director of the Center on Race, Religion, and Urban Life at Rice University:

A few years ago, I watched a pre-screening of a documentary by biologist Randy Olson. The movie investigates how scientists confront religious people who are on the opposite side of the debate about teaching “intelligent design” in secondary-school classrooms. The premise of the film is that while ID has been completely refuted by the scientific community, it’s the scientists rather than ID supporters who are at risk of becoming a “flock of dodos.”
The problem: Scientists lack a spirit of dialogue—and, like the dodo bird that evolutionary theorists think became extinct because it was unable to fly, they’ll run into bigger problems if they do not learn how to adapt to the times. This means acting more respectfully toward those who disagree with them and working hard to present science in a more favorable, catchy, understandable light. It also means becoming less arrogant.
As the film ended, discussion began. I watched incredulously as some of the scientists in the room basically confirmed Olson’s accusations. They erupted with totalizing criticisms of religion and religious people, calling them “stupid fundamentalists,” oblivious to the fact that there were religious people—even religious scientists—seated in the room.
I am now beginning my third national study of top university scientists, and from 2005 to 2008, I conducted the most comprehensive study to date of what natural and social scientists think about religion. I surveyed nearly 1,700 scientists and conducted in-depth interviews with 275 of them (the results of which I discuss in great detail in Science vs. Religion: What Do Scientists Really Think?, my forthcoming book with Oxford University Press).
Two of my studies involved asking scientists what kinds of efforts they were making to translate their work for the broader public. I know from my research that scientists are deeply concerned about the public’s acceptance (or lack thereof) of science. And one of the issues that scientists who care about reaching the general American public are most concerned about is how to tackle religious challenges to science.
We know religious people often misunderstand scientists, but on the other side of the coin, scientists sometimes misunderstand religious people. Here, boiled down, is what they need to know:
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From Elaine Howard Ecklund, a professor of sociology and associate director of the Center on Race, Religion, and Urban Life at Rice University:

Currently, I live in Texas. I have been involved in religious communities much of my life. I am a social scientist, and my husband is a scientist.
In 2005, when Judge Jones told the Dover Area School Board that “intelligent design” could not be taught in any science classroom within the district, I felt uncomfortable. My unease did not come from being a firm proponent of ID. I am not. It came from realizing that even the most thoughtful religious people and the most tolerant scientists are misunderstanding one another at every turn.
This same sense came up again in March, when the Texas State Board of Education voted on changes to high school textbooks and curriculum. A passionate group of religious leaders argued that the textbooks ought to point out aspects of the fossil record that they think undermine the theory of evolution, and again, the debates raised areas of intense misunderstanding based on misconceptions and stereotypes rather than empirical evidence.
As a scholar, I have led or been a part of three national studies of religion in America, which involved conducting interviews and sitting in houses of worship with those from a range of religious perspectives. I have spent time among conservative evangelicals, liberal Protestants, and moderate Muslims. From personal and professional interactions, I know that religious people are sometimes ill-informed about what scientists actually think about religion. These areas of misunderstanding manifest themselves in debates about things like whether ID should be taught in public schools—which sometimes make it seem as if science and religion must stand in opposition to one another. As a consequence, most of us completely miss the truth about what scientists think about religion and what religious people think about science and scientists.
We need “radical dialogue,” when scientists and people of faith become truly open to learning from one another. Such radical dialogue would never have convinced Jerry Falwell and it won’t convince Richard Dawkins. But my research shows that most religious people do not take after Falwell, and most scientists are not like Dawkins.
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