Are attitudes toward science changing in the Muslim world?

You’d think so, based on recent developments. Over the last year, a science and technology park opened in Qatar’s Education City, Jordan’s particle accelerator fired its first ray, and Saudi Arabia celebrated the inauguration of its multibillion-dollar King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. For scientists, one of the best things about KAUST is that:

Rather than having to submit a never-ending stream of grant applications to government agencies and face depressingly low success rates, each faculty member has been given substantial internal support—$400,000 annually for assistant professors, $600,000 for associate professors, and $800,000 for full professors—from which they can hire students and technicians, buy materials and supplies, travel, and otherwise tend to the needs of their individual labs
(Science).

Which led us to ask a pertinent question: Is financial investment really the key to scientific progress in Islamic countries?

It’s a good start, says theoretical nuclear physicist Jim Al-Khalili. “It has been shown time and time again that bigger science budgets encourage greater scientific activity,” he explains. But “it is not simply a matter of throwing money at the problem. Even more important is having the political will to reform and to ensure real freedom of thinking.”

For real progress, he believes:

The whole infrastructure of the research environment needs to be addressed, from laboratory technicians who understand how to use and maintain the equipment to the exercise of real intellectual freedom on the part of the scientists, and a healthy skepticism and courage to question experimental results.

A cultural renaissance leading to a knowledge-based society is urgently required if the Muslim world is to accept and embrace not only the bricks and mortar of modern research labs along with the shiny particle accelerators and electron microscopes that they house, but also that spirit of curiosity that drives humankind to try to understand nature, whether it is to marvel at divine creation, or just to know how and why things are the way they are (Physics World).

Why do some people become organ donors while others do not?

According to a recent survey by Donate Life America, 51 percent of Americans say they’re willing to donate their organs after death (though only 38 percent are registered organ donors), and 53 percent of registered donors say they made the decision to help others in need.

When the researchers spoke with those who are unwilling or reluctant to donate their organs, they found that the majority of them—52 percent—think doctors might not try as hard to save the lives of organ donors, and 61 percent erroneously think it’s possible for a brain dead person to recover. They also found that 8 percent believe organ donation is against their religion.

The truth is, the decision to donate organs and tissue is compatible with most religious beliefs. The Catholic Church has now long supported organ donation, mainstream Protestant denominations approve the practice, and the Rabbinical Council of America ruled organ donation permissible in the early 1990s. As David Fleming, president and CEO of Donate Life America, explains in a news release:

There are no known religions in the U.S. with a position against donation; rather, all major religions support organ donation as one of the highest expressions of compassion and generosity.

In the United Kingdom, where it has been tough to raise the number of organ donations, religious leaders have actively appealed to their followers and tried to clear up misconceptions. The Church of England says organ donation is a Christian duty. The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales described it as a true act of generosity. The head of the UK Hindu Council said it was natural for Hindus to donate body parts, as well as goods, at the end of their lives. (BBC News)

And in Canada, Rabbi Reuven Bulka, chairman of the board of Ontario’s Trillium Gift of Life Network, has suggested that the best way to get results is to promote organ donation as a religious responsibility. “We need to promote it as a religious fulfillment, as a religious imperative, as a religious obligation, as something we should be doing—to get away from this, ‘Aw, it’s OK,’” says Bulka. “It’s the right thing to do. It’s a life-saving thing to do.” (The Ottawa Citizen)

Michael Shermer uses statistics to show why “miracles” happen hundreds of times a day in America (hint: events with a low probability of occurring in a small sample have a high probability of occurring in a large sample)—and why miracle talk is especially unfair to the faithful:

Let’s say 1 million people have cancer in America (it’s much higher than this), and only one-tenth of 1 percent experience a spontaneous recovery (it’s actually higher than this). 1,000,000 x .001 = 1,000 people. Out of that cohort of 1,000 people, what are the chances that half a dozen of them have compelling narrative stories worthy of broadcast television? Pretty good! Here is a show you will never see on any television series: “Next, we examine the remarkable fact that 99.99 percent of people who were diagnosed with incurable cancer and were prayed for died anyway. Stay tuned, for you won’t want to miss these stark statistical realities.”
Of course you will never see such a show because of the confirmation bias, in which we look for and find confirmatory evidence for what we already believe and ignore or rationalize the disconfirmatory evidence. This is naturally what any religion or television production team is going to do when telling a story about miracles: They will pick and choose the most compelling cases that seemingly defy science and reason, and present those to the public, while blindly (and cruelly) ignoring all those devoutly religious people whose loved ones prayed in earnest for them and who died nonetheless.