Silly study is silly (Score 1)

- Sample population is "students and staff at a large university". Always the gold standard for representing everyone.
- Sample size for first experiment and the "significant" increase is 15%. The measurement method is a survey, of course. Confidence values? P-values? What are those?
- Study ignores an obvious bias in their selected group - they picked rowers preparing for a race! There's a lot of science involved (both fluid and human-physiological) in rowing efficiently. Of course they're biased towards science while prepping for a race.
- Second group "ponders death" by writing an essay. Unless a bad grade on the essay results in immediate execution (professor's fantasy), I don't think this counts as facing death.

Conclusion: Ironically, study glorifying science as a belief does a really poor job of controlling their variables scientifically or analyzing their data scientifically. Maybe it's not ironic since I kind of expect a study with a hypothesis this ridiculous to be done badly.

In seriousness: D'uh. "Believing" in science gets easier as the stacks of knowledge grow faster than our ability to consume it (and our lifespans aren't getting THAT much longer). When it's getting harder and harder to comprehend all of the new advances at once, "sufficiently advanced technology becomes indistinguishable from magic". Of course science as a belief is possible. Just look at Portal :D