America is ranked 27th out of 64 countries in science literacy

Religious beliefs are negatively correlated with many scientific ideas including things like climate change and vaccinations which do not directly conflict

They are looking at elements that are common across many religions to analyze them with the rejection of science

The elements they used are religious practices and religious beliefs

They used mass datasets on science knowledge questions and other religiosity comparisons for the first two studies

Study 3 tested participant’s religiosity

Study 4 gave another science literacy test but excluded the topics disputed by religions like evolution

They also tested whether the relationship between science and religiosity was due to their parents

Religiosity is associated with lower levels of literacy in both contested and non-contested science topics

Growing up in a religious household leads to greater rejection of science and lower scientific literacy

They indicate that one reason for the lack of literacy is a negative attitude toward science

Citation: McPhetres, Jonathon, and Miron Zuckerman. “Religiosity predicts negative attitudes towards science and lower levels of science literacy.” PloS one vol. 13,11 e0207125. 27 Nov. 2018, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0207125

Analysis

Although not focused directly on religious schools, this study supports the idea that religious practices and beliefs taught in those schools have a negative correlation with scientific literacy and belief in the importance of science. One interesting thing this journal did was expand it outside of the commonly contested scientific beliefs like evolution and the Big Bang. The fact that people still did poorly on other topics shows an underlying issue of the belief that science is not important. This can trickle down into changing opinions on topics like climate change and vaccinations as well. One of the most interesting parts of this journal was the study that analyzed the impact one’s parents have on their religiosity and scientific beliefs. Finding significance in that area highlights the true problem, kids are not being allowed to think for themselves. School should be a place where you get to receive an unbiased education, learn how to think, and develop your own opinions. Although the article does not specifically mention Yeshiva schools, their results can be extrapolated to account for parents forcing their kids into those heavily biased schools.