A previous student of mine pointed out an interesting article in The New York Times, on a fundamentalist Ph.D. geologist who is a young earther. Now there’s someone who’s going to have an interesting career.

Not that this sort of thing is hugely unusual. Back when I was in graduate school (almost 20 years ago now—urh) I knew another physics Ph.D. student who was very conservatively religious and was inclined toward a young-earth position. It’s a crazy position to hold if you’re going to be a physicist of any breadth, but if you’re planning to hunker down and just build experimental equipment and take data you might be able to get away with it. I figure any religious scientist has to engage in some intellectual compartmentalization, but fundamentalist scientists must have to engage in an extreme version.