Fig 1.
The triangle of mutual social dependencies between OoL research, science communication, and religion.
These three aspects contribute to connect OoL to society and relate to each other. In this work we address how scientists approach these topics and their mutual dependencies.
Table 1.
Scientists’ views about the scientific controversy.
Fig 2.
Controversy profiles frequency.
Prevalence of the answering (orange) and delegating (blue) controversy profiles, when segmenting the sample by discipline, hypothesis preference, and career stage of the researchers (n = 45).
Table 2.
Importance scientists gave to different aspects of communication about origin of life.
Table 3.
Views about communication to a broad public.
Fig 3.
Communication profiles prevalence and view of the public (n = 33).
(a) Prevalence of the teaching (yellow), advocating (green), and discussing (purple) profiles when segmenting the sample by career stage, field, and hypothesis preference of the researchers; (b) View of public attitude towards OoL (brown series), target public (blue series), and public’s prior knowledge of OoL (green series) seen by all scientists (overall), as well as by the different communication profiles.
Table 4.
Scientists’ views about the science-religion relationship and its communication.
Fig 4.
Religion and science in origins of life.
(a) Religious composition of the sample, roughly equally divided between atheists, agnostics, spiritually inclined and religiously affiliated to some degree (N = 46). (b) Prevalence of answering (orange) and delegating (blue) profiles in the science-religion controversy (n = 28). (c) How different religious segments see: the public attitude towards OoL (brown series), the target public (blue series), and the public’s prior knowledge of OoL (green series) (N = 46). (d) Prevalence of the teaching (yellow), advocating (green), and discussing (purple) profile by religiosity (n = 18).