The problem with this video is that it presents a political standpoint as cold science, yet the data upon which the point is based are deeply flawed.

For example, the claim that muslims make up 20% of the world but that muslims only account for 1% of peer-reviewed papers is incongrous; many muslims don't live in muslim countries, but their scientific output is ignored. By the same reckoning, Jews are bad scientists because Israel only produces a relatively small number of patent applications per year (about 100,000 in 2002, compared to 250,000 for Turkey and about the same number granted as Saudi Arabia, for example). Once you put it in those terms, the absurdity of this cherry-picking should become apparent - jews have the highest nobel prizes per capita of any ethnic group, but that fact is ignored by this rather convenient form of analysis. Incidentally, Turkey apply for much more patents per capita per head than the US, for example, so does that mean you'll admit you're wrong?

Quote: "If you can show me a country that practice a sincerely devout version of islam while soaring in reason, philosophy scientific advances, free speech, human rights, equality, freedom, tolerance and justice you might have had some reason to say the correlation is bullshit and the argument is just simplistic prejudice" - don't bother replying, just winding you up.

Furthermore, the article fails to take into account other factors that could contribute to this scientific underachievement: for example, how Islamic countries compare to other countries with similar GDPs? A few contributors have claimed that islamic countries are rich, but this is not actually true. The islamic state with the highest GDP is Kuwait(followed by UAE) - both of these countries have about the same average income as that bastion of richess, um, Ireland. Most of the others are in the poor house: Oman and the Saudis pull in the same as the Greeks, and the rest straddle Ukraine. Hardly money to burn on particle accelerators.

Of course religion is overtly obstructive to scientific progress - just google 'texas school board'; that's not the point made in this video, probably because the main determinant of scientific prowess is actually how much money you spend on it.

Speaking of scientific lucidity, all of the stats I cited were from Gapminder.org, who dredged them from UN reports.

I like this guy normally, but this train of thought was so retarded that I actually registered in order to derail it. 'Muslim World' is predominantly third world, so not surprisingly, few research papers are published in countries in which there is little money for food, never mind access to journals, infrastructure for equipment, travel grants or salaries for academics.

That academic productivity is linked to resources, rather than philosophy, is supported by the observation that the rate of publication has increased at four times the global average in the middle east in the last 30 years (http://www.science-metrix.com/30years-Paper.pdf), ten-fold in Iran. This is due to resource prioritisation by the administrations of those countries, not the religiosity of the scientists.

A better way of thinking about it would be to look at the number of muslims actually publishing scientific papers globally - loads of muslims live and work in the first world conducting great research that is unbiased by any secret fantasies they (or their theist colleagues) may harbour. I actually work in a lab headed by a Jew and staffed by a few atheists, a hindu, 2 christians, 2 muslims and a few shintos, and there is no correlation between how often anybody prays and their success at work.