Francis Collins, religious scientist

The geneticist has had a distinguished career and for the last dozen years has served as director of the National Institutes of Health, a massive federal agency that does basic research as well as fund the research of scientists in the US. The fact that he has served during three different administrations both Republican and Democrat shows that he has managed to avoid much of the partisan attacks that now routinely target prominent scientists, such as tthose on Anthony Fauci, who is head of one of the agencies that are under the NIH umbrella. Collins has been steadfast in his support of Fauci.

Collins is also an evangelical Christian, a fact that caused many people in the non-religious community to oppose his nomination by George W. Bush to be head of the NIH. But he has won over the skeptics by the way he has handled his tenure, with no evidence that he was driven by his religious beliefs in making scientific decisions.

He also wrote a best-selling book The Language of God where he attempted to reconcile belief in a god with science. I dissected that book in a 11-part (!) series of blogs back in 2009 where I pointed out the many flaws in his argument. But I have always respected Collins as a scientist and I especially admired his steadfast commitment to make freely available to everyone the data that were generated during the sequencing of the human genome, where he was named leader of the federal effort.
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