so I'm not surprised at being taken in. Yeah, I asked a statician to look at the site and evaluate the validity of the work, and never heard back from him.

Nonetheless, I think certain inferences can be made, and I'll hazard being called irrational, self-reinforcing, and elitist, and say that the study doesn't need to be taken as gospel and may still yield important insights.

In addition, I think that if you look closely at the cultural map, you'll see that some countries that one can characterize as developing actually score higher than the US in the traditional-rational scale. (Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. Uruguay and Macedonia. All of eastern Europe.) The authors recognize that history and religious life are hugely important.

So I'll remain in danger of committing an elitist fallacy and see where the data leads. Another wave of survey is due to be conducted in the next two years. Perhaps we'll witness the complete collapse of the validity of their conclusions.

"It Can't Be Just About Us"
--Frank Schnittger, ETian Extraordinaire