Your post made me look up Sam Harris' background for the first time ever.
First, his mom created
The Golden Girls!!!!!!!!1
Second, this is amazing:
Though his original major was in English, he became interested in philosophical questions while at Stanford University after an experience with the empathogen–entactogen MDMA.[15] The experience led him to be interested in the idea that he might be able to achieve spiritual insights without the use of drugs.[16] Leaving Stanford in his second year, a quarter after his psychedelic experience, he went to India and Nepal, where he studied meditation with Buddhist and Hindu religious teachers,[16][17] including Dilgo Khyentse.[18] Eleven years later, in 1997, he returned to Stanford, completing a B.A. degree in philosophy in 2000.[19][20][21] Harris began writing his first book, The End of Faith, immediately after the September 11 attacks.[19] Harris began writing the book in what he described as a period of "collective grief and stupefaction" following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Third, I don't know anything about neuroscience journals, but he has published with quite a few co-authors a decent number of times...if I were to give the skeptical explanation, it may be that they use his name to assist publishing, though a couple of the studies are things it looks like he'd actually be involved in like MRI-ing religious people while checking their beliefs. His PhD was for MRIing people while they judged things true/false/unknown.
He says he's not academically employed for security reasons, which would make research quite difficult. Even without his published research in the field I would probably guarantee you this guy could get a professorship at a prominent university. I even bet there's many schools that would give him one in philosophy/religion/ethics if he wanted it despite the PhD and research being in neuroscience. Arguably he's as published in the philosophy/religion field albeit in a very different manner, his name would get him past most any department standards except at certain places like Harvard. I suspect Jake could guess at all this probability far better than me. As philosophy/religion are just neighbors within our Humanities apartment complex.
