All this can but provide some evidence of a certain probability of the connection we are arguing.  The most significant test of the hypothesis is to be found in the confrontation of the results deduced from the hypothesis with relevant empirical data.  If the Protestant ethic involved an attitudinal set favourable to science and technology in so many ways, then we should find amongst Protestants a greater propensity for these fields of endeavour than one would expect simply on the basis of their representation in the total population.  Moreover, if, as has been frequently suggested, the impression made by this ethic has lasted long after much of its theological basis has been largely disavowed, then even in periods subsequent to the seventeenth century, this connection of Protestantism and science should persist to some degree (1968, p. 637).