I might post another comment later going more into depth on this topic, but for now here are some points.
1) Some of you complain that Rabbi Fischer only spoke concerning Modern Orthodox “Males” and avoided mentioning “female”. That is not totally accurate. Here is a quote from his article.
“Something similar is true of the female experience, although women tend to be more religious and more protective of preserving the culture and species. They also are not required to wear external defining symbols when they begin college, a sartorial factor that forces an OTD decision sooner, like deciding to stop wearing a yarmulka. For reasons dictated here by space considerations, I have focused here on the male phenomenon.”
2) Some of you complain about his narrow response to the survey. In my opinion, giving him the benefit of the doubt (which halachicly we should do), I don’t think his intention was to bring a full rebuttal, but rather to simply show that we should not take surveys at face value and that no survey is above scrutiny. The purpose of a survey is to bring to light information that is otherwise unknown or unclear. If there is a flaw in the methods used then clearly the results will not show accurately. What honest benefit can be reaped from it then. It can only be used for financial gain and nothing else. I hate to say it, but when I read the results of this survey I was frustrated because I am really looking for real answers concerning OTD and my gut feeling is that this survey did not really provide that. We can’t reverse this process unless we know the true reasons and I truly believe that the only ones that will gain out from this survey are the ones that paid for it and have an agenda. That leads me to my third point.
3) Look who’s behind this survey and who’s also a client of this startup Marketing Research Company from 2015, Nishma Research. Agendas, perhaps?
Here are two Testimonials on their site:
Steven M. Cohen | Research Professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College
Tsivia Finman | Director of Operations, Footsteps
A REFORM RABBINICAL SCHOOL AND AN OTD ORGANIZATION. Are we really to believe that their agendas had absolutely no affect on the supposed results?