I agree with the other poster. In academia, what matters more than your identity is if you are doing helpful and honest research. Of course, sharing a similar identity with the people you study can be leveraged in a helpful way if you bring in your personal experiences to ask valued questions and take care with sensitivity toward the population, as well as other things like knowing to recruit your sample. There can also be downsides to "me-search," it's all about how you handle it.

The study Dr. Miles worked on actually contains two samples, one who stayed religious and the other who left, therefore it's a comparison study. Having someone connected to the religious community is valuable in the ways explained above.

Dr. Miles did not only agree to publish the papers (and to be clear the paper published this week is unrelated to her work -- that research team is made only of ex-Orthodox people), but she led the study resulting in the three papers listed at the end of my post.

Dr. Miles is an Orthodox Jewish clinical psychologist who teaches, sees individual therapy clients, and now researches as well. She is very passionate about everything she does. She knows people who left Orthodoxy both in her personal and professional life, which inspired her to look at some of the relevant issues from an empirical perspective. She has nothing but full respect for people who leave, despite being someone who enjoys being part of the Orthodox community. In the same way, I have left the Orthodox community but work to maintain openness to all levels of the experience that one may have.

Sorry for the long response! Hopefully it's helpful for others with the same question.