Essentially, it’s the observation that whenever some quackery organization (.ie creationists, truthers, global warming deniers, anti-vaxxers, etc.) comes forward with a champion that claims to have a scientific background, that individual is almost always an engineer. Applied more broadly, it seems as though a lot of engineers hold plenty of really pseudoscientific beliefs, from intelligent design to climate change skepticism. Compare this to research scientists, among which such ideas are noticeably rarer.
I think there is empirical support for this; there have been surveys indicating high religiosity among engineers and a high prevalence of them among terrorist groups (I’m not making this up!), although I’m too lazy to post them right now. I guess there could be a few explanations for this if it’s true:
Engineers tend to be politically conservative, and therefore more susceptible to buy into these ideas from confirmation bias and ideological convenience.
There are creationists who have the aptitude to do math and science, but they self-select engineering because they see it as the STEM field least likely to challenge their belief system. Although this would predict that computer scientists would have similar predispositions.
A lot of engineers were tinkerers, and therefore were more likely to come from families that were tradesmen or technicians, who tend to be very religious and conservative.
Engineers are trained to see design in everything, so they think they see design in organic life.
Engineers learn just enough applied science to *think* they understand it, when they in reality have no training in actual scientific research. So they then try to talk about fields that they don't really understand.
Engineers are actually less likely to believe these things than the general population, but still more likely than pure scientists. It's just that an English major will not be promoted by organizations as authorities on the matter, and you won't balk as heavily.
This is an interesting topic. Of course, I would have to look for or see some statistics before making any conclusions, but based purely on my own personal experience, I have found this to be somewhat true.
I got my Bachelors in cell biology, where I spent most of my time around scientists (biologists, chemists, etc.). Incidence of atheism/agnosticism/nonbelief/religious apathy was relatively high, and things like the anti-vax movement and climate change skepticism were laughed at unequivocally. Currently I’m working on a graduate degree in mechanical engineering where, naturally, everyone in my sphere is an engineer. The difference between the two groups (in regard to pseudoscientific beliefs, etc.) was startling to me–I’d just assumed engineers would be on par with most of the scientists I’d been in contact with. Again, keeping in mind this is purely anecdotal, the sheer amount of religiosity among the engineers around me is significantly higher. Much less than the general population, but far more than scientists. I’ve even met one grad student who believes the Earth is 6000 years old. I’ve met others who entertain ideas like climate change skepticism though it is clear to me they have not really done much reading on the topic.
I’d have to do some more research and thinking before speculating on why this might be the case.
I live in a town with a very high percentage of STEM PhDs and where the S and M portions of that acronym are most heavily represented (rather than E). There are more churches in this town than restaurants.
Also in my experience, hard scientists are just as prone to confirmation bias.
Also, it is not just political conservatives that fall victim to confirmation bias and ideological closed-mindedness. Those on the far left and far right are equally awful in this regard. This is why I’ve had to block so many websites on my Facebook feed since they are basically just conservative/liberal echo chambers rather than offering actual news or analysis.
Terrorists groups also tend to specifically try to recruit engineers. The skills engineers have lend themselves wel to certain things these groups want to do. I’ll let you imagine how that applies. The roots of what makes an individual susceptible to religious extremism are much more complicated than what has been expressed here. A lot of it boils down to economic opportunity and a sense of desperation, so an engineer living in an area with 40% unemployment with a sense that it’s the establishment’s fault is going to get desperate and increasingly able to be radicalized.
I don’t even know what “trained to see design in everything” means. I do know that it doesn’t adequately describe what my education was like, though. I was trained to try to understand nature and then apply that to solve problems.
I’ve noticed a similar dichotomy between software and hardware engineers. The software engineers I’ve worked with have been overwhelmingly atheist/agnostic and socially liberal. Hardware engineers contain more conservatives and/or religious people–not a lot because this is a liberal part of CA, but enough so you’d notice. And the non-degree people working as machinists and assemblers might even be conservative enough that some of them want Rush Limbaugh on the radio for background noise.
I’m also in the ‘who cares’ section. Who cares as long as the bridge doesn’t collapse, your computer battery doesn’t explode in your face and your linear nuclear accelerator keeps it’s atoms on the reservation.
@AuraObscura How do you think the rate compares to those who are college educated in non-technical fields? It seems pretty believable that engineers would be more religious than scientists whose works tend to clash with theologies more frequently. The weird thing would be if engineers were actually more likely than normal to believe in these things.
@Ynotgo So I guess a lot of the hardware engineers were children of those machinists who happened to have the aptitude to become engineers. Their conservatism is diluted by those engineers who came from scientific rather than mechanical interests (.ie, me), the intellectual filtering system of engineering programs, and the general liberalism of most universities. Does that make sense?
It may depend on which non-technical fields. Some fields may involve the study of topics that could be bothersome to a people with extreme political viewpoints. For example, studying the economics and sociology of such things as prostitution, drug gangs, and illegal immigration might be too distasteful for a very socially conservative person to contemplate. Similarly, someone with a far-left political viewpoint on economics may find that academic study in economics to be too much at odds which his/her viewpoints. Someone who thinks that the Civil War was not mainly about slavery may not like it when [these original source documents](Search | American Battlefield Trust) are read in history courses.
I feel I should also point out that pseudoscience is not just a conservative phenomenon. For example, anti-vaxxers skew overwhelming college-educated and liberal.
To continue w my thoughts about 50 shades of grey…
CREATIONISTS
I know many scientists (geologists even) who are religious and have no trouble reconciling creation & evolution. They don’t simplistically interpret the 7 days of creation as literally 7 earth days that are 24 hours long. Scientists have defined the sequence of major events leading up to the appearance of homo sapiens in the same order as does the old testament.
GLOBAL WARMING DENIERS
The earth warms and the earth cools. It’s been going on cyclically for 100’s of millions of years. But there are many scientists who believe the magnitude of the present warming is being overstated in order to grab research money and political power. “Global warming” has even been cleverly rebranded as “climate change” to cover up for the fact that the last few years have been cold. Climate change is the perfect boogeyman.
Don’t kid yourself that scientists are an entirely virtuous and apolitical lot. University researchers supplement their base income with research grants. Part of the grant is used to pay themselves a salary. Having been a grad student myself doing science research, I’ve seen how research grant proposals get written. The sexed up issues get the grant money.
This was actually recently re-analyzed and revealed to be a measurement error. The real issue with climate change is that the modeling required to extrapolate are incredibly complicated, chaotic in some sense, and depend a lot on the quality of input data used in validating the model. There are always improvements to be made to that input data. Further, the models are far from perfect. There is little doubt that the Earth is warming and that there are strong indications that human activity has been a contributor, but the pertinent questions are how much and how fast is it going to continue to warm, what can or can’t be done about it, and what will be the actual effects of such changes to global climates.
Of course my response to all of this is that the costs of overreacting if it turns out to be no big deal are purely economic and likely not permanent. The costs of underreacting if it turning out to be pretty bad are potentially catastrophic. In my mind, that is a no-brainer to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
That said, there is no doubt that some researchers exaggerate their findings in order to facilitate more funding. That’s just a side effect of having such a competitive research funding system.
Genesis gets the order of creation right? That’s cute. How the heck does that work when it claims that light existed before stars?
And there is far, far, far, far more money to be made from catering to oil corporate interests than from getting some more research grants, if you’re trying to look for conspiracies. Nor does your ice age point do anything but suggests that people can make mistakes - it never enjoyed the massive amount of consensus and peer review that anthropomorphic climate change does today. To cite it as evidence that we should be skeptical of climate change is analogous to citing the failed aether theory as a reason to doubt modern quantum field theory.