<p>'Gambetta and Hertog found engineers only in right-wing groups the ones that claim to fight for the pious past of Islamic fundamentalists or the white-supremacy America of the Aryan Nations (founder: Richard Butler, engineer) or the minimal pre-modern U.S. government that Stack and Bedell extolled.</p>
<p>Among Communists, anarchists and other groups whose shining ideal lies in the future, the researchers found almost no engineers. Yet these organizations mastered the same technical skills as the right-wingers. Between 1970 and 1978, for instance, the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany staged kidnappings, assassinations, bank robberies and bombings. Seventeen of its members had college or graduate degrees, mostly in law or the humanities. Not one studied engineering. </p>
<p>The engineer mind-set, Gambetta and Hertog suggest, might be a mix of emotional conservatism and intellectual habits that prefers clear answers to ambiguous questions the combination of a sharp mind with a loyal acceptance of authority. '</p>
<p>Do you think engineers are more likely to be right-wing terrorists?</p>
I think the problem lies in the brutal reality, that at the end of a random day, engineers can’t possibility figure out what the meaning of better computing, better drug power, better gun fires, better rocket missiles are for, when they and everyone will decay as they grow older and that the world will come to an end one day.</p>
<p>This is true for all those who studied science and math that are not blinded by the “space traveling” fantasy.</p>
<p>Muslims are overrepresented in terrorist groups as well, but that doesn’t mean that being a Muslim makes you more ideologically likely to be a terrorist. Give me a break.</p>
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<p>Sounds like these two don’t know much about engineering. Hard sciences generally prefer exact, clear-cut answers. Engineers more generally take the “get close enough” approach.</p>
<p>I find liberal arts and business graduates overrepresented among those who commit financial frauds and developed “Financial weapons of mass destruction”.Namely “Credit default swaps”, “No Income No Asset loans”, “Sub-prime and Predatory Lending” practices, etc. No mention of that though since it’s the New York Times and might hurt the bulk of its readership.</p>
<p>Well then those researchers were clearly not searching very hard at all. The most prominent Communist Party member alive today is undoubtedly Hu Jintao, Paramount Leader and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China. He graduated from college with a degree in hydraulic engineering and worked for the state hydroelectricity utility in his early career. His predecessor, Jiang Zemin, holds an electrical engineering degree and worked in the auto industry as a young man. Wu Banggou, current Politburo member and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National people’s Congress and current #2 ranked politician in China according to official party rankings, studied electrical engineering and worked for an electronics company for more than a decade. Wen Jiabao, the current Premier, holds a degree in geomechanics/geoengineering and rose through the ranks of the provincial geology bureau. Jia Qinglin, Chairman of the People’s Political Consultative Conference, studied industrial and electrical engineering. Li Changchun, public relations chief of the Communist Party of China, holds a degree in electrical engineering. Xi JinPing, the official Vice President of China, holds a degree in chemical engineering. He Guoqiang, head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, holds the title of ‘Senior Engineer’ and used to work as a technician in a chemical plant. Zhou Yongkang, head of the Central Political and Legislative Committee, studied geophysical survey and exploration and used to work in the state oil industry. </p>
<p>Every one of those men mentioned above is a current or former member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. In fact, a whopping 8 out of 9 members of the current Politburo Standing Committee, which is where the true political power in the country lies, are engineers. </p>
<p>Granted, some of you might argue that the Chinese Communist Party is nowadays Communist in name only, and that ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ is merely a cover for autocratic capitalism. Fair enough. Yet I would point out the Leonid Brezhnev, former head of the Soviet Union, was a former metallurgical engineer who worked in the iron & steel industries. Georgy Malenkov, Soviet Premier after Stalin, held an engineering degree from one of the most famous universities in the USSR. Whatever else might be said about them, I doubt that anybody would accuse Brezhnev and Malenkov of being undercover capitalists, and certainly not “right wing terrorists”.</p>
<p>The article was pretty terrible in my opinion.</p>
<p>Let’s propose an alternative hypothesis, first a direct quote from the article:</p>
<p>“For their recent study, the two men collected records on 404 men who belonged to violent Islamist groups active over the past few decades (some in jail, some not). Had those groups reflected the working-age populations of their countries, engineers would have made up about 3.5 percent of the membership. Instead, nearly 20 percent of the militants had engineering degree”</p>
<p>Okay, so what they’re saying is that a large number of Islamist terrorists are engineers.</p>
<p>Since we’re discussing about Muslims, it’s worthwhile noting that engineering in Arab societies is considered on par with being an MD (and perhaps more prestigious than being a lawyer). Engineers aren’t called “Mister”, but rather “Muhandis” which means engineer but is also a respectable title.</p>
<p>Therefore, it wouldn’t be far fetched to propose that a large number of people choose engineering in Muslim countries since it’s a prestigious field of study. Out of those - some are political extremists, not a huge surprise there.</p>
<p>Couple the fact that those with technical professions in demand worldwide are more likely to be able to get outside the country or emigrate or travel, etc. etc. and you have another explanation, there is nothing inherent to engineering that attracts extremism.</p>
<p>There is another problem with this study, they openly admit tha they only looked at the part of the terrorist organizations that could be confirmed to have had post high school education. They don’t compare this to small part of the population in these countries that have gone to college, but to the entire population.</p>