There was a fascinating article in Foreign Policy magazine in 2013 that showed how engineers are overrepresented as a profession among Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in nations where Muslims were the majority. The article first noted:
In a 2009 paper, Diego Gambetta, an Oxford sociologist, and Steffan Hertog, a political scientist at the London School of Economics, found that "among violent Islamists with a degree, individuals with an engineering education are three to four times more frequent than we would expect given the share of engineers among university students in Islamic countries." Of a group of 404 members of violent Islamist groups in the Muslim world, Gambetta and Hertog tracked down the course of study for 178 individuals. Of those 178 violent Islamists, 78 (44 percent) were engineers....(Links removed)
The Oxford study is linked to here.
The article noted, however, that this overrepresentation of engineers was unique nearly around the world for violent, terrorist groups. It stated, in the Western nations, this was not true for either Islamic terrorist groups, Latin American terrorist groups, or European ones such as the old Red Army and Red Brigades in Germany and Italy, respectively. But then, there was this nugget:
To account for this disparity in occupation among Islamic terrorists in the Muslim world, Gambetta and Hertog sketch out a particular engineering "mindset" in which the profession is "more attractive to individuals seeking cognitive ‘closure’ and clear-cut answers as opposed to more open-ended sciences — a disposition which has been empirically linked to conservative political attitudes." Engineers, the authors find, are far more conservative on the whole than members of other professions. Islamic extremism "rejects Western pluralism and argues for a unified ordered society" — a political worldview that lines up nicely with a profession averse to chaos.
In this earlier article from 2010 in the New York Times, the Gambetta/Hertog study was discussed, but with a bit more detail. The article identified admittedly anecdotal evidence of white terrorist and hate group engineers dotting our landscape, including Richard Butler, founder of the America of the Aryan Nations white supremacy group having been an engineer. And these little things:
Each month, Gambetta and Hertog’s database grows....In February, Joseph Andrew Stack, a software engineer, crashed his plane into I.R.S. offices in Austin, Tex. In March, John Patrick Bedell, an engineering grad student, opened fire at an entrance to the Pentagon...
...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.” Do people become engineers because they are this way? Or does engineering work shape them? It’s probably a feedback loop of both, Gambetta says.
At the end of the article, an engineer who was former head of the National Academy of Engineering, scoffs at the study for being too small a sample and said "a person who is rigid is a bad engineer." Quite so on both counts, but not enough, Mr. Engineer. For when doctors, lawyers and accountants are bad, we can be really, really bad, right? Same with police officers who are bad. The point is bad doctors, bad lawyers, bad accountants and bad police officers exist--and there is a certain mindset arising from the training each undergoes that can lead to very bad things. I personally must add here that, for too long, we lawyers have had all sorts of lawyer jokes thrown at us (which I sometimes get a kick out of and have my own jokes about lawyers, too...) but truly, not so many jokes or, more important, blanket observations about engineers.
I mention all this because, from my own experience, I find it intriguing when I see engineers cropping up when one reads the "literature" of climate change deniers and Holocaust deniers in the United States. Now what I find interesting is there does not seem to have been any systemic study of engineers in the United States who subscribe to Holocaust denial and climate change denial. Still, isn't it fascinating that one of the leading American citizen Holocaust deniers for decades was Arthur Butz, a professor of, guess what, electrical engineering at a prestigious university? Another Holocaust skeptic or denier, Fred Leuchter, claims to be an engineer in his training (the article linked to mentions a "part-time" engineer professor who is also a Holocaust denier who lost his position at a college because he promoted Butz's Holocaust denial literature). I know, bad engineers--but really even that does not hold water as we don't really know if Butz is bad at building or designing things. And certainly German engineers, before, during and after the Holocaust, were and remain supposedly very, very competent as engineers. But, let's not jump to the conclusion about overrepresentation, as other leading lights in Holocaust denial come from other backgrounds, such as history majors and even lawyers. What I am talking about is what would we find below leadership and on the ground, apart from just dumb, mean people? I am talking about attitudes that compares engineers, lawyers, doctors etc. and help us get to the people we have met over the decades at social gatherings, who are, well, they just have a lot questions about whether the Holocaust really was "all what people say" or say, "Well, you know, scientists used to believe that the world was cooling back in the 1970s, right?" (Well, actually, wrong.).
So many of us have met these folks, and the best minds we have met, well, they are more often engineers than even us lawyers or even doctors. I say this without a link because I want to make it clear that I am speaking as an individual talking about a few personal life encounters, but also from others I have met over the years who, when they start to think about it, may have noticed this phenomenon as well.
And that brings us to stuff like this when it comes to anthropomorphic climate change denial. Note how the author tells us, in the third paragraph, "We Electrical Engineers would call this..." Yes, and just try reading this article if you are not learned in engineering or math. I found it tough sledding. Very tough. And we know engineers just like this guy, right?
And there is this guy, Anthony Watts, who runs the website where the article appeared: "Watt's Up with That?" Watts' website is actually helpful because it forces people like me to challenge myself, and he is sometimes quite brilliant. Watts studied, you guessed it again, electrical engineering at Purdue University, but did not graduate--and then, as noted at the WUWT website, became a meteorologist working in corporate owned media.
It is not that engineers are dumb. Far from it. We have heard over the years that engineering is a very difficult and demanding major in college, certainly up there with straight up math, chemistry, and physics, and I think most engineers are very bright, insightful people in most matters.*
Again, I would like to see someone perform a study similar to the Gambetta-Hertog study, but this time make it about Holocaust deniers and climate change deniers in the United States or at least the U.S. and Canada, and see what we find. Are engineers overrepresented compared to other professionals, in either or both? It sure feels like that to me, but I have a day job and it's tough enough to find the time to grind out things like this post. They could start by studying this 2012 peer reviewed study people like to cite as showing scientific community climate change skepticism. But note the study decided to query "professional engineers" and what it called "geoscientists," which Wiki says are "geologists."
So, if you encounter a climate change skeptic who is an engineer, just nod and walk away. They will try to overwhelm you with things that are just plain wrong--such as the aforementioned "global cooling consensus"--or they will start to sound like the fellow linked to above at "Watt's Up with That?", which, frankly, is just so much noise that tends to prove Albert Einstein's supposed dictum, "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother."
Me? I tend to play with these guys, owing to my lawyerly nature. I love asking them about what oceanographers talk about, i.e. ocean acidification, or about how the WUWT folks were all atwitter at the dawn of the 20th Century about the coming shift in solar winds, and how not only is there no Dr. Michael Mann "hockey stick," there would be a relative cooling of the Earth. And how did that turn out. Yes, they were right that it was not the hockey stick, but, and this is a BIG BUT, we stayed at around the highest recorded rate year, 1998, for years thereafter, which some called a "pause," and then have seen global temperatures begin to move upwards since. And then I ask, well, it's not just the scientists, you know? What about insurance company reinsurer and underwriter types, you know, guys and gals who are so economically cautious, conservative and sensible, who worry about the costs insurers incur with every Hurricane Harvey? Surely, if they thought anthropomorphic climate change was a hoax, or had strong reason to doubt, they would not release reports like this, right? And the CIA and Joint Chief of Staff, are they in on the conspiracy of long-haired, socialist scientists, too? You could call that "mission creep," but that would be a glib, lawyerly answer, wouldn't it?**
And then of course, these engineer skeptics then tell me they worry about the economics, the costs of combating human contribution to climate change--as if the insurance underwriters and the Joint Chiefs and the CIA don't have down the costs of not doing something globally together to lower the increase in global temperatures. And so often, these engineer types have never even heard of William Nordhaus, let alone read his work.
I know what we're saying here. Maybe it's not that engineers are overrepresented in climate change and Holocaust denial. But when they show up in those areas, well, well, well, are they adamant. And that's where the title of my post comes in. Engineers are taught that systems can and should be closed for efficiency and operation. When we combine that with "cognitive dissonance," it gets us to the engineer's line, "If it's not on, it's off." And politics, public policy, at their best, are open-ended, and are a continued conversation, for as Holly Hunter's Senator Finch character tells Charlie Rose in "Batman v. Superman," "democracy is a conversation."
And I get the point that maybe those guys (and sadly it's mostly us guys, right?) are being bad engineers. But it's really bad politics from highly skilled and intelligent people. It's sorta like the poor fellow at Google (who, in my lawyerly view, may have been wrongfully fired) who wrote an interesting 10 page engineer's "analysis" about sex discrimination at Google and other high tech places. The poor fellow went off the rails because he thought it was elementary that there are biological differences between men and women that extended into conduct and thought. It was eugenics thinking, of course, and the poor fellow needed to read a bit of Stephen Jay Gould.*** When I read the "10 pager" as I liked to call it among friends, I was struck by its engineer mindset and true beauty about regressions and means. I was struck too that, if I was defending the guy, or taking his case against Google for wrongful termination in violation of California Labor Code 1102.5, which has been interpreted to protect one's political statements at work unless they truly become individually harassing, I would note the various places in the document that shows he is amenable to women engineers, amenable to changes to promote women in the tech industry and believes that it is wrong to judge individuals by so-called group characteristics. I don't know why Google jumped here and did not have a conversation with the fellow. He's only 28 years old from what I understand, and bless his heart, he was really trying here, people! :) But, frankly, again, he deserved better from Google from a legal and also moral standpoint to have his arguments checked and discussed as Google does have a problem with its male-centric culture and that it is far from alone. I get that, and even this fellow gets it deep down.
As I say, the problem with at least some engineers is their life perspective and politics, and that it stems from "If it's not on, it's off." Sorry, engineers. Sometimes, something as large as the planet or a mass government policy can be on and off at the same time. Critical thinking is most especially important to both engineers and to lawyers. But critical thinking alone can be a dead end if one over-interprets the exceptions, and that is true for all of us.
*On the other hand, I had to read and digest an awful lot as a History major and then learn to think like a lawyer in law school, and that of course created my own arrogance at people for not seeing holes in their own arguments, and makes me prone to be argumentative and contrarian--and sometimes skeptical about language and-egad!--"truth" as a whole. See, I get the point about us lawyers....As Lenny Bruce said in the Berkeley Concert of 1965 "...everybody's up for grabs!"meaning, we're all vulnerable in our thinking and abilities.
**And if I sense they are right wingers, I ask, "Did you initially support the Second Iraq War under Bush/Cheney? Did you support Cheney's 1% doctrine, that if there was a 1% chance Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, we had to act? If so, why should we not apply that doctrine or at least the 80% doctrine, we can call it, to protect the planet? How much is the planet worth to you compared to Saddam having weapons of mass destruction?" I know. Damn lawyer!
***And reading Gould, one learns that it is good to question scientists who overstate their interpretations of results and to question scientists when they are reflecting prejudices they do not otherwise wish to acknowledge.
**And if I sense they are right wingers, I ask, "Did you initially support the Second Iraq War under Bush/Cheney? Did you support Cheney's 1% doctrine, that if there was a 1% chance Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, we had to act? If so, why should we not apply that doctrine or at least the 80% doctrine, we can call it, to protect the planet? How much is the planet worth to you compared to Saddam having weapons of mass destruction?" I know. Damn lawyer!
***And reading Gould, one learns that it is good to question scientists who overstate their interpretations of results and to question scientists when they are reflecting prejudices they do not otherwise wish to acknowledge.
