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Engineers Nine Times More Likely Than Expected To Become Terrorists (washingtonpost.com)
HughPickens.com writes: Henry Farrel writes in the Washington Post that there's a group of people who appear to be somewhat prone to violent extremism: Engineers. They are nine times more likely to be terrorists than you would expect by chance. In a forthcoming book, Engineers of Jihad, published by Princeton University Press, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog provide a new theory explaining why engineers seem unusually prone to become involved in terrorist organizations. They say it's caused by the way engineers think about the world. Survey data indicates engineering faculty at universities are far more likely to be conservative than people with other degrees, and far more likely to be religious. They are seven times as likely to be both religious and conservative as social scientists. Gambetta and Hertog speculate that engineers combine these political predilections with a marked preference towards finding clearcut answers.
Gambetta and Hertog suggest that this mindset combines with frustrated expectations in many Middle Eastern and North African countries (PDF), and among many migrant populations, where people with engineering backgrounds have difficulty in realizing their ambitions for good and socially valued jobs. This explains why there are relatively few radical Islamists with engineering backgrounds in Saudi Arabia (where they can easily find good employment) and why engineers were more prone to become left-wing radicals in Turkey and Iran.
Some people might argue that terrorist groups want to recruit engineers because engineers have valuable technical skills that might be helpful, such as in making bombs. This seems plausible – but it doesn't seem to be true. Terrorist organizations don't seem to recruit people because of their technical skills, but because they seem trustworthy and they don't actually need many people with engineering skills. "Bomb-making and the technical stuff that is done in most groups is performed by very few people (PDF), so you don't need, if you have a large group, 40 or 50 percent engineers," says Hertog. "You just need a few guys to put together the bombs. So the scale of the overrepresentation, especially in the larger groups is not easily explained."
Gambetta and Hertog suggest that this mindset combines with frustrated expectations in many Middle Eastern and North African countries (PDF), and among many migrant populations, where people with engineering backgrounds have difficulty in realizing their ambitions for good and socially valued jobs. This explains why there are relatively few radical Islamists with engineering backgrounds in Saudi Arabia (where they can easily find good employment) and why engineers were more prone to become left-wing radicals in Turkey and Iran.
Some people might argue that terrorist groups want to recruit engineers because engineers have valuable technical skills that might be helpful, such as in making bombs. This seems plausible – but it doesn't seem to be true. Terrorist organizations don't seem to recruit people because of their technical skills, but because they seem trustworthy and they don't actually need many people with engineering skills. "Bomb-making and the technical stuff that is done in most groups is performed by very few people (PDF), so you don't need, if you have a large group, 40 or 50 percent engineers," says Hertog. "You just need a few guys to put together the bombs. So the scale of the overrepresentation, especially in the larger groups is not easily explained."
Oh good. Just what the world needs. More engineer bashing.
For the record, I'm an engineer, PE license and everything. Liberal as they come (I think Bernie is too conservative on things like gun control). And I'm an atheist. Some of the engineers I know are conservatives, but few are religious. Logic and religion don't mix well. So I'm confused about this idea that engineers are more likely to be religious than the public at large. That just doesn't make sense to me.
So I'm thinking the authors of this book... aren't engineers. Always easier to bash the other guy than look inward, innit?
>> (engineers) are seven times as likely to be both religious and conservative as social scientists
The Paris terrorists didn't seem that "religious" or "conservative". From AFA: "She loved partying and going to clubs. She drank alcohol and smoked and went around with lots of different guys." (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3325180/Two-fingers-world-Pictured-Europe-s-female-suicide-bomber-booze-loving-extrovert-nicknamed-Cowgirl-love-big-hats.html)
Maybe the engineers just tend to be the most "successful" at terrorism.
They deal with that in their summary - stating that they don't believe engineers are recruited for their utility value. My main problem is that they use this hand-wavey statement:
Even if you make extremely generous assumptions, nine times as many terrorists were engineers as you would expect by chance.
Well, it would be quite useful to have a run down of what assumptions they did make in coming to this conclusion. For example, it appears that most of these terrorists are males, and we know that engineering is heavily male dominated compared to other degree classes. So unless this has been accounted for, you would expect terrorists to be nearly twice as likely to be engineers than the general population anyway (oh scary!), but that is because terrorists are more likely to be males, not more likely to be engineers.
It is pretty obvious that the terrorists identified so far are not representative of a general western population select by 'chance', so there is a lot of stuff that needs to be adjusted for before you can start claiming a particular degree is over represented among them.
An alternate explanation:
People from countries whose predominant religion is Islam tend to be Muslim.
Many of those countries are poor compared to Western nations.
People like wealth, and wish to escape poverty.
One popular method for escaping poverty is education.
However, only certain kinds of education correlate strongly with financial independence.
Islamic Studies majors, for instance, are a dime a dozen in Islamic countries.
In the long run, a career in engineering is likely to be far more lucrative.
But educational and economic opportunities in poor Islamic countries are limited.
By contrast, there is a relative abundance of jobs and respected educational institutions in the Western world.
But you can really only get into an math, science, or engineering program there, because the liberal arts programs are strongly biased towards the local culture.
But math and science don't pay all that well.
Therefore, people of college age in those countries look abroad to choose a college, and tend to choose engineering as their field of study.
When they arrive in the West to attend college, they are immigrants, don't speak the language, and don't share the culture.
They are also usually young.
Young adults really want to socialize, especially with those of the opposite sex.
The immigrant students can't socialize effectively with the local population, because of cultural differences, prejudices, and ordinary human nature.
Also, they can't hook up with the opposite sex effectively, because there's no support structure in their host country to do that in compliance with their cultural restrictions.
Young people who can't socialize tend to get depressed and angry.
These students tend to blame the culture of their host country for their depression and anger.
They become chronically homesick, and reject their host country in every way they can.
A terrorist recruiter is trained to spot these disaffected students.
The recruiter fulfills the student's need for socializing and the comforts of a familiar culture, by introducing them to other terrorist recruits.
Having found community at last, the student stops seeking it elsewhere, and cuts off any other contacts he may have had.
The community encourages and reinforces each other's anger, and directs it towards revenge.
And that's why a lot of terrorists are engineers.
As an engineer for over 30 years, it has been my experience that we see what we want to see. In my office, some engineers are religious and some are not. Some are conservative, some are not. The two groups overlap, but are not a 1:1 mapping. I would have to say that the majority are not particularly religious, but where I live, there isn't a particularly large religious community.
I would prefer to say that most engineers are determined and intelligent, and tend to succeed. If any of them were to become fundamentalist in a particular religion, I would have no doubt that they would become successful in that activity
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
Actually I wouldn't be so quick to just say you're kidding.
I was Muslim (currently secular), and I am engineer. I guess I'm the target demographic.
I think people have covered the abuse of these statistics in other posts. Things like technical skill, Western grads might be more involved in engineering...
So I'll just add my anecdotal bit that might actually add some validity. I have a hard time with cognitive dissonance or whatever you wish to call it. But something is either true and I act accordingly. Or something is not true, and I drop it. Or I just don't know enough about it.
In my days as Muslim, I really did believe in Islamic law. I really did think suicide bombing and terrorism was a way to get the end result. It wasn't pretty, but if that's the goal, that's what we have to do. Now I didn't do anything, but the thoughts were in my head.
We sometimes look down at people with cognitive dissonance, but in a way, it's a good feature for society as whole. Other people just don't seem to have the same trouble with it as I do. To them Islam might just be a way of life. They will say they believe and then ignore most of the text and most of the rules.
I think the engineering mind might be very focused on goals and if they can be convinced of the goal, the rest kind of follows.