Crackpot engineers

[doc_lemming]

So for whatever reason, I was thinking about crackpots on the bus this morning and why engineers seem so prone to it. (James Nicoll has repeatedly said so on his LJ.) But I think that there's a selection bias: we notice the engineers more because they fit the criteria so well.

First, the crackpot has to be seen as smart. Some kind of professional or professorial degree is a socially accepted badge of smartness.

Second, the crackpot must be crackpotty about something outside the field of expertise. So certain mathematical physicists can inquire about the nature of consciousness, or writers with English degrees can popularize notions about the descent of woman, and that qualifies.

(You can be a crackpot about something inside your field of expertise and then you stand a higher chance of actually being right. Examples would include Marshall and H. pylori and Wegener and continental drift; I seem to recall that in the latter case you have to strip out a bit of Wegener's thinking, but the core is essentially as he presented it.)

Anyway, I was thinking that nobody cares if your political science prof is a serious Velikovskyite (or a Lamarckian)—possibly because what they do is so esoteric to the layman anyway that it might as well be madness. But an engineer or a doctor...well, what they do has obvious effects. The bridge falls down; the patient stays sick. So there's an objective measure for the layman that the crackpot is reasonably good at what he or she does. So why not believe them when they talk about some-other-topic?

Engineers are predisposed to be caught at this, I think, because their work is so cut-and-dried. And the less cut-and-dried it is, the less the label seems (in a bus ride's worth of thought) to be applied.

Comments

[From: james_davis_nicoll]

May I link to this?

[From: doc_lemming]

Of course.

[From: mmcirvin]

nobody cares if your political science prof is a serious Velikovskyite (or a Lamarckian)

The major exceptions here are really politically-loaded and popular crackpotteries, where the prominent figures are people like Philip Johnson (a creationist whose major credential is being a law professor) or Lord Monckton (a climate contrarian whose major credentials are being a politician, a puzzle author and 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley).

[From: mmcirvin]

...Though, of course, engineers are prominent advocates of both of those too.

[From: doc_lemming]

True. I have to admit I was not thinking of the politically-loaded crackpotteries, such as climate negation or some of the unpleasant race ones.

Johnson still fits my model, being a law professor ("gosh, he must be smart, so why don't I listen to him on this topic he's not qualified for?"). Lord Monchton not so much.

Actually, that's the same fallacy that Microsoft committed: for a long time, they claimed that they hired smart people, saying essentially, "We can make you a developer, but we can't make you smart." (I don't know if their hiring policy is still the same.)

Being smart, while it helps, is not the end-all and be-all. I like that Feynman crowed about testing below genius level on standardized IQ tests. To take an obvious example, what has Marilyn Vos Savant accomplished? (And then we ask, what do IQ tests actually measure, and we are stumped. This is the rhetorical we, of course.)

[From: mmcirvin]

I get the impression Lord Monckton's media reputation in the UK is that of a polymathic brainy guy, so there is some of that going on, probably.

The people who are really into IQ have all kinds of specific excuses/explanations for Feynman. He was given an indifferently administered school test that didn't go up high enough in his best subjects to register real genius, etc. Of course those same kinds of tests provide much of the basis for supposed group differences in IQ.

[From: andrewducker]

The science behind the assertion:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/30/engineers_terrorists_wikipedia_oxford_sociology/

[From: twoeleven]

It is interesting that being a crackpot within the medical field can get you a dedicated following, but perhaps quackery is different than crackpottery.

Staying with crackpots in their own field, one of my former co-workers was a geology graduate student when some nut named Alvarez proposed that giant rocks fell from heaven with suitably Biblical consequences. Alvarez was apparently raked over the coals until the iridium line turned up, and then a lot of his peers discovered the taste of petrified crow.

[From: jamoche]

The bridge will always fall down, but the patient might get well on their own, and then the quack can take credit for it.

[From: tiferet]

This, so much, so, so much.

This is why there is so much crackpottery in the field of obesity research, because we don't honestly know why some people's metabolisms work on a straightforward calories in - calories burned = fat storage model and other people's metabolisms will do everything in their power to hold on to every calorie and still demand more. We just know that some people lose weight and others don't, so when people lose weight and/or get healthier (this second criterion isn't always demanded) on Diet X, the doctor writes a book and tells everyone that this is what they need to do to save their lives, period.

This is why we have Ornish and Atkins fighting it out. The truth is they're both crackpots; some people do better with a lot of meat and others do better with a lot of grain, the only thing we know for sure is that nobody's better off with a lot of refined sugars and starches, which is one of the reasons I cut it back so severely some years ago.

[From: doc_lemming]

When there isn't a clear way to see results, you get a lot of that.

And, given the complexity of the human body, I'm not surprised that what works for some people is exactly the wrong thing for others. The effects of stimulants on people with ADHD is one example; opiates on those with fibromyalgia is another.

[From: bwross]

Here's a relevant Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal strip (SWF, although other SMBC are not).

[From: doc_lemming]

Lovely.

I don't read Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal nearly enough: I go through a batch every year or two.