Salem hypothesis
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The "Salem Hypothesis" (named after Bruce Salem) is a name for a correlation that has been observed amongst scientists, between subscribing to creationism and working in an engineering discipline.
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[edit] Origins
The "Salem Hypothesis" is credited to Bruce Salem, a regular contributor to the Usenet talk.origins newsgroup. It is the "[c]onjecture that an education in the engineering disciplines forms a predisposition to {SciCre}[Scientific Creationism] viewpoints."[1]
Critic of creationism PZ Myers elaborated on its origin and meaning by stating:[2]
It was proposed by a fellow named Bruce Salem who noticed that, in arguments with creationists, if the fellow on the other side claimed to have personal scientific authority, it almost always turned out to be because he had an engineering degree. The hypothesis predicted situations astonishingly well — in the bubbling ferment of talk.origins, there were always new creationists popping up, pompously declaiming that they were scientists and they knew that evolution was false, and subsequent discussion would reveal that yes, indeed, they were the proud recipient of an engineering degree.
... Of course, it doesn't say that engineers are all creationists: it says that creationists with advanced degrees are often engineers, a completely different thing altogether.
[edit] Academic support for the hypothesis
In a paper presented to the Iowa Academy of Science, John W. Patterson stated that "engineering educators, senior engineers, and registered professional engineers are perhaps the most prominent leaders of the creationist movement." Patterson offers two possible explanations for this phenomenon:[3]
- Disinterest among engineering societies in policing themselves with regard to "ethical irresponsibility or scientific incompetence", allowing their membership to "publicly endorse ludicrous forms of pseudoscience without being publicly chastised by their professional societies."
- Involvement by engineers in "the rather difficult subjects of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics", allowing them to "develop confusing and yet authoritative-sounding arguments which are unintelligible to laymen."
In a working paper, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog state that:
Whether American, Canadian or Islamic, and whether due to selection or field socialisation, a disproportionate share of engineers seems to have a mindset that inclines them to entertain the quintessential right-wing features of “monism” – ‘why argue when there is one best solution’ – and of “simplism” – ‘if only people were rational, remedies would be simple’.
They further note that a Carnegie survey shows that "engineers turn out to be by far the most religious group of all academics", and note the relevance of the Salem hypothesis to these results.[4]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ The talk.origins/Evolution Echo Jargon File
- ^ The Salem Hypothesis, PZ Myers
- ^ An Engineer Looks at the Creationist Movement, John W. Patterson, Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science 89(2):55-58, 1982
- ^ Engineers of Jihad, Sociology Working Papers Paper Number 2007-10, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, Department of Sociology, Oxford University
[edit] External links
- talk.origins Jargon File
- An Engineer Looks at the Creationist Movement, John W. Patterson, Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science 89(2):55-58, 1982.
