Form - Except the only statistics we have so far show you are wrong. You have anecdotal data that you know more conservative engineers, and that's it - and you were certainly far off the mark to think the hard sciences are mixed when out of all technical fields they're probably the most liberal. You don't even have a reason to say that students should vastly differ from professors to make them more conservative - if anythng, students could be expected to be more liberal due to being younger, and there's no reason to suspect a conservative is less likely to be a successful chemist or something (again, I would say it's a valid concern that political beliefs could keep, say, an economist from being as successful, but that's not what I'm here to argue with you about, let Mobby/Pat handle that). In short, you made unsupported accusations like "engineers and businessmen are both about equal in education, but worse than liberal arts majors" and were wrong about political affiliations. I don't need apology via PM or something, after all, thousands of people every day mistake "anecdote = statistics" but still, you were off.
Edit: @Merk - post some data then, cause at least among universities that's clearly not true. It's true engineers don't tend to be extremely "liberal" like psychology but they're middle of the road if anything. They definitely seem to be more liberal than medicine, business, and law, but in short, find some statistics then. Your anecdotes are great, but I recall you have disdain/little experience/don't know anyone in fields like alternative energy, which is heavily liberal. Lots of others have friends/experience in engineering too, so the one company you work for isn't a statistic. Also, we may be working with different definitions here, for instance libertarian =/ conservative, again unless you have data that engineers oppose homosexuals or are above-average religious or something then that's not suggesting they're conservative.
And there is NO DOUBT that, while we could debate engineering, people in hard sciences are liberal, both within and beyond universities that's true as well, entirely. If it's needed and I have time later I'll even find the other thread here on CFC.
Edit: @Merk - post some data then, cause at least among universities that's clearly not true. It's true engineers don't tend to be extremely "liberal" like psychology but they're middle of the road if anything. They definitely seem to be more liberal than medicine, business, and law, but in short, find some statistics then. Your anecdotes are great, but I recall you have disdain/little experience/don't know anyone in fields like alternative energy, which is heavily liberal. Lots of others have friends/experience in engineering too, so the one company you work for isn't a statistic. Also, we may be working with different definitions here, for instance libertarian =/ conservative, again unless you have data that engineers oppose homosexuals or are above-average religious or something then that's not suggesting they're conservative.
And there is NO DOUBT that, while we could debate engineering, people in hard sciences are liberal, both within and beyond universities that's true as well, entirely. If it's needed and I have time later I'll even find the other thread here on CFC.
