“Conjecture that an education in the engineering disciplines forms a predisposition to {SciCre} viewpoints.”

There is zero evidence in favor of this. The so-called “data points” are merely the results of confirmation bias on a self-selecting group of creationists. The Oxford paper doesn’t support the Salem hypothesis. It shows a definite religious slant, which could explain why engineer creationists seem to pop up frequently, but that is entirely different from saying that an engineering education “forms a predisposition” to creationism. If you use religious beliefs as a proxy for creationism, you’re going down the road of arguing that an engineering education makes engineering students more religious. And you’ve only found a correlation between religious beliefs and creationism, not an engineering education and creationism.I am willing to bet engineers are much less likely to be creationists than the general population. Which is what counts, isn’t it? If someone gets around to doing a study that shows that, you could argue that an engineering education reduces predispositions to creationism. Polls of doctors have shown that there are even doctors who are creationists, at a lower rate than the general public but at a higher rate than biologists. Is it an extraordinary claim to say that engineers would be similar?(PZ Myers’ post I’d say has a much better Salem Hypothesis.)