{"id":2727,"date":"2008-06-13T16:41:11","date_gmt":"2008-06-13T16:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2008\/06\/13\/engineer-heal-thyself\/"},"modified":"2008-06-13T16:41:11","modified_gmt":"2008-06-13T16:41:11","slug":"engineer-heal-thyself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/13\/engineer-heal-thyself\/","title":{"rendered":"Engineer, Heal Thyself"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"i-594baa3fbd5c2550ec68bea9545bc8f8-goldy_gopher.jpg\"

The University of Minnesota Mascot, Goldie Gopher. <\/em> <\/center><\/span>Biological engineers at the University of Minnesota tend to be creationists. The main professor who teaches this subject is a creationist and he teaches a creationism seminar on a regular basis. He helps run and organize a Christian student group that has a pledge of faith for members. The bio-engineers student group uses a gopher (our school symbol) standing in the Leonardo position ala the Discovery Institute.Yes, you read that right. The symbol of the student group for biological engineering is a take-off of the Discovery Institutes’s symbol, but using our dumb gopher.I just noticed this the other day while walking around aimfully on the campus. I’ll try to haul a camera over there at some point and get a shot for you.Anyhow, there is a belief among those of us who are involved in the Evolution-Creationism debate that says that engineers are more likely to be creationists than other individuals in the broader group of scientist\/mathematicians\/engineers. This idea was embodies some years ago in what is now known as The Salem Hypothesis, originally proposed by Bruce Salem. At Talk Origins<\/a>, this is defined as follows:<\/p>\n

Conjecture that an education in the engineering disciplines forms a predisposition to {SciCre} viewpoints. Due to longtime t.o. regular {Bruce Salem}. New SciCre or {TAE} posters whose credentials include EE, CSE, ME, or other brands of engineering are noted as “data points for the Salem Hypothesis”. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

PZ Myers has blogged about this<\/a>, and I believe he generally accepts it as a reasonable hypothesis. In discussing it on his blog, he points to the following example:<\/p>\n

Electronic Engineering Times is a venerable trade weekly. …With amusement, I came across a series of letters [in the journal] about “Intelligent Design” …Jack Atkinson of Alabama penned a letter, “‘Particles to man’ evolution is only a theory-an absurd one”, in response to an article about problems in science education in America.. Jack felt that curtailing the teaching of evolutionary theory would in no way affect the future science and technology careers of students. (‘Cause that’s how they roll in ‘Bama.)…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest of this very interesting post here.<\/a>I think there is something to the Salem Hypothesis, but we need to remember to emphasize the term “exposed to” in this very carefully worded construct. Exposure does not mean conversion, or even contamination. I know a number of engineers and most of them are not creationists. Except the Civil Engineers. About two thirds of them are creationist Republican yahoos.There is a discussion on this topic, sort of, over here at Sciencewoman’s Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The University of Minnesota Mascot, Goldie Gopher. Biological engineers at the University of Minnesota tend to be creationists. The main professor who teaches this subject is a creationist and he teaches a creationism seminar on a regular basis. He helps run and organize a Christian student group that has a pledge of faith for members. … Continue reading Engineer, Heal Thyself<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[207,55,156],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-HZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}