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Why are so many top terrorists engineers?
Diego Gambetta and Steffan Hertog report:
We find that graduates from subjects such as science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements in the Muslim world, though not among the extremist Islamic groups which have emerged in Western countries more recently. We also find that engineers alone are strongly over-represented among graduates in violent groups in both realms. This is all the more puzzling for engineers are virtually absent from left-wing violent extremists and only present rather than over-represented among right-wing extremists. We consider four hypotheses that could explain this pattern. Is the engineers’ prominence among violent Islamists an accident of history amplified through network links, or do their technical skills make them attractive recruits? Do engineers have a ‘mindset’ that makes them a particularly good match for Islamism, or is their vigorous radicalization explained by the social conditions they endured in Islamic countries? We argue that the interaction between the last two causes is the most plausible explanation of our findings...
Henry Farrell adds commentary. I take the bottom line to be that engineers are systematizers by nature and in Islamic countries in particular they face difficult social circumstances, relative to their human capital and ambition. I suspect also that elites with a clear inherited path to the top do not become engineers.
I am less convinced by the parallels drawn with politically conservative engineers in the United States, but the piece offers (p.51) this fascinating bit:
...engineers turn out to be by far the most religious group of all academics – 66.5 per cent, followed again by 61.7 in economics [emphasis added by TC], 49.9 in sciences, 48.8 per cent of social scientists, 46.3 of doctors and 44.1 per cent of lawyers, the most sceptical of the lot. Engineers and economists are also those who oppose religion least (3.7% and 3.0%), and, together with the humanities, those who more strongly embrace it...
Footnote 63 (p.58) is not satisfactory but nonetheless intriguing. This is probably the best piece on terrorism I have read.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 11, 2007 at 03:19 PM in Education | Permalink
Comments
the representation of individuals from the sciences generally is known in other right-wing religious groups. doctors and scientists were prominent in the rise of hindu nationalism, and have been prominent in evangelical student associations in the UK. i've speculated on the issues before.
Posted by: razib at Nov 11, 2007 3:53:33 PM
I offer a quick remark about economists and engineers being less opposed to religion, relative to professors in some other fields.
Economists and engineers also tend to stand out for being least social-democratic.
If James Buchanan (and others) are correct that government/the state/social democracy functions as a kind of God surrogate for social democrats, then it may be simply that the economists and engineers are relatively less opposed to plain old God because they are less enamored with the social-democratic God surrogate.
Posted by: Daniel Klein at Nov 11, 2007 4:02:47 PM
What role might western education play in the answer to this question? I don't have the statistics to back this up but I would venture to say that students from predominantly Islamic countries are more likely to study science, engeering, or more medicine than students from the United States or Western Europe.
Posted by: Sparty at Nov 11, 2007 4:13:34 PM
In the US at least, engineers are typically smart strivers from the lower and middle classes, with immigrants overrepresented among them. And immigrants have always been overrepresented among engineers, even in the 19th century.
As for terrorists, I wonder what a study of American terrorists would produce? The terrorists I've heard about in the US tend to be either "red-diaper" types who drifted into extreme religion as some sort of rebellion against their parents (Lindh), or clever losers such as Timothy McVay. This isn't counting people who flew here with the express purpose to commit terrorist acts such as the 9/11 people.
Posted by: Foobarista at Nov 11, 2007 4:14:07 PM
ASDs (autistic spectrum disorders) are more prevalent among engineers than the general population. That's why we're so difficult to work with. Perhaps ASD is what the study should be looking for. Are terrorists more likely to show signs of widespread abnormalities of social interactions and communication? If so maybe the inability to make strong human connections plays a part.
Posted by: washcycle at Nov 11, 2007 4:35:44 PM
This seems to explain a big part of it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_hypothesis
If you are drawn to learn engineering, you're bound to be more likely (on average) to believe in 'intelligent design' & it takes a particlar personality to subsume your own short-term gain for the 'grand design' of a God/Allah. It is plausible that this could be a factor - thanks for highlighting this Tyler! More research needed...
Posted by: nick at Nov 11, 2007 4:36:09 PM
My experience with engineers is that many of them tend towards relating to others more as objects/tools than as people. This probably allows them to feel more morally comfortable with blowing them up.
Posted by: Jacqueline at Nov 11, 2007 4:38:45 PM
This reads like a case of cultural attitudes and I second Sparty's comment. I wouldn't limit it to just Islamic countries, but Asian and Middle Eastern countries in general. Parents prefer sons to be engineers/doctors/scientists rather than the liberal arts curriculum that is prevalent in the United States. Also, in many countries that inherit a British type education system in particular, there is a tendency toward "streaming" or what some might call sorting with the tendency to be streamed into hard sciences being considered "good" or a signal of high ability. This may result in some selection bias that is giving this "intriguing" result.
Posted by: bccheah at Nov 11, 2007 7:53:44 PM
Razib,
Awesome post--thanks for the link!
rob from SM
Posted by: rob at Nov 11, 2007 8:45:42 PM
I concur with Sparty, Foobarista and bccheah. I am the child of immigrant parents who were born and raise in the middle east. Among my parents' peer group, "engineer" is synonymous with "doctor." In America we say "doctors and lawyers," but in the middle east they say "doctors and engineers."
My best guess for this is that perhaps these countries are in a phase of development where engineers are more vital than lawyers. They are (re-)building lots roads and buildings, but not political structures. When these countries establish a stronger rule of law, and don't need so much new infrastructure as vitally as they do today, perhaps lawyers will supplant engineers as they do in the west.
Posted by: Hovie at Nov 11, 2007 9:30:41 PM
I am civil engineer and lawyer.I was religious when i began engineering and became agnostic after studying physics well before begining law.But I have been a clasic liberal ( except for antilericalism) all the time.But here most lawyer are religius person , a big chunk of faculties at my school belong to the opus dei.
BTW, the evidence refered shows that CP SNOW was wrong
Posted by: jules at Nov 11, 2007 9:36:33 PM
Have the authors looked into what percent of degrees in Islamic countries are in engineering? Maybe that's like a default degree people get over there (like a "business" degree here in the US). No offense to the business majors!
Posted by: BlogReader at Nov 11, 2007 11:12:32 PM
I think BlogReader is right. I think there are lot more engineering jobs in developing countries than for other professions. So they possible represent the general population more closely than say scientists.
Posted by: pc at Nov 11, 2007 11:51:39 PM
EXCEPT, there's a better case that the bigger overrepresentation is of those wussy sciences and education types, like the sociologist of the survey.
After all, arts, sciences, theology, and education summed in their sample come to -->>79<<--, more than the 78 engineers.
Clearly, the authors are just trying to distract from the real arts and soft science culprit. After all, clearly you guys are just a bunch of extremists ;-) .
Let's see you spin THAT.
Or maybe the only pattern that can be drawn is overrepresentation of higher education.
Posted by: Jon Kay at Nov 12, 2007 12:54:10 AM
You might also want to look at
http://www.american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-contents/what-makes-a-terrorist
Summary quote
"It’s not poverty and lack of education, according to economic research by Princeton’s ALAN KRUEGER. Look elsewhere."
Posted by: Eric at Nov 12, 2007 1:01:00 AM
The French have a term for it: "professional deformation." Each profession tends to attract a certain personality, and then accentuates it. (This is even true, hard as it is to believe, for economists!)
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Nov 12, 2007 1:19:46 AM
One obvious explanation is that engineers are actually trained to build physical objects (e.g., bombs), unlike, say, lawyers or economists. So, engineers are more valuable recruits for any organizations that wants to build bombs than are professionals who only work with letters and numbers.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Nov 12, 2007 1:24:24 AM
Argh! How many times do I have to repeat this? All developing countries produce more graduates in the hard sciences - there's no choice of work otherwise. Males have been formed by evolution to seek status - status ensures reproductive success. Males are competitive and aggressive with one another; females tend to be cooperative with one another, as we're formed by evolution too. Our ancestors were polygynous, and that's why we are the way we are. When young males feel they are 'losers' ie, low status, they often go 'postal.' If you examine the lives of the various school shooters, apart from the fact that they're always male, you'll note that they never have girlfriends.
When the male/female ratio gets out of whack, violence ensues - East Germany and Russia today. When the male/female ratio gets seriously out of whack, in those parts of the world where polygyny is practiced, all hell breaks loose on a regular basis. The Middle East, and central and southern Africa.
Does anybody here think that Atta was able to get a date in Hamburg? Probably constant rejection, which explains his utter contempt for women. In Egypt, he would have been an highish status male; middle class, educated, trilingual, and off to Germany to be educated. Once arriving in Germany, however, he suddenly became a low-status male. And because socialism builds in high-youth unemployment, he couldn't even get a job and bring a wife over from Egypt.
Although it's a cliche to speak of the 'veneer' of civilization, it is correct -once the veneer comes off, we revert back to our primal selves. Thus, every war, from the depths of antiquity, through the Balkans in the '90s, and in Darfur and the Congo today, has featured mass rape.
The House of Saud has pulled off a magnificent trick - they've managed to send all the young males who can't find a wife in Saudi Arabia off to fight the jihad in other countries.
We'll be dealing with jihadis until the House of Saud bans polygyny - until that day comes, anything reforms the royal family promises should be taken with a grain of salt.
Oh, and continue to expect more jihadis coming from Europe.
Posted by: Jean at Nov 12, 2007 4:15:14 AM
How odd that they didn't try dividing their scientists into Physical Scientists and Biological Scientists.
Posted by: dearieme at Nov 12, 2007 5:05:10 AM
Engineers & doctors define the "elite" students in most Asian countries. These are also the people who have the greatest exposure to the world at large.
Trace the history of revolution/overthrow of capitalism. Asian fights for freedom were all led by those educated in Western systems, at home at abroad, which is where they face discrimination and where they experience denial of privileges. Gandhi's being thrown off a First Class compartment of a train in South Africa is one such story. And we all know what he went on to do.
This correlation, that of Engineers being over-represented in "terrorism" is perhaps specious. Reframe it, someone's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. And freedom fighers are leaders. And leaders tend to be better educated.
Posted by: Sushobhan Mukherjee at Nov 12, 2007 8:23:42 AM
Perhaps a tendency in both groups of "implementing a solution" instead of "talking about a solution"?
Posted by: Perete at Nov 12, 2007 8:57:39 AM
I wonder to what extent this also reflects the LACK of a rigorous traditional Islamic education - if you choose the Sci/Eng track early do you have time for the more humanistic disciplines of Islamic law, etc.?
My experience (I'm an art historian) of western medical doctors and engineers is that they often have kinda crackpot ideas about art - in part because they never had more than a distribution requirement course in it.
Posted by: Michael Tinkler at Nov 12, 2007 9:03:14 AM
Sailer: engineers don't build things, technicians do. When I was an engineer, I worked *exclusively* with words and numbers, and so did pretty much every other engineer I knew. The only ones who built stuff with their hands did so as hobbies on the weekends.
Have you ever heard of the terms "blue collar": and "white collar"?
Posted by: bartman at Nov 12, 2007 9:10:56 AM
Jacqueline: "My experience with engineers is that many of them tend towards relating to others more as objects/tools than as people."
Was your ex-husband or ex-boyfriend an engineer, Jacqueline?
I've known and worked with dozens of engineers over the past 30 years. I've even been one myself for a few years. Most engineers do not view people as objects.
Lawyers, on the other hand, seem to view people as essential elements of a balanced diet.
Posted by: John Dewey at Nov 12, 2007 9:34:49 AM
Many, if not a majority, of the founding members of Opus Dei were also engineers.
Posted by: Peter Forrester at Nov 12, 2007 9:42:43 AM
Jacqueline: I was once an engineer, and I think you're a "tool", if that helps.
Posted by: bartman at Nov 12, 2007 9:52:14 AM
bartman: "engineers don't build things, technicians do."
I'm sure Steve Sailer understands very well the meaning of the word "build":
build
1: to form by ordering and uniting materials by gradual means into a composite whole : construct
2: to cause to be constructed
3: to develop according to a systematic plan, by a definite process, or on a particular base
Merriam-Webster online Dictionary
build
1. To form by combining materials or parts; construct.
2. To order, finance, or supervise the construction of;
3. To develop or give form to according to a plan or process;
It doesn't really mean "fabricate by hand".
Engineers I've worked with are every bit a part of the building process as the grunt who pushes concrete or the technician who attaches cable or the machinist who operates lathes and milling machines.
Posted by: John Dewey at Nov 12, 2007 9:52:20 AM
Perhaps we should look at engineering being less of a cause and more of a result. Engineers are generally smart, and more likely to be discontent due toa lack of opportunities. There are millions of unemployed, over-educated engineers here.
Also, engineering being one of the default degrees is a valid statement. In most asian countries, Engineering is a proxy for 'educated'. Doctors as well, but there are usually fewer of them, and more of them following the social norm of 'do no harm'.
Posted by: HeShootsAndScores at Nov 12, 2007 10:17:12 AM
Perhaps we should look at engineering being less of a cause and more of a result. Engineers are generally smart, and more likely to be discontent due toa lack of opportunities. There are millions of unemployed, over-educated engineers here.
Also, engineering being one of the default degrees is a valid statement. In most asian countries, Engineering is a proxy for 'educated'. Doctors as well, but there are usually fewer of them, and more of them following the social norm of 'do no harm'.
Posted by: HeShootsAndScores at Nov 12, 2007 10:19:15 AM
I can't believe nobody's even mentioned this angle:
In the US, an engineering degree consigns you to a far lower probability of meeting a mate. (Take a look at all the single guys at Microsoft. Just trust me on this one.). But at least you get to enjoy greater-than-median wealth in a society with ample avenues to spend it, so you may be dateless, but at least you can entertain yourself. What's it like for immigrant engineers in England, though? And in the actual Islamic countries in question?
(This ties into the "large number of young males with nothing to do ===> big problems" sociology theory, I should have mentioned earlier).
Posted by: M1EK at Nov 12, 2007 10:57:31 AM
"We find that graduates from subjects such as science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements in the Muslim world, though not among the extremist Islamic groups which have emerged in Western countries more recently."
If I recall correctly, a relatively large number of revolutionaries of the Tsarist era also came from the intellectual strata of Russian society - a good education and limited capacity for advancement seem to be a bad combination - such countries may be well served by liberal emigration policies...
Posted by: Affe at Nov 12, 2007 11:04:46 AM
Osama bin Laden bragged on video that other terrorists didn't believe that crashing airliners into the Twin Towers would do more than damage a few floors but, because of his civil engineering education, he knew the floors above would come down. He was pleasantly surprised, though, when the entire structures pancaked. So, engineering is a practical skill for terrorists.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Nov 12, 2007 11:30:36 AM
engineers treat people as tools
practicing law has taught me most people are tools
Posted by: Steve at Nov 12, 2007 12:46:35 PM
M1EK, that's a pretty compelling angle. I wonder how you could test that.
Posted by: Kyle at Nov 12, 2007 1:00:55 PM
Hm. Seems to be that nobody has mentioned the obvious things.
1> Engineers are trained to plan and estimate risk, and those skills are portable
2> Project management is enough to drive anybody to violence.
Posted by: Vinay Gupta at Nov 12, 2007 1:15:36 PM
Is this a coincidence or not: Most Chinese (PRC) leaders are engineers too ?
Posted by: Larry at Nov 12, 2007 1:32:24 PM
Is this a coincidence or not: Most Chinese (PRC) leaders are engineers too ?
Posted by: Larry at Nov 12, 2007 1:33:45 PM
How about because you have to be alive in order to qualify as a top terrorist, and you are more likely to stay alive in a hostile world if you are an engineer rather than, say, an English major? Not to knock the liberal arts people--I am one myself--but if I was looking for someone who was solution-oriented, methodical, practical, and capable of fabricating something useful from household chemicals...I wouldn't be recruiting from the Medieval English Literature students.
Posted by: laser at Nov 12, 2007 1:59:57 PM
For once I agree with Stever Sailer. It is not just that they have superior skills
for building bombs and other damaging devices, but they are also more likely to know
how airplanes work and thus able to learn how to fly them than most other folks.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Nov 12, 2007 2:16:39 PM
I think that among engineering and medicine students you'll find a lot of persons who are very intelligent which makes them good at learning tough physics or math stuff. But from my personal experience i somehow got the impression that these students unlike students of mathematics, physics or computer science don't think about philosophical dimensions of science very much. They often seem to treat scientific ideas just as principles that can be applied to build stuff or heal people. Of course this normally will become their job. But i see a lot of engineering students (Christians as well as Muslims) who tend to have beliefs reminding me of medieval thoughts while studying nuclear physics or genetics which just makes me ask:
Why the hell don't these guys see a conflict between backward beliefs and modern science? Shouldn't this clash be obvious or is this exactly the point why they become so fundamentalist?
Posted by: hans herbert at Nov 12, 2007 2:39:52 PM
washcycle has part of it: ASD explains M1EK's angle as well as (in this case) Steve's professional deformation. It also underlies part of Gambetta and Hertog's explanation, the systematizer hypothesis. Check out Ted Kacynski's wiki entry and tell me that guy doesn't have Asperger's.
Posted by: Eric H at Nov 12, 2007 5:19:25 PM
I think we should check this list for terrorists.
Posted by: Ken Houghton at Nov 12, 2007 8:40:56 PM
Engineers have different incentives. Think about engineers you know, to them, any women even in the afterlife, looks pretty good.
Posted by: S at Nov 12, 2007 10:19:22 PM
Because I couldn't resist . . .
An engineering student is walking across campus when his friend, also an engineer, rides up on a brand new motorcycle.
The engineer asks his friend where he got the bike. His friend replies, "You won't believe it. I was walking down the street the other day when this gorgeous woman pulls up beside me, jumps off this motorcycle, tears her clothes off and says 'Take what you wan't.'"
"So, you chose the motorcycle?" the engineer asks.
"Sure," says his friend, "the clothes wouldn't have fit."
Posted by: Offa Rex at Nov 14, 2007 1:45:17 AM
Chatting this over the Thanksgiving holidays, my father, an engineer, and I believe that people intelligent people who crave rules and order naturally gravitate to both religion and engineering. Each has a kind of logic and clear rules.
Posted by: BobG at Nov 24, 2007 8:57:43 AM
It's obvious that economists believe in God. The invisible hand was a mistic concept since its conception.
Posted by: Oskar Shapley at Nov 26, 2007 9:27:07 PM
"Why the hell don't these guys see a conflict between backward beliefs and modern science? Shouldn't this clash be obvious or is this exactly the point why they become so fundamentalist?"
Maybe because they manage to ask a question that you don't even manage to understand IS a question, Mr.Herbert - what makes modernity modern? You seem to simply take it for granted that if the normative views of society - "society" being defined in a knee jerk kind of way as being the society which you are used to - have moved in a particular direction for what you think of as being a long time, that direction must necessarily be good and right, and never mind the fact that maybe, on examination, we'll find that "a long time" to you is something on the order of sixty years, as you dwell on a world where recorded history goes back for over 4700 years, and what are now acknowledged to be reverses of past civilizations have spanned centuries.
Understanding has a way of teaching one what the American cultural mainstream is so eager to claim but so reluctant to embrace - humility. The American suit, as he pushes around his little pieces of paper and applies "advanced analytical techniques" that are in reality barely more than repackaged freshman undergraduate mathematics, may imagine himself to be a self-made man competent to undo and replace all that came before him, but for the most part pure and applied scientists know better than to see themselves that way. They know that all that they have built has been laid upon the foundations built up by those who have gone before them, and see themselves as being a part of that history which, in their own low key sort of way, they view with a kind of calm reverence.
They are also left with one of those questions that the stridently "modernist" never seem to feel the need to ask themselves. If the advance of technology is one of the things that makes a civilization "modern", and the supposedly modern need the assistance of those "backward" traditional folk to achieve those advances - then who, really, are the backward ones? In the case of an Osama Bin Ladin, we find somebody whose traditional cultural background is a rather grim affair, with grim results, but you and some of your friends seem to want to lump him in with the Opus Dei belonging Roman Catholic physician down the street or the Conservative Sephardic Jewish Probabilist teaching at the campus across town. You know, Herbert, speaking as one of those Jews, I've seen intolerance and a crazed hysteria appear in the encounter between the so-called "American cultural mainstream" and Judaism, complete with bombings - but guess what? The traditional religious folks weren't the ones planting the bombs and the agnostics weren't the ones being bombed. It was the reverse.
Oops.
But we're not supposed to remember that, are we? The thought I'd like to leave you with is that of the irony of presuming to tell another how he ought to believe, to preach to him about his refusal to let himself be steamrollered into abandoned his own ways and replacing them with one's own simply because they are one's own and one is being pushy about it, and then attacking that refusal with some blend of condescension, bitterness and outright psychosis, and one and one's friends speak of the "intolerance" of those traditionalist who they would drag kicking and screaming into a supposedly modern era which the self-styled modernists have, in all humility, remade in their own image.
Posted by: Joseph Dunphy at Dec 13, 2007 7:20:13 PM
I'm from Asia and a civil engineer. In Asia engineering is a prestigious profession, as it is in the Mid-East. Note that China's president is a hydraulic engineer, and that all ll members of China's elite Politburo Standing Committee are also engineers. Lawyers virtually have no standing at all - perhaps because the rule of law is so entrenched in the english speaking world - and hence anglo societies tend to be more litigious.
Highly educated people are often the most politically radicalized in any society. In the mid-east this converges with the popularity of engineering as a profession - hence the over-representation of engineers among terrorists - Arafat, Ahmadinejad, Abu Nidal, etc
Posted by: John at Mar 17, 2008 4:07:42 AM
Posted by: 鑽石 at Apr 2, 2008 11:19:44 PM
The theory that engineers are driven to violence because they can't get women is rather absurd. In Asia engineers are the social elite and women go for them much like they do for doctors in the U.S. The theory that they view people as tools is even more absurd. I don't think I need to bother countering that one.
Enough with the crackpot theories - the answer is that they are simply more useful to terrorists and there more heavily recruited. It does take some technical talent to be a terrorist.
Posted by: at Jun 11, 2008 5:28:48 PM
