[shanemhansen]

You're getting downvoted, but over the last decade I've seen a pretty high number of STEMers that seem to confine their logical reasoning skills to very specific domains.

Example (I'll let you be the judge of which one is being irrational): I know STEMers who are adamant atheists. I also know STEMers who are pretty devout and think that science supports all of their beliefs.

For a less controversial example just look at the sheer amount of fashion trends that sweep through the programming community. Pushing those trends is literally a core function of this website. Just like many people in america jump from fad diet to fad diet , and we jump from fad framework to fad framework. The number of software engineering decisions we make that are based on actual software engineering research is vanishingly small.

Fellow STEMers please understand that you (and me) are human and very likely just as irrational and emotional as any other group of people. Ignoring that fact will lead to a false sense of superiority.

Theoretically science is supposed to be that paragon of reasoning where we attempt to falsify our beliefs and thereby make the more correct ones stronger, but my interaction with the academic world has made me realize that science is again mostly about developing relationships so that your papers will be favorably reviewed, publishing junk to make sure your boss thinks you are productive, and researching whatever the people paying your bills are interested in researching.

[fauigerzigerk]

I agree with almost all of what you're saying, but the question isn't whether or not STEMers are very rational people. The question is whether they are better equipped than the average person to understand and scrutinize a logical argument that is presented to them in court.

Being better at that than the average population isn't a very high bar. Yes we make a lot of irrational choices and often times we will defend them in pseudo rational terms. Flame wars abound.

But the meta debate about the standard of proof for our claims is never far away. It counts for something to be able to come up with some sort of test or empirical support. Every front page story about medical experiments inevitably has a comment thread about correlation vs causality and various sorts of possible biases.

Do you really want to be judged by people who never had these sorts of debates and never had to defend their own arguments against this sort of criticism?

[justinlaster]

You two are missing the point. See my reply to the parent comment of your post.