Comment by btrettel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by btrettel | Hacker News Reader

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You claim that engineers apply known science, and consequently have a hard time understanding and doing quality science themselves. This is a common view in some groups, but it isn't true in my experience. Fact is that engineers receive training in science that is similar that of scientists as far as I can tell. (I'd argue that it's superior in some aspects!) Don't focus too much on the titles. Look at the content of the curriculum.

Full disclosure: I haven't read the linked article and am not defending or endorsing it here, just trying to correct a misconception about engineers. I have a BS and MS in engineering, and am almost done a PhD in engineering, where I have basically conducted applied scientific research. I am friends with quite a few physicists and have heard variations of your argument from them many times. When they ask why I didn't get a degree in physics, my answer is easy: "Physics" is more accurately "modern physics". Consequently, fluid dynamics (my area) is rarely studied in physics departments. Typically one gets a degree in aerospace or mechanical engineering to become a fluid "physicist".

Also, I haven't seen any clear data showing that engineers are more prone to unqualified statements that than non-engineers. I think there is something to this but I would attribute it to engineers (by title) seeming more conservative and religious than scientists, and they are willing to challenge the status-quo here. The problem in my view is not engineers being less qualified to do and understand science.

I want to be clear that I'm not intending to make a value judgment, like scientists are better than engineers or vice versa. And I agree that it's not about degrees; people with engineering degrees work in science and vice versa.

Well, the following seems fairly harsh to me, and I would recommend rephrasing it:

> IMO few categories of professions have a harder time understanding cutting-edge science than engineers. That is because they think they know science because they use similar mathematical and technical tools, when in fact the professions do the exact opposite of one another.

The wording "few categories" in particular seems hyperbolic. I think many non-STEM folks would have a much harder time understanding science than engineers.

I think the huge overlap in shared tools, techniques, technologies, language etc. can act to obscure the fundamental differences in mindset between the fields. If a research scientist doesn't know how their work is going to turn out, they're probably on the right track. If an engineer doesn't know how their work is going to turn out, they're probably on the wrong track.

Non-STEM folks might have a hard time understanding either field, but they might also be less likely to assume that they already do.

> If a research scientist doesn't know how their work is going to turn out, they're probably on the right track. If an engineer doesn't know how their work is going to turn out, they're probably on the wrong track.

Your view of engineering doesn't fit with my experience. Certain areas of engineering are quite conservative and take that approach, using primarily proven designs (e.g., structural mechanics, fire protection). Licensed professional engineers generally follow that pattern. But this is not characteristic of engineering as a whole.

E.g., a small side project of mine is a device I intend to get a patent on. I understand the physical mechanism (the science) behind the device but have only a vague idea of what the actual device itself will look like. It's going to take a fair amount of experimentation to figure that out. Experimentation and design are fairly closely linked in engineering, and this was emphasized in my education.

Add on top of that the engineers who basically just experiment with various poorly understood systems. I'm thinking in particular about the industries with chemical processes and chip fabrication here. They might not have any clear understanding at all at first about why certain changes have certain effects. Now, some of these engineers might not care and accept that something works without understanding why. But many of them will look into that.

> Non-STEM folks might have a hard time understanding either field, but they might also be less likely to assume that they already do.

You identify a real phenomena, but I don't think there's a reason to single out engineers here. My own experience with physicists is that they are typically overconfident about their own fluid dynamics knowledge, for instance.

The only reason I singled out engineers is that this article was written by an engineer. I agree it can go both ways.

https://xkcd.com/793/

:-)

bringing this back, do you think the mindset of policy makers be closer to that of the scientist or engineer?

My take is that GP simply doesn’t have any experience with engineering research.

You have a very restrictive, and frankly naive view, of what constitutes science and what is engineering. There is not a clear-cut distinction (same as with "pure" and applied mathematics), not royal line which clearly separates the disciplines.It is a continuum. Were Penzias and Wilson doing science or engineering? What about Barden or Marconi or Nakamura? What about the guys at the Manhattan project? God knows engineers suffer a lot of the "let-me-tell-you-how-your-field-should-work" syndrome, but guess what? So does physicists, so it has nothing to do with understanding what science is all about and more with overestimate our success in transferring our knowledge,experience and capability to a different field.

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