Illogical Engineers

I reckon that I'd better "pick on" my own profession a bit, and unfortunately, there's a lot to pick on. More or less, I've far too often seen a tendency to believe whatever comes out of a statistical test--to "trust the data" rather than to "quibble over theory." Even worse, there is often something of an animosity between "theorists" and "experimentalists", as if the scientific method did not clearly note that hypotheses need to be tested in the lab or elsewhere.

My theory is that too many have forgotten that is really simply "natural philosophy," and thus have discarded many of the tools that Newton, Maxwell, Bernoulli, and others used; most notably logic and geometry. To object to results because of methodology ("is that sample representative?" "Is that the right fit, physically speaking?" ) is too often to open yourself up to ridicule.

In other words, too many engineers (and scientists) are more or less making decisions based on statistical noise. Not a good sign for our society, I think.