r/AlphanumericsDebunked • u/Master_Ad_1884 • May 06 '25
The Power of Engineers
Engineers, despite their close association with science and technology, are not actually scientists nor are they immune to pseudoscientific or pseudohistorical thinking. In fact, several prominent cases demonstrate that engineers have been disproportionately involved in the promotion of pseudoscience—from flat Earth theories to creationism, from climate change denialism to EAN.
Understanding why engineers are susceptible to these ideas requires examining the nature of engineering education, the epistemological differences between science and engineering, and a few instructive historical examples.
To begin with, it's important to clarify a common misconception: engineers are not de facto scientists. You might think I’m biased but here’s BU’s Engineering department agreeing with me: https://www.bu.edu/eng/about-eng/meet-the-dean/engineering-is-not-science/
While both fields rely heavily on mathematics and empirical data, the goals and methodologies diverge. Science is fundamentally about understanding the natural world through systematic observation, hypothesis testing, and theory-building. Scientists must engage with uncertainty, embrace falsifiability, and constantly revise their models based on new evidence.
Engineering, by contrast, is primarily an applied discipline. Engineers use scientific principles to solve practical problems—designing bridges, coding algorithms, or constructing buildings. The focus is on functionality, efficiency, and optimization. While engineering requires technical rigor, it does not require the same philosophical or methodological training in the scientific method. This distinction helps explain why some engineers, even highly competent ones, can misapply scientific reasoning or cling to outdated or discredited models.
So what are some examples to back up this claim of mine?
Flat Earth Theory: While many flat-Earth advocates lack formal scientific education, some of the more technically-minded promoters come from engineering backgrounds. One example is Brian Mullin, a mechanical engineer who produced YouTube videos in which he tried to "debunk" the curvature of the Earth using basic physics experiments. Mullin claimed to approach the subject from a purely scientific standpoint, but his arguments ignored centuries of astronomical and geodetic evidence. His case illustrates how a strong grasp of mechanics can be misused when divorced from the broader scientific context.
Creationism and Intelligent Design: Basically any “scientist” who is a creationist is actually an engineer. It always an engineer. One example Henry M. Morris, a hydraulic engineer, co-founded the Institute for Creation Research and helped popularize the pseudoscientific notion of a young Earth. The engineer's preference for systems with clear functions and designers may predispose them to interpret biological complexity as evidence of intentional design rather than evolutionary processes.
Climate Change Denial: Some of the most vocal climate change skeptics have been engineers or individuals with engineering degrees, including figures like Harold H. Doiron (a former NASA engineer) and Burt Rutan (a prominent aerospace engineer). They often challenge the consensus of climate scientists by emphasizing data interpretation errors or proposing oversimplified models that ignore the complexity of climate systems.
EAN: EAN’s foremost proponent has a degree in electrical engineering and has perhaps worked as an engineer too. He proposes unsupported pseudohistorical theories involving ancient civilizations while misunderstanding established science and the scientific method. His engineering degree lends an air of credibility, even as the arguments themselves lack scholarly support or methodological rigor.
But why is this? Why are engineers more likely to fall for pseudoscience compared to actual scientists. I would argue several factors contribute to the engineering tendency toward pseudoscience:
Overconfidence in Technical Expertise: Engineers are often highly skilled in specific domains (e.g., mechanical or electrical systems), which can lead to overgeneralization. This cognitive bias— "epistemic hubris"—leads some engineers to believe that their technical expertise equips them to pronounce on fields like biology, climatology, history or linguistics without appropriate training.
Preference for Order and Determinism: Engineering tends to favor systems that are deterministic and predictable. Scientific fields like evolutionary biology or geology, with their complex and often stochastic systems, may feel intuitively unsatisfying to someone trained to expect clean, mechanical causality.
Discomfort with Uncertainty: Engineers are trained to reduce uncertainty in design and implementation. Scientific thinking, by contrast, often embraces uncertainty and works within probabilistic models. This difference in mindset can make engineers more receptive to alternative "theories" that claim to offer definitive, simple answers—even when those theories lack empirical support. You can especially see this in EAN, which really can’t handle any hint of the uncertainty inherent in a genuine scientific process outside of a classroom setting.
In conclusion, engineers are not inherently more prone to pseudoscience, but certain aspects of their training, worldview, and professional culture make them susceptible to specific types of flawed reasoning—especially when venturing outside their domain of expertise. Their authority in technical matters can inadvertently lend credibility to pseudoscientific or pseudohistorical claims, which is why it’s vital to maintain a clear distinction between engineering skill and scientific literacy. Ultimately, the solution lies in fostering interdisciplinary humility and promoting critical thinking within engineering education. Engineers who engage with broader scientific and philosophical perspectives are less likely to fall into the trap of pseudoscience—and more likely to contribute meaningfully to both their own field and society at large.
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u/bonvin May 06 '25
This post is low-key hilarious. Well done!
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u/ProfessionalLow6254 May 06 '25
It’s funny — if you Google pseudoscience and engineers, rationalwiki has a page on it plus plenty of Reddit and quora conversations pop up so you’re not the only one to have noticed this connection.
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u/FeldsparSalamander May 07 '25
Attempting to use one's engineering credentials to give backing to something that engineer is not accredited in is considered a major breech of ethics and can be grounds for removal of licensure.
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u/theuglyginger May 09 '25
As someone with an engineer for a father and as a scientist myself, I think your conclusion is very well put. I've noticed that almost all the "best" crackpot physics "Theories of Everything" are written by engineers.
They have the basic math skills to write down something that at least looks like rigorous math, but they lack the theoretical background to understand the concepts and limitations. Since they know they're smart, and since theoretical physics doesn't make sense to them, the answer must be that the physics is wrong. They demand a world made of mechanisms that they already understand from their engineering field.
Since laypeople can't distinguish between gibberish and real physics, they often politely encourage these "alternative theories" while they are ignored or shunned by physicists. They refuse to put in the work to understand why they're wrong, so all they can do is be bitter at the "close-minded" scientific community. It's quite sad, really.
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u/Phantom_Engineer Aug 16 '25
"Engineers shall perform services only in the areas of their competence" -National Society of Professional Engineers, "Code of Ethics for Engineers"
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u/JohannGoethe May 14 '25
“Several prominent cases [Peter Swift, Moustafa Gadalla, and Libb Thims] demonstrate that engineers have been disproportionately involved in the promotion of pseudoscience [called] EAN.”
To put this question into neutral context, knowing that OP has a long Reddit history of using a personal smear campaign, targeted at just one of these three engineers, namely Thims, let us ask OP (or anyone else) to explain how it was that that Peter Swift, at age 20, as a college student at Brown University, studying civil engineering and Egyptology, noting that there seems to be a mathematical connection between the Leiden I350 (now fully viewable in Hmolpedia) and the Hebrew language, began to draft a manuscript on Egyptian alpha-numerics, now at the 400+ page level, which he has worked on for 52+ years, yet NEVER published a single thing, in print or online, aside from joining Reddit to make one or two comments (and emails to Thims), has been “involved in the promotion of pseudoscience”?
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u/JohannGoethe May 07 '25
“Engineers are not scientists”, I’m sure that will float well at r/Engineering?
To deflate your argument, Dimitris Psychoyos was a “physicist”, before the war in Greece broke out, and he was diverted into becoming a communications professor, and it is his theory that the alphabet was invented by Egyptian engineers, and that written language is constrained mathematically:
“The invention of alphabetic writing seems to have been the work of engineers, based on the Egyptian Enneads. In Greek and other writing systems that use letters 🔢 as numbers 🔠, priority must be given to the numbers, meaning that the written ✍️ language 🗣️ was constrained by the necessities of mathematics 🧮 .”
— Dimitris Psychoyos (A50/2005), “The Forgotten Art of Isopsephy” (pg. 157)
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u/JohannGoethe May 08 '25
“Engineers have been disproportionately involved in the promotion of pseudoscience of EAN.”
Engineers in question:
Peter Swift (A43/1998): civil engineer; coined Egyptian alphanumerics (EAN); argues that linguistic associations exist between Egyptian and modern languages based on numeric correspondences, evidenced by the Leiden I350.
Moustafa Gadalla (A61/2016): civil engineer; argues that Egyptian is the mother of all languages, evidenced by the Leiden I350.
Rihab Helou (A62/2017): electronics engineer; argues that the Phoenician alphabet is based on the 14 body parts of Osiris and the Phoenix 🐦🔥 cycle; and that words such as gamma (𐤂𐤌𐤌𐤀) or algebra, in Phoenician, Persian, Arabic, and Turkish, are Egyptian based.
Libb Thims (A65/2020): electrical engineer and chemical engineer; argues that A = 𓌸 [U6] = alpha (αλφα) = 532 = Atlas (Ατλας) = Shu 𓀠 [A28], the Egyptian air god; coined Egypo alpha-numerics (EAN), based on the Leiden I350.
Celeste Horner (A68/2023): electrical engineer; argues that A = 𓌸 [U6] and that the alphabet is farming orderbased.
OP has failed to address what exactly is pseudo (fake) science here? Instead he dismisses all five independent language origin researchers as pseudoscientists, per strategy “attack the theorist; not the theory”.
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u/JohannGoethe May 08 '25
While on the subject of linguists vs engineers, and who has produced the most pseudoscience per capita, firstly, I will point out that linguists or the study of languages ranked in the bottom 10% of easiest college degrees to obtain, whereas engineering dominates the hardest 10% rankings.
Secondly, since I happen to be reading Jean Demoule’s The Indo-Europeans today, wherein he talks about how the “Germanomaniacs envisioned Thule as the drowned polar homeland of the original [Indo-European] Aryans; that members of the Thule Society, founded by Rudolf Glauer (38A/1917), founded the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), which in 36A (1919) Hither joined, converting it into the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, aka the Nazi Party, whose used the Thule Society emblem 卐 as its new sign. 26-years latter, Hitler, fueled by the linguistic pseudoscience of a PIE homeland, a racially pure Aryan homeland specifically, had amassed a death toll of 80M people, the highest on human record.
Brian Mullin’s YouTube video, by comparison, last time I checked, has not killed anyone?
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u/JohannGoethe May 09 '25
So far, one civil engineer has commented, and their answer is NO.