It’s not just Michael Rappaport’s character in Higher Learning. From Usama bin Laden to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, there’s an overlap between engineers and terrorists that the mainstream media just refuses to discuss. It’s up to brave truthtellers like the Sphere’s Russell Berman to penetrate the cant that the media wants you to accept about engineerofascism. Berman reports on an academic study by European sociologists Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog who reject the politically correct explanations that engineers just have skill sets valuable to terrorists:

The authors instead conclude that the phenomenon is explained by a combination of mindset and professional circumstance. Citing studies finding that engineers as a group are more politically conservative than other professions, Gambetta and Hertog write that engineers by nature are more likely to be drawn to the kind of rigid, hierarchical worldviews that radical Islam provides: Their governing mentality “inclines them to take more extreme conservative and religious positions everywhere.” What’s more, although engineering is considered an elite profession in Middle Eastern countries, the region’s job market for engineers dried up during the economic crises of the 1970s and ’80s, frustrating that era’s recent graduates and driving them to radicalize.

That’s science fact. Engineers are three to four times more likely to be terrorists as other recipients of advanced degrees. But watch the engineer lobby try to put the wool over your eyes:

“It’s baffling,” said Larry Jacobson, the executive director of the National Society of Professional Engineers, which counts about 45,000 members across the country.

These people need to have their phones tapped and their places of business monitored.