
This is the group that’s surprisingly prone to violent extremism - tdurden
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/17/this-is-the-group-thats-surprisingly-prone-to-violent-extremism/
======
panarky
From a Bayesian perspective, this story illustrates how ridiculous it is to
target Muslims for additional surveillance, or to stop accepting refugees from
Syria.

Let's say there are 500,000 people with the ability and intent to commit a
terrorist act. This includes 40,000 Daesh, 10,000 Boko Haram, the military
wings of Hezbollah and Hamas, Maoist rebels and Hindu nationalists in India,
Basque separatists, FARC in Colombia, neo-Nazis and other violent white
supremacists, etc.

So the Bayesian prior is something like 5e5 / 7e9 = 0.00007. Even if 70% of
terrorists are Islamic, with 1.6e9 Muslims, knowing someone is Muslim only
changes the posterior to about 0.0002. Since there are many non-Islamic
terrorists, this is probably overstated.

If the article is right that engineers are overrepresented among terrorists by
a factor of nine, then law enforcement would be more justified in targeting
engineers for investigation than they would be in targeting Muslims generally.

That's obviously ridiculous. The posterior is so low for both engineers and
Muslims that it would be a huge waste of time with an astronomical false-
positive rate.

Just looking at the math shows that these broad generalizations are useless.

------
MollyR
Really, saying engineers are more prone to terrorism. . . Talk about
misunderstanding causation and correlation.

I don't see people committing violent acts of terrorism in the name of
engineering.

~~~
MollyR
In reference to some of the comments below me. This article seems eerily
similar to this [http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-
chine...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chinese-
robbers/)

I stand by my early comment as well. As I don't think over representation of
engineers in terrorist groups suggests causation. It can easy be attributed to
another hidden variable such as the same culture that creates more engineers
also creates more terrorist candidates(not that I think it does).

~~~
richmarr
> ... It can easy be attributed to another hidden variable such as the same
> culture that creates more engineers also creates more terrorist candidates
> (not that I think it does).

There are plenty of problems in science, but I'm reasonably confident that a
researcher at Oxford, and his co-author, an associate professor, probably
understand the relationship between correlation and causation.

From the abstract of their paper in the European Journal of Sociology they
hypothesised and then tested multiple hypotheses before arguing for a likely
cause.

~~~
MollyR
I am not a fan of an appeal to authority, because I've seen people do worse in
biomedical research.
[http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30534674](http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30534674)

but I haven't read the original paper either.

So here is a link to the abstract for curious people.
[http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...](http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=6607832)

I can't actually find the full article. So I'm going to refrain from
commenting on it.

~~~
richmarr
According to abstract of their paper, these two researchers hypothesised and
then tested several possible explanations of the observed correlation.

That fact alone disproves your claim that they mistook correlation for
causation.

The article also discusses a third factor.

~~~
MollyR
If you get me the actual paper, I might change my mind. Without more
information from the actual whole paper, I'm not going to update my reasoning.

I've seen it numerous times in psychology and sociological papers. I've even
seen biologists mistake correlation and causation in their own experiment. As
being part of the scientific community, I was forced to read tons and tons of
retraction papers by my PI (principal investigator).So again I'm holding out
until I get the actual paper, and I standby my skepticism.

~~~
richmarr
Sorry, unless I'm missing something your reasoning is faulty.

You don't need to read the paper to see that their method involved looking and
testing hidden variables, disproving your assertion that they mistook
correlation for causation.

You may disagree with their conclusion, but their method disproves your
accusation.

~~~
MollyR
Typically papers have a section called "Materials and Methods".

[http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/scientific-
papers-1...](http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/scientific-
papers-13815490)

Not having seen this part of their paper. I can't really conclude anything,
but stay skeptical based on outside prior information.

~~~
richmarr
Note how you completely avoided addressing my point.

>...stay skeptical...

Well, no, skepticism is withholding judgement pending evidence. You judged
them and found them guilty without waiting for evidence. That's cynicism.

~~~
MollyR
Actually I asked for the paper with the evidence. Still don't have it. I also
gave prior evidence of academic failures, one of many that inform my thoughts
on the matter.

It seems you are trying to puts words in my mouth,and trying to use an appeal
to authority, ignoring my point about bad academic research which informs my
skepticism, and avoiding the actual papers methods and materials issue.

Finally I'm not sure what you mean by the cynicism comment but a quick google
search showed cynicism: inclination to believe that people are motivated
purely by self-interest; skepticism.

~~~
richmarr
If you're willing to argue that cynicism and skepticism are synonyms then I
really can't be bothered talking to you. Cheerio.

------
irickt
Quotes Friedrich von Hayek: "[people with engineering training] react
violently against the deficiencies of their education and develop a passion
for imposing on society the order which they are unable to detect by the means
with which they are familiar."

------
lostmsu
The study itself is behind the paywall, so there's no actual data to discuss.
It would be very funny, if the study result was actually produced by a gender
difference, rather than a profession.

