It is completely inexcusable that people in STEM fields are so reactionary, considering how capitalism utterly destroys science.
If universities were actually "left wing indoctrination factories" like the right thinks they are, every STEM grad would be taught, for example, what Kropotkin had to say about innovation.
I like to make the distinction between scientists and engineers. I think that because of the sheer amount of money pushed onto engineers, they can often become more reactionary simply because they are sucessful under capitalism (this is of course a generalisation). Another problem is the influence of the defense industry and other morally bankrupt industries at universities, on more than one occassion I've heard people express their desire to build weapons and drones for the defence industry. What the fuck. On the other hand I think that many scientists are more left wing because they see how privitisation of industry and government budget priorities have wreaked havoc for science. As well as this, scientists get paid significantly less than engineers, which is almost certainly a factor (again, somewhat anecdotal). My biggest issue with STEM is the idolotry of Elon Fucking Musk. Musk is one of the biggest pieces of shit in the world and I can't say what I would like to see happen to him.
Engineers, as applied scientists, are also not trained to do the scientific method, they're trained to apply already accepted scientific principles, so it tends to attract a completely different type of person than hard science does.
For applied scientists, they're used to treating science like religion: edicts handed down from on high.
Which is good when you're building a bridge, not so much when you want society to improve a little and get "BUT IT WAS ALWAYS DONE THIS WAY".
As a personal anecdote, spending the first year and half or so of my post-education career as a quality engineer helped radicalize me, one of the major reasons being it's one of the few engineering positions (when done correctly) that encourage questioning the status quo. You are always doing analysis and "5 Whys" and the like to get down to root causes. I eventually went, "what happens if I applied this philosophy to my understanding of society?" And here we are now.
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