In general, people tend to be overconfident in their beliefs and too slow to incorporate new information. There is experimental evidence to back this up (pdf wa

In general, people tend to be overconfident in their beliefs and too slow to incorporate new information. There is experimental evidence to back this up (pdf warning: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Baruch_Fischhoff/publication/230726569_Knowing_with_certainty_the_appropriateness_of_extreme_confidence/links/00b4952b854b29281c000000.pdf http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Baruch_Fischhoff/publica...). I think this applies to engineers as well as anyone else.