I'm actually very surprised by many of the posts here. I know that in the humanities advisors are often picked which are only partly related to the research que

I'm actually very surprised by many of the posts here. I know that in the humanities advisors are often picked which are only partly related to the research question. But I would have expected to find many more natural science/engineering PhD here. In those areas picking an advisor is directly linked to picking a topic, i.e. you pick the advisor because you want to work in his area of expertise.