Are you a “Genealogy Detective” or a “Genealogy Engineer”?

At a conference a while back, I noticed how many of the presenters were engineers. That got me thinking about how engineering skills help in genealogical research. Then I wondered if genealogists might be more like engineers than detectives.

Usually, genealogists think of themselves as detectives. That makes sense as we interview people, dig through records, and scan for the smallest details of an ancestor’s life. We try to connect the dots and align different versions of an ancestor’s life to establish the truth. We use timelines. We look for good quality resources to use in our exhaustive searches. We focus on including the largest and the tiniest details to build our case.

Engineers and detectives use similar practices in their work. Detecting is certainly a part of engineering. Like detectives, engineers stay focused on a problem. Engineers also bring all the resources that they can to bear on solving a problem. In flight test engineering, I have had to research a system and all its details, employ strategies to compare and combine feedback, and interview participants to solve problems.

Engineers know when to use an estimate and move on with the bigger problem. They keep a list of assumptions and revisit the estimates to make sure that they remain reasonable. Seeing the similarities then brought me think about the differences between detectives and engineers.

How are detectives and engineers different?
I asked several friends what they saw as the difference between detectives and engineers. There were interesting themes that emerged. While there are different goals in their work, engineers and detectives employ a similar skillset.

However, detectives are limited to interpreting the facts in front of them, and engineers look at what can be built using what is available. Engineers look to the future and have to consider safety.

A case for being a “Genealogy Engineer”
Engineers have to look backward to analyze requirements, solve a problem, then look forward to prevent the problem from happening again.

Like an Engineer: In genealogy, we want our conclusions to be relevant in the future. We also do not want to make the same mistake twice.

Detectives can usually go into the field to observe clues. Sometimes engineers don’t get this luxury. They are told what went wrong and have to figure it out without touching the original system. In flight testing some reports simply cannot be duplicated on the ground. It can take a good amount of research, dissection and imagination to figure out what caused these problems.

Like an Engineer: Until there are time machines, we cannot return to an ancestor’s lifetime to view all the facts right after they occurred.

Engineers focus on reproducibility. An example of this was in the recent series about Tesla and his Death Ray. After the engineer proved that a scale model of the death ray would work to destroy a flying drone, his first thought was to see if he could have the same results again. (Spoiler: he did!)

Like an Engineer: Given the same information, would other genealogists reach the same conclusion? If you reanalyze all the information starting over, would your conclusions be reproducible?

Result: Perhaps, I am more of a genealogy engineer.

Special thanks to: David, Dave, Andrea, Beth, Deb and Mark for your insights.