[gumpzilla]

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1. I didn't spot anything that backed up at all the assertion that the mathy types were any better at using language skills particularly well or had much more of them. I mean, sure, we all can talk, but ... I don't think that's what's being "measured" here. The only assertion I saw was that those not in science/math fields had poor knowledge of science and math.

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It's anecdotal, sure, but I think it's true. The major reason is that nerds frequently still read literature for fun, but humanities types don't tend to bone up on the science.

If you want to push the discussion in a direction where it evens out, you could get into literary theory/criticism. But I don't think that's an apt comparison, because familiarity with lit crit isn't a prerequisite for learning basic language skills in the same way that learning Newton's laws is a prerequisite for learning physics. Going down those roads, I'd say the number of physicists familiar with literary criticism is greater than the number of poets familiar with quantum field theory.

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2. "High levels"

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For pretty much everybody but poets, the only language skill that matters is the ability to clearly convey meaning. I don't consider that to be a very high level of skill. But, if that's the metric for high levels of skill, then I still believe that many more scientists will have high levels of language skill than vice versa.