So Maine is packed with neurotic extroverts, who are not only disagreeable, undisciplined and irresponsible, but uncreative and not intellectual?

Something smells funny to us. This appraisal, culled from an online survey of 3,540 Mainers over five years, runs counter to most generally understood, and apparent, qualities of what it means to live here.

Neurotic really means we care about things – perhaps too much. Maine has a long-standing history of impressive voter turnout, including first-in-the-nation status in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections.

Civic participation here is always high.

So if “neurotic” means “engaged,” which we think it does, the title is deserved. If it indicates, as it seems, we’re a bunch of worrywarts consumed about the trivial, they can keep it.

If anything, Mainers are most concerned with what’s important.

And as people with such strong positions and opinions, it’s little wonder we rank high on the “disagreeableness” scale. This is an outcome for any homogeneous group with differing social, economic, religious and political beliefs.

It could be why so many Mainers trend toward political independence. Our electorate, despite recent enrollment gains by Democrats and losses by Republicans, is still predominantly neither. There’s a history of putting people and policy over parties. If that makes Mainers “disagreeable,” fine.

We don’t care if you don’t like it.

But how about undisciplined, irresponsible and uncreative? Seems like hogwash on all fronts; maybe some of our dooryards are piled with stuff, but this is not indicative of lacking discipline or displaying irresponsibility.

It’s recycling.

These none-too-favorable adjectives also disagree (there’s that word again) with the reputation for the Yankee work ethic and ingenuity that is prevalent. Far too many Mainers work too hard, or too many jobs, for their living to allow the badge of “irresponsible” to go unchallenged.

What passes for creativity elsewhere might be different here. Artists come in several forms; Maine is home to plenty of the traditional variety, but also many others, in their own, homespun ways.

Some would say metal fabrication is an art form, or finding the right bottom to drop a lobster trap. Or fixing any combustion engine known to man. The old saying about art is not knowing what it is, but knowing it when you see it.

If the survey-masters really consider Mainers uncreative, we urge them to look around.

But it’s the nonintellectual title that stings. If true, Maine would neither attract nor produce so many scholars. We have some of the smartest representatives in Congress (some of whom are disagreeable and independent, to boot).

Lewiston just honored a Nobel Peace Prize winner and medical trailblazer, Dr. Bernard Lown. Generations of leaders have emerged from our universities and colleges. Noted authors Stephen King and David McCullough call Maine home. So does a former president with some pretty successful offspring – on the whole.

If that survey is believed, Maine swells with unfriendly yet outgoing yokels who don’t know a hard day’s work and aren’t smart enough to find it. This doesn’t sound right.

But maybe we’re just neurotic. Or, more likely, that survey is just plain wrong.