Ethical engineering work 5

[BigInch]

In a discussion in another forum I mentioned that I had recently decided not to work on a particular project as I was not convinced of its environmental soundness (locating an NGL plant on supposedly sensitive island when pleanty of space is available only a short distance to the mainland). One response was more or less of a nature suggesting, why not, money is nice". While I would generally agree that money is nice, surely there must be some limits in engineering work. Many nuclear scientists stopped working on certain projects in history, because it didn't fit into their view of the world's future. Is there an ethical limit to engineering work?

I'm curious about how other engineers view my decision and if they can envision themselves taking a similar decision based on environmental soundness, or some other reason. Is there a project that would cross your line and what might it be?

**********************
"Pumping accounts for 20% of the world’s energy used by electric motors and 25-50% of the total electrical energy usage in certain industrial facilities."-DOE statistic (Note: Make that 99% for pipeline companies)

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[KENAT]

Biginch, I would not work on landmines and cluster bombs in a situation where to do so was illegal.

However, I don't have ethical objections to them and so if in a country that hadn't signed up to those agreements would at least consider working on them, especially cluster bombs. In fact, depending on ones point of view, I may have tangentially worked one of them before the conventions were in place.

Then again I think both of those pieces of legislation were ill conceived by a bunch of do gooders that didn't really know what they were on about. If one of it's main proponents hadn't happened to die very publicly I wonder if they'd have even been adopted. I sometimes wonder if we learnt nothing from the Washington treaty and the other arms restriction agreements of the inter war period.

I have stood up to be counted on safety issues and like to think I'd do so again.

I’d probably have a hard time working for big tobacco. Also, while I’m not sure I can come up with a convincing logic for my stance, even if they weren’t illegal by most definitions I’d have a bit of trouble working on poison gases etc.

Either way, kudos for putting your money where your mouth is.

Though here’s one, if ever in the situation, is it more ethical to refuse a job you find ethically problematic and instead live on government welfare or some kind or another, or is it more ethical to take the job rather than sponging off the state, especially if you have dependants?

Hmm, wonder if I’ve said a bit too much for a public forum, hope I don’t come to regret it.

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[IRstuff]

I have observed that countries that are not directly in armed conflict involving their own country can afford to be all righteous with indignation, but when push comes to shove, they invariably sing a different tune.

This is no different than at the personal level. I might have an abstract objection to violence, but if my wife or children were threatened, I have no doubts as to what I might be willing to do to resolve the situation. People are also great at rationalizing, after the fact.

Note that the Ottawa Treaty only band anti-personnel mines, and many of the mine types mentioned heretofore are not banned in the treaty:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty

TTFN

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[BigInch]

Technicality. They all go boom.

**********************
"Pumping accounts for 20% of the world’s energy used by electric motors and 25-50% of the total electrical energy usage in certain industrial facilities."-DOE statistic (Note: Make that 99% for pipeline companies)

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

 

[graybeach]

I salute your decision BigInch and appreciate you bringing up this subject. Faced with a similar situation I might have done the same thing as you if I could. But, as has been pointed our, everything engineers do has impacts. In an effort to reduce them I try to always consider future inspectability and maintainability in my designs. But sometimes you just gotta hold your nose. I have participated in the design of several prestressed and post-tensioned concrete structures with full awareness that it might be a bear to deal with them 50-60 years down the road. How do you replace the deck of a segmental box girder bridge? Maybe it's karma but in my current job I oversee the upkeep of a massive 50 year old post-tensioned concrete girder viaduct. Everytime it gets a biennial inspection, there is another difficult structural problem to deal with. Someday, who knows when, we will have to replace the superstructure. Will I fight for a steel structure even it is more expensive? Hmm, something to think about.

 

[rowingengineer]

Kenat,
" is it more ethical to refuse a job you find ethically problematic and instead live on government welfare or some kind or another, or is it more ethical to take the job rather than sponging off the state, especially if you have dependents?"

Sounds like the old is it right to steal a loaf of bread to feed a staving child? Question then is - how big the loaf?.

Same with your question just how “ethically problematic” are we talking? If it was a 9/10 problem I would say going on the dole sounds like the way to go, however if it was a 2/10 I would work on spite the fact, anywhere in between 2/10 to 9/10 is grey.

Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in mud. After a while you realize that they like it

 

[btrueblood]

Like Kenat, my wife, and so tangentially myself, worked on cluster bomb delivery systems in a past life. I have no problems with the fact that these were used to kill a lot of people, or (more close to the truth) destroy a lot of materiel being used by those people who were actively engaged in "bad behavior". My personal rationalization was that the use, or threat of use, of weapons I may have helped design, may save the lives of a lot of neighbors and friends...and maybe some of those "civilian lives" in foregin countries too.

If I didn't like the situation the weapons were being used in, I would actively engage in the methods at hand to change that - write my congress critter, protest, write to the editor of the local paper...etc. Unlike the playgrounds of our youth, you can't just take your ball and go home in this game, you are in the game whether you like it or not.

Anybody who thinks they have never worked on something defense related just doesn't have enough imagination. Oil wells produce petroleum that is used to propel all of the neater war toys. Development of high strength alloys allows better armor-piercing ammunitions. R&D in plastics leads to lighter weapons that allow soldiers to carry more equipment, and therefore kill more people more quickly. Better bridge building techniques can allow heavier equipment to be deployed by armies, or conversely, the knowledge of those techniques can be used by those who would bring the bridges down. Ad infinitum. So, yeah, it's a matter of degrees.

But - I have no problem with anybody who refuses work on ethical grounds. I've done so too, although not at the level that BigInch talks about, more along the lines of Pat's post. We have to live with ourselves.

 

[btrueblood]

Oh, and the cluster bomb treaty is "in progress"...see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Cluster_Munitions

from there:

"The treaty allows certain types of weapons with submunitions that do not have the indiscriminate area effects or pose the unexploded ordnance risks of cluster munitions. Such weapons must meet strict criteria for a minimum weight, a limited number of submunitions, the capacity for each submunition individually to detect and engage a single target object and the presence of electronic self-destruct and self-deactivation mechanisms."

Those are/were the types of weapons my wife and I were helping to develop. They had self-destruct mechanisms built in, both to reduce civilian casualties but also to reduce hazards to occupying friendly troops. So I guess we are just a bit less tainted...legal on a technicality, eh?

 

[KENAT]

btrue, no fair, the 'tangential involvement' issue was my back up plan if I got any heat, you beat me to it. I checked too and I don't believe what I worked directly on falls in the currently banned list, though again, some definite tangential involvement with at least one maybe more that do.

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[BigInch]

Humm... Tangentials certainly are a problem. I'll have to introduce a level factor.
Cluster bombs = 100%,
Petroleum = 5% ??,
Petroleum Storage for Defence Ministry = 100%. Ought Oh.

**********************
"Pumping accounts for 20% of the world’s energy used by electric motors and 25-50% of the total electrical energy usage in certain industrial facilities."-DOE statistic (Note: Make that 99% for pipeline companies)

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

 

[patprimmer]

When it comes to weapons or items that have legitimate peaceful and military uses, the ethics lay with the user or those who ultimately control the user much more than the creator.



Regards
Pat
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[BigInch]

Looking back, it seems like ethical issues have been crossed with personal moral issues. I wonder if we can separate them?

**********************
"Pumping accounts for 20% of the world’s energy used by electric motors and 25-50% of the total electrical energy usage in certain industrial facilities."-DOE statistic (Note: Make that 99% for pipeline companies)

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

 

[KENAT]

I doubt it. To some extent what is ethical is dependant on what is moral. Ethical tending to pertain more to what is right or wrong according to your proffesion than personally.

I didn't take any great oath of ethics or the like at any point in my education or after graduation.

However, as I mentioned above I take safety very seriously, and I think I've mentioned before that I like to deal ethically with vendors and the like and so on and so forth.

If it's ethically wrong for an Engineer to work on weapon systems then there's a whole lot of folks you need to expell from engineering.

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[btrueblood]

Umm...no, BigInch you can't, or at least not easily. Every person has their own personal beliefs that drive a major part of what they call ethics. You wouldn't ask a Hindu to work in a Chicago stockyard/slaughterhouse (if such even still exists, but you get my drift).

 

[BigInch]

I'd hesitate to make it an ethical issue, unless there was a legal compication, such as working under a contract for items to be furnished to an "embargoed country", an item prohibited by some convention to which the host country has subscribed, etc., or maybe it could be something as apparently benign as designing a hotel for Cuba while being resident in the US. You can't buy cigars from there you know. It does seems like the solid line definitely starts where legal issues begin, if nowhere else, although "conflict of interest" would appear to be a rather soft line along that path.

**********************
"Pumping accounts for 20% of the world’s energy used by electric motors and 25-50% of the total electrical energy usage in certain industrial facilities."-DOE statistic (Note: Make that 99% for pipeline companies)

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

 

[stevenal]

While there may not be a solid distinction between ethics and morality, a starting place would be the engineering code of ethics. That said, how do engineers in munitions manage to follow the part about holding public safety paramount? Aren't the civilians of enemy or occupied nations not members of the public even we were to exclude the soldiers and terrorists?

 

[TDAA]

Safety for the user of those types of things. You do not want it to blow up on you. Where the bullet/bomb goes is up to the user, just like driving a car. Will an automotive engineer be put to the same scrutiny since it is not safe for a car to hit a pedestrian?

 

[KENAT]

OK, I'll bite.

What's this "engineering code of ethics" you're on about.

Is this one of those PE things.

In which case I'm bound to point out that most Defence work is in exempt industry.

As to the civilians V combatants I think Pat covered that. I could go out of my way to design something that is super accurate, super reliable, has a very well defined and small 'lethal' zone etc. However, if the user decides to send it into a schoolroom packed with children, civilians are going to get hurt.

When in the field I did my part for the public safety. Explosive devices are color coded so that people finding one can have a good idea of what it can do. It's not just bomb squad/EOD folks but even firemen, police and the like.

Some idiot Chartered Engineer (UK equivalent of PE) wanted to not follow this color coding to save a few cents per unit. He was the new golden boy who had the ear of management etc. I kicked up a stink, I wasn't going to knowingly let it happen, even if it didn't bode well for my career. I won out, though for a while I thought it wasn't going to do my career any favours.

Was the use of weapons by the allies to defeat Nazi Germany ethical, if so was the engineering of those weapons ethical? How about what other users of those weapons did with them? Shermans may have been developed to fight WWII but were used for many years afterwards by many countries, almost certainly in some less easily justifiable conflicts or internal repression.

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[BigInch]

A PE doesn't make ethics any more applicable IMO. Its something everyone has or hasn't. And I'm not so concerned about what the letter of the law of ethics says, if you can find it written down anywhere I doubt it would be any more clear than whatever you think it might mean anyway. It mostly translates into whatever your mother told you, or that old book, "Everything you need to know you learned in kindergarten." I was just trying to see amongst this community of engineers, if the line is heavy and thick, or if it was a wide spray painted grey line. So far, it seems to start as a faint blury grey line, and may or may not reach a solid edge, or a solid dashed line (line style #7 )perhaps depending on where you live. Although I don't understand the last part very much.

Thanks all for your opinions.

**********************
"Pumping accounts for 20% of the world’s energy used by electric motors and 25-50% of the total electrical energy usage in certain industrial facilities."-DOE statistic (Note: Make that 99% for pipeline companies)

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

 

[mauricestoker]

This sounds more like situational ethics. The line may fade or darken, depending on the crcumstance. I am against war, but reality dictates war is inevitable, and I am in favor of winning versus losing. I volunteered for deployment on Desert Storm-the 82nd Engineer BN kicked serious butt. I am in principle against war, I was proud of the combat engineers.

Is stealing different if it is stealing to feed your family, or stealing because you want another million dollars? Both are stealing. One may have a greater opprobrium attached, a moral matter. If stealing were legal, would that remove any ethical impediments? Slavery was once legal in this country, I would not consider it ethical treatment of other human beings.

Some times there is no resolution except for your sense of morality and responsibility. I worked in the middle east on five projects. The Host Nation law required mandatory fees, bakshish, to the Host Nation government representative. Federal law required compliance with Host Nation laws, and at the same time disallowed gratuities to Host Nation government representatives. The projects had to be completed or our soldiers would be sleeping and working in damaged facilities which were obviously unsafe. What would be the ethical thing to do?

I've quit a job, and I have turned down much higher paying jobs, over moral objections, and would do it again. Personally, I would not trust any person that took a job and stated it was against their ethical or moral code. If they would bend their ethics that far, it would be hard to tell how much further it could be bent.

 

[stevenal]

Not so much a PE thing as an engineering thing. Industry may be exempt from requiring PEs, but PEs in industry are not exempt from the code of ethics. And many engineers, registered or not, belong to engineering societies; most of which have codes. Similar wording in all of them. Try Google, and you will find them.