Engineering as Experimentation

Introduction

• Technology products pose risks regardless of careful design and usage
• Engineering is inherently risky and experimental
• Experimentation at the social level calls for safety mechanisms during product failure, known as a 'safe exit'
• Engineering projects involve technology development, humans, and a social scale

4.1 Engineering as Experimentation

• Experimentation plays a key role in design
• Design is iterative, conducted via trial designs and modifications based on test feedback
• Further tests occur during production until a finished product is achieved
• Each engineering project can be viewed as an experiment

4.1.1 Similarities to Standard Experimentation

• Ignorance: Engineering tasks are carried out with partial ignorance and uncertainty
  • Abstract models cannot perfectly simulate real-world conditions
  • Manufacturing introduces variation
  • Actual field conditions for the product are often unexpected
• Unpredictability: The outcomes of engineering projects is unknown
  • The design might fail to fulfil its purpose
  • The design may produce unintended consequences
  • The design may be used for unanticipated purposes
  • Entirely unpredicted side effects may occur
• Novelty: Effective engineering uses the the knowledge gained before and after product release
  • New products need monitoring
  • Need to be tested under client use

4.1.2 Learning from the Past

• Engineers must learn from past failures and successes

• Problems include limited communication; misplaced pride; reluctance to ask for information; and fear of litigation

• To avoid these, learn from workers; do calculations to check long calculations; be informed and exchange ideas

• Examples

  • The Titanic disaster occurred because of a lack of lifeboats
  • A bridge collapse in Sweden, due to lack of impact protection, killed eight in 1980 but a 1993 Bayou Canot bridge collapse that cost 43 lives revealed a lack of engineers using knowledge from previous failures
  • The Milford Haven Bridge Wales collapse in 1966 caused the bridge builder in Australia, to have a partial collapse as well that killed 33 and injured 19
  • Valves were a key part of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor incident on March 28, 1979

4.1.3 Contrasts with Standard Experiments

• Engineering differs from standard experimentation

• Differences highlight special responsibilities and impacts moral responsibility

• The three key constrasts are Experimental Control, Informed Consent, and Knowledge Gained

• Experimental Control

  • Typical test groups subjected to a test, treatment, or special situation whilst another is the control
  • Engineering 'experimentation' happens in real world
  • No randomization is possible

• Informed Consent

  • Experiment on societal scale impact human subjects
  • Real persons are involved, and engineers have a moral duty of care to protect their safety and welfare
  • Must ensure the freedom of choice of the subject involved
  • Subjects have fundamental more and legal rights to know about risks and possible consequences
  • Amounting to an ethical responsibility to respect certain rights
    • knowledge
    • Voluntariness
    • Voluntarily undertaken risks
    • Involuntary risks
  • Valid informed consent basics
    • Consent must be given voluntarily
    • Consent is based on all required and requested information
    • Consenter is competent to make the decision
    • All information has been presented clearly and distributed widely
    • If group consent is involved, the proxies fairly represent the like subjects

• Knowledge Gained

  • Experiments aim to generate new knowledge, but engineering experimentation prepares for unexpected outcomes
  • Science discovers something entirely new
  • Engineering intends to confirm existing knowledge

4.2 Engineers as Responsible Experimenters

• Engineers share responsibility for technology with management, government, and the public

• They can monitor projects, identify risks, and share data for responsible public decisions

• Defining characteristics are:

  • Commitment to moral values
  • A comprehensive perspective
  • Autonomy
  • Accountability

Engineers as Responsible Experimenters - Style of Engineering

• Conscientiousness:
  • Obligation to protect the safety of human subjects
  • Respect right of consent
  • People act responsibly to moral values instead of self-interest
  • Encompasses sensitivity and using time, effort, and money to strike a moral balance
  • Conscientiousness includes open eyes, ears, and mind.
  • Contemporary conditions of engineers can narrow view of obligations
• Comprehensive perspective:
  • Conscientiousness is a blind without knowledge
  • Moral concern requires assessing information related to moral obligations
  • Grasp the context of one's work by doing a moral import
• Moral autonomy:
  • People are morally autonomous when moral conduct and principles of action belong to them
  • As experimenters, engineers have a core professional identity
  • Responsible people accept moral responsibility
• Accountability:
  • Accountability = disposition of one’s actions
  • This could be something someone seeks to develop
  • It’s not the "overly narrow sense of culpable"

Accountability

• Tendency to separate causal influence from moral accountability in engineering
• Causal responsibility and moral responsibility do not always fall on the same individuals
• Causal influence leads to moral accountability
• Issues include:
  • Fragmented work
  • Loss of an awareness.
  • Overemphasis on legality
• Remedy to have those embrace work

A Balanced Outlook on Law

• Regulations for professions are becoming more numerous and specific
• Complaints and efforts to deregulate are there
• Calls for new laws arise always
• Emphasize law can cause conduct issues
• Problems in engineering fostered with minimal existence and compliance
• People searching for loopholes over the spirit of the law
• Standard specifications is convenient, but perpetuates a "handbook" type of thinking
• Society’s attempts at regulations have succeeded
• Laws offer:Reasonable and enforceable safety measures.
• Support and defense.
• Precise rules with safety

A Balanced Outlook on Law Final Points

• Rules must not attempt to cover the outcomes, nor the courses of action needed

• Regulations should be broad

• Hold engineers accountable for designs and designs

• Through engineers professional societies they should also play an active role in establishing (or changing) enforceable rules and enforcement

• Conclusion: Reasonable sanctions can be part of engineering, but they don’t replace the full substance of ethics

Industrial Standards

• Ensure that stated criteria for interchangeability and quality

• Serving interchange of components and substituting for lengthy design specifications

• Examples

  • Automobile tire sizes.
  • Computer protocols

• Standards origin

  • Companies use for in-house
  • Trade associations use for industry-wide

• Standards types

  • Accuracy
  • Interchangeability for uniforms
  • Safety and reliability to prevent injury
  • Product quality for price of goods
  • Personnel quality of tasks

Industrial Standards - Final points

• Value of Standards
  • Helps manufactures achieve competitive
  • Allow clients to own and operate safe products
• Problems with standards include:
  • over specification
  • serving only a few interests
  • failure to have creative
  • Seduction

Safe Exits

• Engineered products can involve risks
• Provision for a safe exit is a must
  • Safe Exits: procedures ensuring that a product fails safely and it does not put the public at risk

4.3 The Challenger Disaster

• Relate this discussion of engineering as social experimentation towards the space shuttle program explosion

• What caused the disaster?

• What went wrong ethically?

• Who is at fault for this?

• Was there some ethical misconduct?

• "to take off you engineering hat and put on the management hat".

• The three main engines depended upon liquid hydrogen; fuel is carried in a external,fuel tank

• There are two booster rockets that depend upon rocket design

• Casing of each booster rocket is assembled at the launch site.

• The four field joints use pairs of O-rings seals

• The O-rings assist zinc chromide

• Allan J. McDonald, worried about temps

• Temperature predictions for the night. As his firm's director, he know of cold weather joint issues

• NASA reps conferred that this poses as a safety issue

• They were to consult for the cold temperatures

• Thompson and Boisjoly had launch plans that may cause erosion

• Issue was the entire temperature history and increase distress

• Top execs of Morton were in on teleconference

• Jerry Mason told Lund to show executive over engineer, to have a smooth contract

• Official finding showed The engineers' judgment was not serious

• McDonald refused launch which lead to an accident

• The engineers were on their game to avoid the wreck, yet the accident occurred and crew had a fatal collision

• No launch consensus of an expert caused the issue. In several respects the ethical issues in the Challenger case resemble those of other such cases. Concern for safety gave way to institutional posturing. Danger signals did not go beyond Morton-Thiokol and Marshall Space Flight Center in the Challenger case. No effective recall was instituted.