Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research

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Summary: On the "Central Professional Responsibilities of Engineer"
Review: Litigation associated with engineering design has escalated enormously over the last few decades; such increases have intensified the debate surrounding the boundaries of legal liability versus social responsibility. [1] The engineer's role within this debate is the central focus of Caroline Whitbeck's chapter entitled "Central Professional Responsibilities of Engineers." In her chapter, she defines engineer's responsibility for safety, gives insight on the fundamental ideologies to achieve designs with safety integrated within and states the engineer's duty to place social responsibilities over the objectives of his/her employer.

Through citation of professional organizations, Whitbeck demonstrates an overwhelming popular view of safety as the engineer's top priority. She elaborates her demonstration by paraphrasing Shinzinger and Martin's comparison of engineers to medical practitioners [2] and furthers their notion through the comparison of the engineer's approach of system design to the admonition of physicians (i.e. "First do no harm"). However, Whitbeck dependence on the reader's connotative definition of safety weakens her argument, due to ambiguity . Thus, while her statements may demonstrate a need for prudence, such prudence becomes almost valueless without basis. For argumentative reasons, the William Lowrance definition as noted by Shinzinger and Martin[2] will be used within this critique .

Whitbeck notes that the acquisition of safety requires decisive action. She elaborates by noting several proactive techniques commonly practiced by engineers including hazard and operability analysis, fault-tree analysis and event-tree analysis. Whitbeck later illiterates that while these methodologies are effective, the fundamental limitation of the proactive approach is in unforeseeable nature of possible outcomes. Such limitations does not excuse the engineer's responsibility, rather it highlights the need for balance between the associated risk and the cost to reduce such risk. She thus concludes that the accurate assessment of risk versus cost is intrinsic to the assessment of safety. This conclusion is well aligned with the views of Martin, Schinzinger, and well supported by Theordore Glickman and Micheal Gough [3].

The placement of social responsibilities over the objectives of his/her employer, possibly Whitbeck's most controversial view, is supported by several professional code of ethics, papers and text. While the principle of social responsibility first is well accepted within the engineering community academically, the practice of such is complicated by individual needs for employment as well as the sociological consequence for such adherence. For this reason, the primary responsibility to society may be noble, though unrealistic in practice.

In conclusion, Caroline Whitbeck's chapter entitled "Central Professional Responsibilities of Engineers" focuses on the engineer's responsibility to safety, the methodologies to attain it and supports the view of social responsibility as foremost in the hierarchy of obligations. In doing so, she successfully express the central theme for which the chapter is entitled...