Engineers are responsible experimenters

Engineers –Shared Responsibility
• Engineers are not the sole experimenters
• – Managers
• – Marketing people
• – Public
• But, “with knowledge comes responsibility”
• •Engineers are in a unique position to:
• – Monitor projects
• – Identify risks
• – Develop facts for informed consent
• An engineering professional will take on the
• responsibility!
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To fulfill their obligations as responsible
experimenters, engineers must:
• A Primary Obligation to protect the safety of human subjects,
providing a safe exit whenever possible, and respect their right of
informed consent
• use imaginative forecasting of possible side effects, and reasonable
efforts to monitor them
• have autonomous, personal involvement in all aspects of a project
• accept accountability for the results
• display technical competence and other attributes of responsible
professionals
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General responsibility of engineering as
society:
• Engineers are primarily considered as technical enablers or facilitators,
rather than being the sole experimenters.
• Engineers‘ responsibility is shared with management, the public and others.
• The other unique responsibility of engineers include monitoring projects,
identifying risks, providing customers and clients the required information
to make reasonable decisions.
• While exercising engineering duties, the engineers should display the virtue
of being morally responsible person
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General features of moral responsible
engineers:
• 1. Conscientiousness
• 2. Relevant information
• 3. Moral Autonomy
• 4. Accountability
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Responsible Experimentalists
• 1. Conscientiousness: Protect safety knowledge,
• respect right of consent of public
• 2. Relevant Information / Comprehensive perspective: Awareness of
experimental nature of projects, forecasting, monitoring
• 3. Moral autonomy: Personally engaged,
• thoughtful, involvement in project
• 4. Accountability: Accept responsibility for results
• of a project (avoid fragmentation, diffusion, time
• pressures)
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Conscientiousness:
• People act responsibly to the extent that they conscientiously commit
themselves to live according to moral values .
• Self interest
• Conscientiousness means commitment to live according to certain
values. It implies conscientiousness.
• Engineers have to be sensitive to a range of moral values and
responsibilities, which are relevant in a given situation.
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• · Also engineers should have the willing to develop the skill and
apply the effort needed to reach the best balance possible among
various considerations.
• · Open eyes, open s and an open mind‘ are required to evaluate a
given situation, its implication and to determine who are involved or
affected.
• · The primary duty of morally responsible engineers is to protect
the safety of human beings and respect their rights of consent.
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•Open eyes, Open ears and an Open mind are
required to recognize a given situation, its
implications and who is involved or affected.
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Working Conditions
• The contemporary ( modern or present) working conditions of
engineers tend a narrow moral vision solely to the obligations that
accompany employee status.
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Engineers work benefits
• 90% of engineers are salaried employees work in large
bureaucracies ( organizations or administrations ) under great
pressure to function smoothly within the organization
• Benefits :Prudent self interest and concern for one’s family  make it
easy to emphasize as primary the obligations to one‘s employer
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Moral aspiration (goal)
• Minimal negative duties:
• Not falsifying data
• Not violating patent rights
• Not breaching confidentiality
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Engineering as Social Experimentation
• Restores vision of engineers as guardians of the public interest 
professional duty it is to guard the Welfare and safety of those affected
by engineering projects .
• Engineers should not impose their own views of the social good upon
society
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Relevant information:
• Conscientiousness is impossible without relevant factual information.
• Engineers have to show the commitment to obtain and properly gauge all the
information related to meeting one‘s moral obligations.
• The two general ways of losing perspective on the context of one‘s work are
given below.
• 1. To grasp the context of one‘s work, one should be aware of implication
of that work.
• 2. To shifts the responsibility and blames the others in the organization.
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• Thus, conceiving engineering as social experimentation, it is important that
engineers act as responsible agents. The responsible agents require
• · Imaginative forecasting of possible bad side effects
• · The development of an attitude of ‗defensive engineering‘ and preventive
technology‘
• · Careful monitoring of projects and
• · Respect for people rights to give informed consent
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Example
• A company may produce items with obsolescence built into them ,
or the items might promote unnecessary energy usage
• It is easy to place the burden on the sales department : “Let them
inform the customers”
• It may be natural to thus rationalize one’s neglect of safety or cost
considerations , but it shows no moral concern.
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Moral autonomy:
• The moral autonomy is the ability to think critically and
independently about moral issues and apply this moral thinking to
situations that arise during the professional engineering practice.
• Moral Beliefs and attitudes basis of Critical reflection
• It is understood that an individual personality depends on the
integration of his moral benefits and attitude.
• When one‘s labour and skills are sold, then it is an illusion to think
that the person is not morally autonomous.
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• As an experimenter, an engineer has to undergo an extensive and
updated training to form his identity as a professional.
• There will be a personal involvement in one‘s work.
• The magnitude of moral autonomy to be experienced by engineering
is highly influenced by the attitude of company‘s managements.
• Where there is a treat for engineers‘ moral autonomy, then engineers
can look for moral support from their professional societies and
outside organization.
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ATTITUDE OF MANAGEMENT
• Plays a decisive (vital) role in how much moral autonomy engineers
feel they have.
• Long term interest
• Thoughtful &
• involvement in project
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Accountability:
• The term 'accountability‘ means being responsible, liable, answerable or
obligated.
• In proper terms, the accountability refers to the general tendency of being
willing to submit ones action to any type of moral scrutiny and be
responsive to others assessment.
• It involves a willingness to present morally convincing reason for ones
action and conduct.
• Morally responsible people are expected to accept morally responsibility for
their action.
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• According to Stanely Milgram, people are not willing to accept
personal accountability when placed under authority.
• There exist a lot of difference and separation between casual
influence and moral accountability in all professions including
engineering.
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• Because of modern engineering practices, the complication in accepting one‘s moral
accountability further worsened. Some of these situations are explained below:
•
• 1. Modern engineering projects involve teamwork, in which each members contributes a
small of personal accountability.
• 2. The modern organization are based on the principle of division of work‘. Due to this
division of work, the personal accountability also stretched within hierarchies of authority.
• 3. A preoccupation with legalities in a time of proliferating malpractice lawsuits.
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Engineers are responsible experimenters

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Engineers are responsible experimenters