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THE ETHICALLY
RESPONSIBLE
ENGINEER

IEEE Press
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Piscataway, NJ 08854
IEEE Press Editorial Board
Tariq Samad, Editor in Chief
George W. Arnold Vladimir Lumelsky Linda Shafer
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Mary Lanzerotti Ray Perez George Zobrist
Kenneth Moore, Director of IEEE Book and Information Services (BIS)
Technical Reviewer
Yogeshwarsing Calleecharan, Ph.D., University of Mauritius, Mauritius

THE ETHICALLY
RESPONSIBLE ENGINEER
Concepts and Cases
for Students and
Professionals
Robert McGinn
Stanford University

Copyright © 2015 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. All rights reserved
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN: 978-1-119-06019-2
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Carol and Dick, Jan and Howard, Kris and Steve, and Wanda and Joe;
in appreciation of abiding friendship.

CONTENTS
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
1 THE ETHICS GAP IN CONTEMPORARY ENGINEERING 1
1.1 Two Vignettes 1
1.2 The Gap Between Education and Experience 2
1.3 Evidence 3
1.4 Importance 5
1.5 Unfruitful Approaches to Bridging the Gap 7
Requiring a Typical Philosophy-Department Ethics Class 8
Integrating Ethics Study into Technical Engineering Classes 8
1.6 Preferred Approach 10
2 SOCIOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL PRELIMINARIES 11
2.1 Sociology of Engineering 12
2.2 Engineering Society Codes of Ethics 15
3 THE FUNDAMENTAL ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF
ENGINEERS 21
3.1 An Ethical Responsibilities Approach 21
3.2 Ethical Issues and Harm 22
3.3 The Fundamental Ethical Responsibilities of Engineers 25
FERE1 27
FERE2 32
FERE3 32
FERE4 33
4 SIXTEEN CASE STUDIES OF ETHICAL ISSUES IN
ENGINEERING 37
4.1 Introduction 37
vii

viii CONTENTS
4.2 Case Studies 39
Case 1: The Cadillac “DeVille”/“Seville” Engine-Control
Chip (1990–1995) 39
Case 2: SDI Battlefield Management Software (1983–1985) 45
Case 3: Collaborative Research Practices at Bell
Laboratories (1997–2002) 52
Case 4: The Apple “Newton MessagePad” (1990–1993) 60
Case 5: An Employee Database Management System 65
Case 6: The “Citicorp Center” Tower (1970–1978) 70
Case 7: The Union Carbide MIC Plant in Bhopal
(1970–1984) 81
Case 8: The Space Shuttle “Challenger” (1983–1986) 98
Case 9: A Composite-Material Bicycle Project (1989–1992) 110
Case 10: Nanotechnology R&D (1985–present) 121
Case 11: The Ford “Pinto” (1969–1972) 132
Case 12: Topf & Sons: Crematorium Ovens for the Nazi SS
(1939–1945) 138
Case 13: TRW and the US Ballistic Missile Defense System
(1995–2003) 149
Case 14: The Kansas City “Hyatt Regency” Hotel Walkways
(1979–1981) 158
Case 15: The Manhattan “Westway” Project (1974–1985) 170
Case 16: Product Design for Kenya (1991–present) 186
5 ETHICAL ISSUES AND SITUATIONAL FACTORS
CONDUCIVE TO MISCONDUCT 197
5.1 Specific Ethical Issues Raised in the Case Studies 198
5.2 General Engineering-Related Ethical Issues 207
5.3 Specific Situational Factors Involved in Misconduct in the
Cases 208
5.4 General Situational Factors Conducive to Engineering
Misconduct 214
6 KEY IDEAS AND LESSONS OF THE CASES 217
6.1 The Leading Precept of Most Current Codes of Engineering
Ethics 217
6.2 The FEREs 218

CONTENTS ix
6.3 Ethics and the Sociology of Contemporary Engineering 219
6.4 An Ethically Problematic Pattern of Engineering Practice 220
6.5 Conditions for Whistle-Blowing to be an Engineer’s Ethical
Responsibility 220
6.6 Risk and the Idealization of Technology in Society 221
6.7 Ethical Responsibility and the Culture of the Engineering
Workplace 222
6.8 Codes and Regulations: Letter, Spirit, and Ethics 223
6.9 An Overlooked Ethical Responsibility of Engineers 223
6.10 An Engineering Professional 224
6.11 Radical Engineering Design and the Ethics of Precaution 225
6.12 Normalizing Risk and Routinizing the Experimental 226
6.13 Technology Transfer and Ethical Responsibility 227
6.14 “Two Cultures” and Ethical Responsibility 228
6.15 Decontextualization 228
6.16 The Politicization and Economization of Engineering
Decision-Making 229
6.17 Negligence 229
6.18 Workplace Culture and the Ethically Responsible Engineer 230
7 RESOURCES AND OPTIONS FOR ETHICALLY
RESPONSIBLE ENGINEERS 233
7.1 Organizational Resources 234
7.2 Legal Resources and Options 238
7.3 Employment-Related Options 241
8 CONCLUSION 245
8.1 Bucciarelli’s Critique of US Engineering-Ethics Education 245
8.2 A Foundational-Contextual Ethical Responsibilities Approach 249
8.3 Two Quotes 252
Bibliography 255
Index 267

PREFACE
It is time for the study of ethical issues in engineering to become an integral
part of engineering education.
Reflecting that conviction, the main goal of this book is to help engineer-
ing students and practicing engineers enhance their understanding of ethical
issues that arise in engineering practice. Through reading it, they will hopefully
become better able to recognize a wide range of ethical issues in engineering
work and to think about them in a critical, context-sensitive way. A secondary
goal of this book is to raise awareness of technical, social, and personal charac-
teristics of engineering situations that can induce or press engineers to engage
in misconduct.
Some books on engineering ethics devote considerable space to classical
ethical theories. The real-life case studies they contain are often described and
discussed in cursory fashion. Other books on engineering ethics are anthologies
of actual cases, each analyzed by a different author with her/his own approach.
Still others are multi-author hybrids, combining case studies of real-life episodes
with philosophical essays on concepts or principles relevant to engineering
ethics. Few show a practical, foundational approach to exploring ethical issues
in engineering being brought to bear on a wide range of real-life cases. The
bulk of this book is devoted to case studies of ethical issues in engineering
work. Fundamental ethical responsibilities of engineers are applied to real-
life engineering situations to shed light on engineers’ context-specific ethical
responsibilities.
Engineering students and practicing engineers who read this book with care
will acquire intellectual resources useful for coming to grips with ethical issues
in real-life engineering situations. These resources should also prove useful
to engineering students and practicing engineers for grappling with whatever
ethical issues confront them in the future.
Robert McGinn
Stanford University
xi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many individuals have supported my work on engineering ethics over the
past two decades. Colleagues in the Stanford School of Engineering who helped
me in various ways include Brad Osgood, Steve Barley, Sheri Sheppard, Eric
Roberts, Walter Vincenti, James Adams, and David Freyberg. Engineering stu-
dents in E131 (“Ethical Issues in Engineering”) offered valuable feedback on
several cases explored in this book.
In 2003, James Plummer, then Dean of the Stanford School of Engineering,
put me in touch with staff engineers and scientists at the Stanford Nanofabri-
cation Facility (SNF). The studies that resulted altered my approach to engi-
neering ethics. Sandip Tiwari of Cornell University, former Director of the
National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN), Yoshio Nishi, for-
mer SNF Faculty Director, and Roger Howe, SNF Faculty Director and Director
of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN), supported my
research on nanotechnology-related ethical issues. Mary Tang, SNF Lab Man-
ager, improved and facilitated my surveys of nanotechnology researchers’ views
about ethical issues related to their work.
Stephen Unger of Columbia University kindly read a draft version of the
text and offered helpful feedback. He also generously shared an explanation,
a suggestion, and an example that have been incorporated into the text. My
longtime research collaborator and virtual colleague Rafael Pardo Avellaneda
of the Spanish National Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Cientı́ficas, CSIC) in Madrid made many helpful suggestions on survey design
and data analysis. Howard and Janice Oringer, Mathieu Desbrun, Richard Her-
man, Alan Petersen, and Roya Maboudian afforded me opportunities to present
early versions of parts of this work before audiences at Cal Tech, the Univer-
sity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Spectra-Physics, and the University of
California, Berkeley. Finally, I am indebted to five anonymous reviewers for
constructive criticisms and suggestions.
Palo Alto, California
xiii

1
THE ETHICS GAP IN
CONTEMPORARY ENGINEERING
1.1 TWO VIGNETTES
During the night of December 2–3, 1984, the worst industrial disaster in history
occurred at Union Carbide’s plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. Methyl
isocyanate (MIC) liquid, an intermediate used in making “Sevin,” Union Car-
bide’s name for the pesticide carbaryl, came into contact with water, boiled
violently, and turned into MIC gas. Unchecked by various safety systems, tons
of highly toxic MIC gas escaped from storage tank E610.1 A cloud of MIC gas
descended upon shantytowns just outside the plant, as well as on Bhopal city.
Estimates of the death toll from exposure to the gas, immediately or in the first
2 weeks, range from 2000 to 8000 or more. If those who died months or years
later from MIC exposure are counted, the death toll rises to between 20,000 and
30,000.2
More than 500,000 people suffered injuries from exposure to the gas
and its effects on the environment.3
1
Tank E610 contained 42 metric tons of MIC. Estimates of how many tons of MIC gas escaped
into the air range from “approximately 27 tons” (Cullinan, 2004) to “some 40 tons” (Peterson,
2009a).
2
“Bhopal disaster,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster and Edwards (2002).
3
“Bhopal disaster,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
The Ethically Responsible Engineer: Concepts and Cases for Students and Professionals, First Edition. Robert McGinn.
© 2015 The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
1

2 THE ETHICS GAP IN CONTEMPORARY ENGINEERING
In February 1992, I attended a conference on professional ethics at the
University of Florida, Gainesville. On the shuttle bus to the conference hotel,
the only other passenger turned out to be a chemical engineer. I asked him
whether there was any consensus in the chemical engineering community about
what had caused the Bhopal disaster. His response was immediate and succinct:
“sabotage.” Union Carbide has given the same explanation for almost three
decades and continues to do so on its website.4
About 14 months after the Bhopal disaster, on January 28, 1986, the US
space shuttle Challenger exploded and disintegrated 73 seconds after launch
from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The entire crew perished: six astronauts
and Christa McAuliffe, the first “Teacher in Space.”5
President Ronald Reagan appointed the late Arthur Walker Jr., at the time a
faculty member at Stanford University, to serve on the Presidential Commission
on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. Reagan charged the Commission with
determining the cause of the accident. In late 1986, after it had submitted its final
report, I ran into Professor Walker on the Stanford campus and invited him to
give a talk about his Commission experience to a faculty seminar on technology
in society. After his talk, I asked Walker what was the single most important
lesson to be learned from the Challenger disaster. He responded instantly: “Hire
smarter engineers!”
1.2 THE GAP BETWEEN EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE
The responses quoted in these vignettes are simplistic. The tragic engineering
outcomes involved cannot be explained as simply as those succinct replies sug-
gest. The explanations probably reflect the educational backgrounds of those
who offered them. Few intending engineers (or scientists) ever take ethics or
4
See http://www.unioncarbide.com/history. On the company’s historical timeline, the item for
“1984” reads, “In December, a gas leak at a plant in Bhopal, India, caused by an act of sabo-
tage, results in tragic loss of life.” See also http://www.bhopal.com/union-carbide-statements. It
reads, “Shortly after the gas release, Union Carbide launched an aggressive effort to identify the
cause. Engineering consulting firm, Arthur D. Little, Inc., conducted a thorough investigation.
Its conclusion: The gas leak could only have been caused by deliberate sabotage. Someone pur-
posely put water in the gas storage tank, and this caused a massive chemical reaction. Process
safety systems had been put in place that would have kept the water from entering into the tank
by accident.” On Union Carbide’s sabotage theory, see Weisman and Hazarika (1987), “The-
ory of Bhopal Sabotage Is Offered”; Peterson (2009), pp. 9–11; and “Bhopal disaster” (2014),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster, Sections 4.2 and 4.3.
5
Besides the loss of human life, the harm caused by this accident had a financial com-
ponent. According to NASA, “the Space Shuttle Endeavor, the orbiter built to replace the
Space Shuttle Challenger, cost approximately $1.7 billion.” http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/
about/information/shuttle_faq.html#1

EVIDENCE 3
social science classes that focus on engineering (or science) projects or prac-
tices. They are therefore predisposed to attribute the outcomes of destructive
engineering episodes to technical failures or to clear-cut, non-technical factors.
The latter include individual cognitive shortcomings, such as “mediocre intellec-
tual capability on the part of project engineers,” and individual political motives,
such as “vengeful sabotage by a disgruntled employee.”
Part of the appeal of such explanations is that they point to problems that
can be readily “solved” by making specific changes, for example, hiring smarter
engineers and screening potential employees more rigorously. Engineers who
never took ethics or social science classes closely related to engineering endeavor
rarely consider the possibility that some harmful engineering episodes may
be partly attributable to ethically problematic conduct on the part of engineer
participants. They also rarely consider the possibility that social, technical, or
personal features of the often complex contexts involved can set the stage for
and elicit such conduct.
Not only does contemporary engineering practice pose many ethical chal-
lenges to engineers, engineers are rarely adequately prepared to grapple with
them in a thoughtful manner. There is an “ethics gap” in contemporary engi-
neering, that is, a mismatch or disconnect between the ethics education of
contemporary engineering students and professionals, and the ethics realities of
contemporary engineering practice. One purpose of this book is to help narrow
that gap.
1.3 EVIDENCE
Is there evidence of a gap between engineering ethics education for engineering
students and the ethics realities of contemporary engineering practice? If there
is, does it suggest that the gap is substantial? Consider the following.
Between 1997 and 2001, I surveyed Stanford undergraduate engineering
students and practicing engineers about two topics: the study of engineering-
related ethical issues in undergraduate engineering education, and the presence
of ethical issues in engineering practice.6
Of the 516 undergraduate engineering majors who answered the question
and ventured an opinion,7 about 17 of every 20 (86.1%) indicated they expected
to face ethical issues or conflicts in their engineering careers.8 But how well did
respondents believe that their education had prepared them to deal “thoughtfully
6
McGinn (2003).
7
147 engineering majors did not respond because they did not plan to become practicing engineers;
28 others indicated they had no opinion.
8
Ibid., p. 521.

and effectively with such ethical challenges as they might encounter”? A meager
14.2% responded “a good deal” or “a great deal,” whereas more than half (54.3%)
responded “a little bit” or “not at all.”9
There was some encouraging news in the undergraduates’ responses.
Slightly more than three-fifths (62.2%) indicated that during their engineer-
ing education they had received the message that “there’s more to being a good
engineering professional in today’s society than being a state-of-the-art technical
expert.”10 But that finding was offset by the fact that only 14.9% of the respon-
dents indicated that they had learned “anything specific” from their engineering
instructors “about what’s involved in being an ethically and socially responsible
engineering professional in contemporary society.”11
Thus, while a healthy majority of the respondents had gotten a message
that there is more to being a good engineering professional in contemporary
society than being technically competent, the message often lacked specifics.
Most students learned nothing concrete about the ethical responsibilities of
engineers from their engineering instructors. As they left their classrooms for
workplaces where most expected to encounter ethical issues, few engineering
students took with them specific knowledge of the ethical responsibilities of
engineers.
But how likely is it that engineers will actually confront ethical issues in
professional practice? 85.3% of the practicing engineer respondents believed
current engineering students are “likely to encounter significant ethical issues
in their future engineering practice.”12
Indeed, almost two-thirds (65.4%) of
the responding engineers acknowledged that they personally had already been
“faced with an ethical issue in the course of [their] professional practice.” Almost
the same percentage (64.3%) stated they knew or knew of one or more other
engineers “who have been faced with an ethical issue in their professional
practice.”13 Not surprisingly, a remarkable 92.8% of the practicing engineer
respondents agreed that engineering students “should be exposed during their
formal engineering education to ethical issues of the sort that they may later
encounter in their professional practice.”14
Unless these groups of respondents are not representative of engineering
students and practicing engineers in general, these findings strongly suggest
9
Ibid., p. 523.
10
Ibid., p. 524.
11
Ibid., p. 525.
12
Ibid., p. 527. Note that this percentage is almost identical to the percentage of surveyed engi-
neering students who expect to encounter ethical issues in their future engineering careers.
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid.

IMPORTANCE 5
that there was (and presumably still is) a major disconnect.15
The disconnect is
between the levels of student expectation and practitioner experience of being
confronted by ethical issues in engineering work, and the amount of effective
engineering-related ethics education provided to US undergraduate engineering
students.
1.4 IMPORTANCE
I shall proceed on the plausible assumption that such a disconnect exists and
is substantial. Why is it important to bridge or at least narrow the gap between
engineering-related ethics education and the ethics realities of contemporary
engineering practice?
First, as the case studies in Chapter 4 make clear, misconduct by engineers
sometimes contributes to causing significant harm to society. Making engineer-
ing students aware of ethical challenges in engineering practice and illustrating
the serious social costs attributable to engineering misconduct could help prevent
or lessen some such societal harms.
Second, it makes sense for engineering students to learn upstream, for exam-
ple, during their undergraduate studies, about challenges they are likely to face
downstream, for example, being faced with ethical issues in their engineering
careers. For a long time, there was a disconnect between engineers’ need for
good technical writing and other communications skills, and the scarcity of
training dedicated to cultivating such skills in undergraduate engineering edu-
cation. Happily, in recent years technical communication classes and programs
for undergraduates have emerged in many US engineering schools, to the con-
siderable benefit of those able to access them. The same should happen for
engineering-related ethics education. Failure to do so does a disservice to engi-
neering students. It sends them out into engineering workplaces ill-equipped to
recognize and effectively grapple with another important type of professional
challenge they are likely to face.
Third, acquiring intellectual resources useful for making thoughtful ethical
judgments about engineering conduct can help empower engineers to make up
their own minds about the ethical acceptability of prevailing workplace culture
and practices. Engineers who lack the intellectual skills to make thoughtful
ethical judgments about questionable features of workplace culture or suspect
15
This would hold only if there has not been a major upsurge in engineering ethics education
in the last decade. That is highly unlikely. In a 2013–2015 survey of new users of the Stanford
Nanofabrication Facility (SNF), 120 of the 330 respondents identified their occupations as “engi-
neer” or “more engineer than scientist.” Of those 120, only 34.2% indicated that they had “ever
taken a class in which ethical issues closely related to science, technology, and/or engineering
were discussed”; 65.8% had not. 2013-15 SNF Ethics-Module DataFile.

work practices are more likely to yield to pressure to go along with prevailing
attitudes and practices.
Fourth, equipped with an understanding of responsible engineering prac-
tices, young engineers in the job market can better assess how committed the
firms recruiting them are to supporting ethically responsible engineering work.
It would be useful for would-be ethically responsible engineering students and
practicing engineers in the job market to know to what degree the firms they are
considering joining expect and exert pressure on their engineer employees to
follow orders uncritically, even when the latter have concerns about the ethical
acceptability of tasks they are assigned.
Fifth, the ability to recognize and comprehend the ethical issues in an engi-
neering situation should make inadvertent irresponsible behavior by engineers
less frequent. That recognition and understanding will diminish appeals to the
classic excuse, “I didn’t realize there were ethical issues involved in that situa-
tion.” Presumably some engineers who are able to recognize ethical issues in pro-
fessional practice will choose to avoid conduct they deem ethically irresponsible.
Sixth, a quite different kind of reason why bridging the ethics gap in con-
temporary engineering is important is that in recent years, pressure to provide
engineering students with opportunities to study ethical issues in engineering
has grown. This pressure has come from multiple sources.
r In a 2003 request for proposals, the US National Science Foundation
(NSF) stipulated that each group of universities submitting a proposal for
funding to establish a network of nanotechnology research laboratories had
to indicate how it was going to “explore the social and ethical implications
of nanotechnology” as part of its mission.16
r In 2004, the UK Royal Academy of Engineering recommended
that “consideration of ethical and social implications of advanced
technologies…should form part of the formal training of all research
students and staff working in these areas.”17
r In 2006, a survey of 1037 nanotechnology researchers at 13 US universi-
ties posed this question: “how much do you believe that study of ethical
issues related to science and engineering should become a standard part
of the education of future engineers and scientists?” About three-tenths
(30.1%) of the respondents replied “quite a bit,” while another third (33%)
replied “very much.”18 This suggests that significant interest in relevant
ethics education exists among engineering students and young engineers
16
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2003/nsf03519/nsf03519.pdf
17
The Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering (2004), Recommendation 17, p. 87.
18
McGinn (2008), p. 117.

UNFRUITFUL APPROACHES TO BRIDGING THE GAP 7
themselves, not just on the part of accrediting agencies, professional soci-
eties, and engineering-related funding organizations.
r In 2009, NSF took a step toward requiring ethics education for engineering
students. In implementing the America COMPETES Act of 2007, NSF
stipulated that, as of January 2010, when an institution submits a funding
proposal to NSF it must certify that it has “a plan to provide appropriate
training and oversight in the responsible and ethical conduct of research
to undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers who
will be supported by NSF to conduct research.”19
r The US Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET)
currently requires that engineering programs seeking initial or renewed
accreditation of their bachelor’s degrees “document” that most graduates
of the programs in question have realized eleven “student outcomes.”
Among them are “an ability to design a system, component, or process to
meet desired needs within realistic constraints, such as economic, envi-
ronmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability,
and sustainability [constraints]”; and “an understanding of professional
and ethical responsibility.”20
In short, there are individual, organizational, and societal reasons why pro-
viding engineering students with meaningful engineering-related ethics educa-
tion makes excellent sense.
1.5 UNFRUITFUL APPROACHES TO BRIDGING THE GAP
Hopefully, the reader is now persuaded that, all things considered, it would
be worthwhile to expose engineering students to study of engineering-related
ethical issues in their formal education. But even if that is so, the question
remains: what kind of approach to providing engineering students with education
about engineering-related ethical issues is likely to be fruitful?
I will first describe two general approaches to engineering-related ethics
education that are unlikely to be fruitful, then identify and briefly characterize
one that is more promising. The two unfruitful approaches are requiring engi-
neering students to enroll in a traditional philosophy-department ethics course,
and incorporating engineering-related ethics education into technical engineer-
ing classes.
19
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2009-08-20/html/E9-19930.htm
20
http:/www.abet.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/E001-14-15-EAC-Criteria.pdf

Requiring a Typical Philosophy-Department Ethics Class
Requiring engineering students to enroll in a traditional philosophy-department
ethics course is unlikely to be fruitful. Few such courses in the United
States pay any attention to ethical issues in engineering. They tend to be
concerned with ethical concepts and theories, the nature of ethical reason-
ing, and the status and justification of ethical judgments. With rare excep-
tions, the examples explored in such courses typically involve non-professional
contexts.21
It is not surprising that engineering-related examples and cases are typically
absent from such courses. Few philosophy-department faculty members in US
research universities or liberal arts colleges have substantial knowledge of or
interest in engineering (as distinguished from science). The same is true of the
kinds of concrete situations in which engineers can find themselves that may give
rise to ethical issues. In more than four decades as a faculty member at Stanford
University, I know of no philosophy-department ethics course that has paid any
attention to ethical issues in engineering. The same is true of such courses at
virtually all US universities and colleges.22 Consequently, requiring engineering
students to take a traditional philosophy-department ethics course with the hope
that they will learn something useful about ethical issues in engineering would
leave it completely up to the student to work out how the ideas and theories
explored in such courses apply to engineering situations. It would therefore not
be surprising if most engineering students perceived such courses as irrelevant
to their future careers.
Integrating Ethics Study into Technical Engineering Classes
A second option would be to attempt to cover engineering-related ethical issues
in technical engineering classes. This could be done by a non-engineer guest
instructor with expertise in engineering ethics, or by the primary engineer-
instructor of the course.
If a non-engineer guest instructor with expertise in engineering ethics pro-
vides the engineering-related ethics education, it is likely to be limited to one or
two lectures. Unfortunately, class members will almost inevitably perceive the
(limited) material covered in such sessions as peripheral to the course. More-
over, the material covered will probably not be well integrated (by the main
21
The most common exception is that some such courses include exploration of some biomedical
ethical issues, such as abortion, euthanasia, and organ transplantation.
22
Engineering ethics courses are most often taught by instructors in academic units with names
like “general engineering,” “technology in society,” “engineering and society,” and “science,
technology, and society,” almost always at institutes of technology or universities with large
engineering schools.

UNFRUITFUL APPROACHES TO BRIDGING THE GAP 9
instructor) into discussion of the technical material encountered elsewhere in the
course.
If the course’s main engineer-instructor provides the coverage of ethical
issues in engineering, then the consideration of ethical issues is likely to be
intuitive and/or not grounded in ethics fundamentals. Having an engineer-
instructor cover ethical issues in engineering is an excellent idea in princi-
ple. However, in practice it faces two problems: one pedagogical, the other
temporal.
First, effectively integrating ethics into a technical engineering class is likely
to be more pedagogically demanding for the engineer-instructor than getting
back up to speed on a body of technical subject matter with which s/he was once
familiar but has forgotten over time. Doing that integration well requires a grasp
of key ethical concepts and principles, familiarity with a range of ethical issues
in engineering, detailed knowledge of various cases, and the ability to apply
key ethical concepts and principles to concrete cases in an illuminating way. It
is difficult for an engineer (or anyone else) without formal ethics education to
achieve such knowledge and ability in short order.
Second, required technical engineering classes are already tightly packed
with technical subject matter. Engineer-instructors of such courses often com-
plain that, in their classes as they now stand, they do not even have enough time
to cover all the important technical subject matter that students need to know.
But the more time that is devoted in such a class to studying engineering-related
ethics issues, in hopes of making coverage of that topic non-superficial, the less
time will remain for important technical engineering material. Hence, study of
the latter would have to be diluted or truncated. That is extremely unlikely to
happen.
Thus, what may sound ideal in principle – having instructors who are engi-
neers provide education about ethical issues in engineering in technical engi-
neering classes – faces serious practical barriers in the real curricular world of
undergraduate engineering education.23
23
To “learn how to incorporate ethics into engineering science classes,” one mechanical engineer-
ing professor attended an “Ethics Across the Curriculum Workshop” given by Illinois Institute
of Technology’s Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions. Shortly thereafter, he added
an ethics component to his “Automatic Control Systems” course. It included exploration of two
“Ethics Cases” inspired by actual events. Students were asked to generate a list of possible courses
of action open to the engineer(s) who faced an “ethical dilemma” about what to do. The instructor
“asked students to vote on their preferred choice” of action in each case. Encouragingly, a survey
revealed that most students believed that the course had “increased their awareness of ethics
issues.” However, given the limited time available in the course for discussion of ethical issues,
the “mini-ethics lessons” do not appear to have tried to give students any ethics fundamentals that
they could draw upon in making thoughtful ethical judgments about engineering conduct in the
future. See Meckl (2003).

1.6 PREFERRED APPROACH
I favor a third kind of pedagogical approach to teaching engineering students
about engineering-related ethical issues. In this approach, engineering students
explore ethical issues in engineering in a separate course focused on such study.
They read and discuss at length real-life cases in which engineering-related eth-
ical issues arose, and make presentations on original cases of ethical issues in
engineering that they have researched and developed. The instructor has exper-
tise and experience in teaching engineering ethics, has an abiding interest in
engineering education, and is reasonably familiar with the realities of engineer-
ing practice. S/he is a full-time engineering school faculty member who believes
that analysis of ethical issues in engineering and evaluation of engineers’ conduct
from an ethics viewpoint are important tasks. Further, s/he believes that such
analysis and evaluation must be carried out with due attention to the specific
contexts in which those issues arise and the related actions unfold.
* * *
Chapters 2 and 3 present background and foundational materials intended
to help engineering students and engineering professionals develop the ability
to make thoughtful judgments about ethical issues in engineering. Then, making
use of those materials, Chapter 4 explores a wide range of cases from different
fields of engineering and analyzes various ethical issues raised therein. Almost
all of the cases are real life and some include engineers speaking in their own
voices as they wrestle with the ethical issues involved.
Subsequent chapters identify the kinds of ethical issues raised in the cases,
the kinds of factors that helped engender them, and noteworthy ideas and lessons
extractable from the case studies. I then survey some resources and options that
might be useful to those who care about practicing engineering in an ethically
responsible way.
By reading and reflecting on the wide range of cases presented, and by
grasping the intellectual resources used in exploring them, engineering students
and practicing engineers should become more aware of and better able to come
to grips with the ethical dimension of engineering practice. More specifically,
such exposure should also help them develop sensitive antennae with which
to detect ethical issues present in concrete engineering situations, and improve
their ability to unpack and think clearly, critically, and contextually about such
issues. With careful study, they will acquire concepts and principles that can be
added to their personal ethics tool kits and used to come to grips in a thoughtful
way with ethical issues in their professional careers.

2
SOCIOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL
PRELIMINARIES
Familiarity with background materials of two sorts – sociological and ethi-
cal – is useful when thinking about ethical issues in contemporary engineering
practice. The sociological materials shed light on why the work situations of
engineers in contemporary Western societies make it highly likely that they will
face ethical issues in their professional practice. The ethical materials focus
on a resource long cited and occasionally used by engineers to make judg-
ments about the ethical acceptability of engineering actions, decisions, and
practices.
The purpose of exploring these background materials early in this book is
to refute two mistaken beliefs. The first is that there is nothing qualitatively or
quantitatively new about the presence of ethical issues in contemporary engi-
neering practice. The second is that the question of how engineers should make
ethical judgments about engineering actions, decisions, and practices has been
resolved and involves using the codes of ethics of the professional engineering
societies.
I begin with the first kind of background materials: the sociological.
11

12 SOCIOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL PRELIMINARIES
2.1 SOCIOLOGY OF ENGINEERING
Since the late nineteenth century, several noteworthy sociological changes have
occurred in the engineering profession in the United States. These changes have
made contemporary engineers considerably more likely to face ethical issues in
their work than previously.1
Over the last 125–150 years, the locus of engineering employment has
undergone a major change. Most engineers have gone from being independent
engineer-consultants, machine shop or mine owner-operators, or employees in
small firms, to being employees in considerably larger organizations, whether
private for-profit, private non-profit, educational, or governmental. In the words
of Terry Reynolds,
“early in the 20th century, organizational hierarchies (usually corporate) became
the typical place of employment for American engineers. By 1925, for example,
only around 25% of all American engineers were proprietors or consultants –
the ideals of the previous century; 75% were hired employees of corporate or
government organizations. By 1965 only around 5% of American engineers
were self-employed.”2
From the point of view of ethics, this was a critical development because
it meant that since the early twentieth century, the autonomy of more and
more engineers has been more tightly restricted than it was in the nineteenth
century. As more and more engineers found employment in large-scale firms,
they became subject to ongoing pressure to make decisions that gave top priority
to their firms’ interests. A declining percentage of engineers retained the freedom
of the independent engineer-consultant and the engineer who owned her/his
own machine shop or mine to determine her/his own practices, priorities, and
policies. Engineers employed in private, for-profit firms are always at risk of
facing “conflicts of interest.” That is, they often find themselves in situations
in which they are torn between the desire to protect the public interest and/or
remain faithful to their professional and personal commitments to do excellent
engineering work on the one hand, and the need to serve the sometimes opposed
private economic interests of their employers and/or their own private economic
interests on the other. The possibility of being faced with “conflicts of interest”
in professional practice is a persistent fact of life for many if not most engineers
employed in private for-profit corporations in contemporary societies.3
1
The discussion of the first two changes that follows is indebted to Reynolds (1991).
2
Ibid., p. 173.
3
This is not to say that engineers who are not employees in private for-profit firms are immune
from conflicts of interest.

SOCIOLOGY OF ENGINEERING 13
This development spawned a related one: in the twentieth century, the typi-
cal career path of an engineer changed. For an engineer-employee in a private,
for-profit firm, the typical career trajectory increasingly became one that went
from being a practicing engineer whose workday is comprised largely or entirely
of technical engineering tasks, to being a corporate manager whose workday is
devoted exclusively or primarily to non-technical managerial tasks. This devel-
opment also provided fertile ground for new conflicts of interest. Engineers
who become corporate managers are strongly expected to prioritize the profit
and various organizational interests of their firms. The interest in doing or sup-
porting excellent and responsible engineering work is sometimes relegated to a
subordinate status. This tug of war can be ethically problematic.
Starting in the late nineteenth century, another new and important trend in
engineering emerged, one that accelerated in the twentieth century: fundamental
research took on unprecedented importance in engineering work. This develop-
ment can be traced to the birth and development of large-scale sociotechnical
systems of communication, transportation, and lighting in the nineteenth cen-
tury. These systems were made possible (and given impetus) by the invention
and diffusion of the telegraph, telephone, railroad, and incandescent light bulb
in a national market economy.4 The enormous capital investments required to
construct the large-scale systems that such innovations enabled, and that the
prevailing market economy encouraged, made it imperative that the engineering
work involved be well grounded.
AT&T could not afford to create a system like the nation-wide telephone
network on a trial-and-error basis. Fundamental research-based understandings
of pertinent areas of chemistry and physics were required so that the huge capital
investment needed to construct that large-scale system would not be at risk of
being squandered. The bearing of this development on ethical issues in engineer-
ing is this: sometimes time and money pressures to push an engineering project
forward are in tension with the need for fastidious, time-consuming research
to achieve a better fundamental understanding of key aspects of the project sit-
uation. This tension can tempt engineer-managers to compress, curtail, or not
conduct the relevant research in order to meet the project-completion schedule
and assure on-time delivery of promised goods and services. Negligence is an
important form of ethical malpractice and failure to conduct or complete expen-
sive and/or time-consuming research inquiries, and failure to do such research
carefully, are noteworthy forms of negligence that sometimes taint engineering
work.
4
Another factor that made these large-scale sociotechnical systems possible was a social innova-
tion in business: the emergence of the multi-unit, professionally managed, vertically integrated,
hierarchically organized modern business firm. See Chandler (1977).

Another significant sociological change in the engineering profession is that
contemporary engineering endeavors undertaken by private, stockholder-owned
engineering firms are often of unprecedented scale and scope, hence of enor-
mous cost and profit potential. This is relevant to ethics because, given the high
stakes, the pressure to win or retain lucrative engineering contracts and to meet
budgetary, profit, and market-share goals can be so great that engineer-managers
and the engineers who report to them may resort to ordering, engaging in, or
being blind to the use of ethically problematic engineering practices. Finan-
cial stakes are so high that engineers can be tempted to deliberately overesti-
mate engineering performance and reliability and/or underestimate project cost
and risk.
Finally, several noteworthy sociologically significant developments in the
engineering profession have emerged in the United States since 1970. These
include enormous growth in the computer-science-and-engineering field; mush-
rooming employment of engineers in information technology (IT) and biotech-
nology start-up firms; major increases in the percentages of women and minori-
ties among computer and engineering workers5; and increasing reliance on the
Internet and the World Wide Web in engineering work. These trends have elicited
new concerns and heightened others, including concerns about intellectual prop-
erty protection, interactions between engineer-entrepreneurs and venture cap-
italists, the recruitment and retention of engineering talent, human–computer
interface design, information disclosure prior to initial public stock offerings,
the work cultures of IT firms, and the privacy interests of engineer-employees.
These concerns have in turn engendered a wide range of engineering-related
ethical issues, including the following:
r whether and under what conditions it is ethically irresponsible for a firm’s
engineers to reverse engineer a rival’s microprocessor chip instruction set;
r whether it is ethically acceptable for an engineer to write software that
covertly tracks the websites visited by individual computer users;
r whether and under what conditions software engineers have an ethical
responsibility to ensure that human–computer interfaces are readily usable
by the lay public;
r whether a knowledgeable software engineer working for a firm has an
ethical responsibility to confirm publicly the existence of a microprocessor
or software flaw or software bug publicly denied by her/his firm;
5
While the percentages of women and minorities in engineering have not increased monotonically,
compared with the situation that existed in 1970 the current percentages represent substantial
increases. The increase in the percentage of Asians in computer and engineering occupations in
the United States has been especially dramatic. See Landivar (2013), especially Figures 4, 10,
and 11.

ENGINEERING SOCIETY CODES OF ETHICS 15
r whether heads of engineering departments in academia and industry have
an ethical responsibility to ensure that the work environments in their units
are not subtly biased against female engineering students or engineers.
In short, because of a number of transformative sociotechnical developments
in the engineering profession in the United States over the last 125–150 years,
engineers today are more likely than ever to find themselves faced with chal-
lenging ethical issues at work. That makes it all the more important that they be
equipped to address such issues in an ethically responsible manner.
2.2 ENGINEERING SOCIETY CODES OF ETHICS
The second kind of preliminary background materials is the ethical. The focus
of attention here will be on codes of engineering ethics.
Major fields of engineering, for example, chemical, civil, electrical, and
mechanical, have had codes of ethics since the early twentieth century. In prin-
ciple, an engineer in any of those fields is expected to be familiar with and
act in accordance with the provisions of her/his professional society’s code of
ethics.6 Initially, it looks impressive that engineering fields have their own codes
of ethics. However, these codes do not play important roles in the socialization
of young engineers by their respective professional societies. While accessible
on engineering society websites, these codes of ethics are treated informally and
usually invoked only after the fact that often when an engineering society is
deciding whether to reprimand members who have been involved in controver-
sial or destructive engineering episodes.
In contrast, consider the “Code of Ethics and Professional Practices” of the
Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA).7 Its provisions spell out a set
of practices that ADAA members promise to “observe in their relations with
clients, artists, other dealers, and auctions.”8 ADAA members must “acknowl-
edge in writing their acceptance of, and compliance with,” the provisions of
the ADAA code.9 Engineering professional societies do not require such writ-
ten acknowledgement by their members. The fact that their members are not
required to acknowledge in writing their acceptance of and future compliance
with the provisions of their respective codes of ethics suggests that professional
6
The codes of ethics of various field-specific engineering professions, as well as of the multi-
disciplinary National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), can be found at http://www.
onlineethics.org/Resources/ethcodes/EnglishCodes.aspx
7
“ADAA Code of Ethics and Professional Practices,” http://www.artdealers.org/about/code-of-
ethics-and-professional-practices
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.

engineering societies do not attach much substantive and operational (as opposed
to symbolic) importance to them.
Engineering society codes of ethics have changed significantly over time.
Today, many share a preeminent canon: viz., that engineers, in the performance
of their professional duties, shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare
of the public.10 That was not always the key provision of such codes. When the
ethics codes of the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE), American
Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), and American Institute of Elec-
trical Engineering (AIEE) were first devised, between 1910 and 1915, the most
prominent responsibility that engineers were said to have was to be loyal to
their employers. However, after World War II, the leading concern of many, if
not most, professional codes of engineering ethics in the United States shifted
dramatically, from the engineer being a loyal employee of her/his employer to
the engineer holding paramount the health, safety, and welfare of the public in
carrying out her/his professional duties.
What accounts for this major change is not clear. It may have been partly a
result of expanding awareness by engineers of a number of serious engineering
accidents and disasters that occurred in the first half of the twentieth century.
Perhaps the vivid demonstration in World War II of the enormous impact of
contemporary engineering on public welfare, in the form of national security,
contributed to bringing about this change. Perhaps it was partly due to spreading
recognition of the key role engineering played in creating the physical infras-
tructure of twentieth century American society that so enhanced public health.
Whatever factors were at work, it is probable that the potency, impact, and perva-
siveness of engineering in twentieth-century US life helped foster the realization
that it was critical that engineers keep the health, safety, and welfare of the public
uppermost in mind in their professional practice. Recently, some codes of engi-
neering ethics have begun to come to terms with more contemporary concerns,
such as sustainable development and privacy.11 The key point here is that codes
of engineering ethics are historical artifacts that have evolved over time and
continue to develop, albeit slowly. They tend to lag behind the changing foci of
societal concern about engineering activity.
Beyond evolving content and shifting priorities, codes of engineering ethics
vary considerably in level of detail and clarity. The “Code of Ethics” of the
10
See, for example, the codes of ethics of the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE),
the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
(ASME), and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). Other engineering society
codes espouse essentially the same idea in different words.
11
On privacy, see the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Code of Ethics, Section 1.7.
On sustainable development, see the ASCE Code of Ethics, Canon 1, parts e and f, and the ASME
Code of Ethics of Engineers, Fundamental Canon 8.

IEEE,12
“the world’s largest technical professional association,”13
consists of
one preliminary sentence and 10 short propositions.14
In contrast, the “Code of
Ethics and Professional Conduct” of the Association of Computing Machinery
(ACM) is considerably more detailed. It contains “24 imperatives formulated as
statements of personal responsibility.”15
Engineering society codes of ethics are sometimes quite vague. For example,
according to the “Fundamental Principles” of the “Code of Ethics of Engineers”
of the ASME, engineers “uphold and advance the integrity, honor, and dignity
of the engineering profession” by, among other things, using their knowledge
and skill for “the enhancement of human welfare,” and by “striving to increase
the competence and prestige of the engineering profession.”16 The vagueness
here is noteworthy. For example, a specific engineering endeavor could enhance
human welfare in some respects and reduce or dilute it in others. Is such a course
of action consistent or inconsistent with the “enhancement of human welfare”
that is required of ASME members? Is the “enhancement” in question to be
understood as net enhancement? How does the engineer seeking to adhere to
this code provision determine that? What exactly is meant by “human welfare”?
Beyond being a competent engineer, what would reasonably count as “striv[ing]
to increase the competence and prestige of the engineering profession”?
The fourth Fundamental Canon of the codes of ethics of the ASME and
the NSPE states that “in professional matters” engineers shall act “for each
employer or client as faithful agents or trustees…”17
But what exactly does
it mean for engineers to be “faithful agents or trustees” of their employers or
clients, and what does being a faithful agent or trustee of one’s employer or
client require of an engineer?18 Such vagueness and uncertainty diminish the
usability and practical value of professional engineering society codes of ethics.
Vague precepts in a code of ethics also open the door for the engineer to interpret
the code in ways that prioritize her/his firm’s or her/his own economic interests.
Besides playing a negligible role in the socialization of young engineers,
lagging behind current social concerns about engineering, being short on detail,
containing key expressions that are vague, and being open to self-serving inter-
pretations, reliance on codes of engineering ethics can be ethically problematic.
The engineer who consults a code of ethics to determine the ethical acceptability
12
The IEEE, which had over 395,000 members in 2010, was formed in 1963 by merging the
American Institute of Electrical Engineers, founded in 1884, and the Institute of Radio Engineers,
founded in 1912. See http://www.ieee.org/about/ieee_history.html
13
Ibid.
14
http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html
15
http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics?searchterm=Code+of+Ethics
16
http://files.asme.org/ASMEORG/Governance/3675.pdf
17
Ibid. and http://www.nspe.org/resources/ethics/code-ethics
18
I return to this topic in Chapter 3, section 3.

of a certain course of action may be tempted to think that if it is not explicitly
prohibited by the code being consulted, then acting thus is ethically acceptable.
But deciding whether a course of engineering action is ethically acceptable is
not like determining whether an expense incurred in doing business is legally tax
deductible by scrutinizing the provisions of the relevant tax code. A course of
action not explicitly prohibited by the letter of a code of engineering ethics might
nevertheless violate its spirit. Developing the engineering student’s and young
engineer’s ability to make an independent thoughtful ethical judgment after con-
sidering all relevant aspects of an engineering situation is arguably much more
important than the ability to scan the precepts of a code of engineering ethics to
see if any explicitly addresses the course of action under consideration.
In fact, relying heavily on a code of engineering ethics arguably hampers
engineers from developing the ability to make their own independent, carefully
considered judgments about ethical acceptability or responsibility. That ability
is especially important when it comes to making ethical judgments in novel
or complex kinds of engineering situation not explicitly referenced in one’s
field’s code of ethics. Education about ethical issues in engineering provided
to engineering students in the United States has been too dependent on finding
rules or canons or precepts in engineering society codes of ethics that appear to
apply to the case at hand or that can be stretched to do so.
Even conscientious adherence to the precepts of the code of ethics for one’s
field of specialization is not the last word on being an ethically responsible
engineer. Besides adherence to the letter and spirit of an engineering society
code of ethics,19
society needs engineers with sensitive “ethics antennae” who
take into consideration the interests of all stakeholders, whether individuals or
the public at large, who stand to be affected by engineering actions, decisions,
and practices. Engineers must also be attentive to subtle harms (and risks of
harm), not just to obvious physical and financial harms. They must be attentive
to harms whether they are directly or indirectly caused, in whole or in part, by
engineering activity, and whether they manifest themselves immediately, in the
short term, or in the foreseeable future. Developing habits of mind in engineers
that reliably take such considerations into account is an important goal, one that
use of a code of ethics does not promote.
In short, while the various professional engineering society codes of ethics
can be useful to some engineers for some purposes,20 they are not very helpful
19
How far that is possible for a given code of engineering ethics depends on, among other things,
its levels of clarity, specificity, and internal consistency.
20
One way in which a professional engineering society’s code of ethics can be useful to an engineer
is by serving as a basis for her/his refusal to act as directed by her/his employer or client if the
directed action would violate a provision of the code. Some employers and clients may respect
that refusal, but others may be unmoved and insist that the employee act as directed.

for grappling with ethical issues that arise in many different kinds of engi-
neering situations. In the next chapter, I will present and discuss a different
kind of foundational ethics resource, one that enables engineers who master
it to make thoughtful, well-grounded judgments about the ethical merits of
engineering actions, decisions, and practices in a wide range of engineering
situations.

3
THE FUNDAMENTAL ETHICAL
RESPONSIBILITIES OF ENGINEERS
3.1 AN ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES APPROACH
In this book, the approach taken to making ethical judgments about engineer-
ing conduct I call “an ethical responsibilities approach.”1,2 “Taking an ethical
responsibilities approach” means that in evaluating an engineer’s conduct in an
engineering situation from an ethics perspective, one begins by looking long and
hard, widely and deeply, spatially and temporally, for all ethical responsibilities
incumbent on the engineer in question.
But how does one go about identifying those ethical responsibilities? There
are three general steps in doing so. First, the evaluator must have clearly in mind
1
Although I take “an ethical responsibilities approach” in what follows, on occasion an overarching
ethical judgment may be called for that takes priority over the one suggested by that approach.
The ethical responsibility approach yields a judgment about what the engineer in question has an
ethical responsibility to do. However, on rare occasions harm-related considerations not involving
ethical responsibilities may deserve to trump those that do.
2
In Chapter 8, I argue that, all things considered, the approach used in this book to make ethical
judgments about engineering conduct might be better termed “a foundational-contextual ethical
responsibilities approach.” See pp. 251–252.
21

22 THE FUNDAMENTAL ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF ENGINEERS
the fundamental ethical responsibilities of engineers.3
Second, by examining
the engineering activity in the situation being studied, including its technical
and social characteristics, the features of the work product, and properties of
the contexts of production and use, the evaluator determines which of those
fundamental ethical responsibilities apply to the situation at hand. Third, the
evaluator brings the applicable fundamental ethical responsibilities of engineers
to bear on that situation in order to determine what specific ethical responsibilities
are incumbent on the engineer(s) involved. I will often refer to the latter as
the derivative ethical responsibilities of the engineer in that situation. The
adjective “derivative” connotes that these specific responsibilities can be derived
by applying one or more of the fundamental ethical responsibilities of engineers
to the specific features of the activity, work product, and/or social situation in
question.
Before discussing the fundamental ethical responsibilities of engineers,
items critical to exploring the ethical issues raised in the cases of Chapter 4,
I will first make clear what I mean by a key expression used frequently in this
book: “an ethical issue.”
3.2 ETHICAL ISSUES AND HARM
It is important to understand what an ethical issue is because doing so helps
one recognize when one is faced with such an issue, rather than remaining
oblivious to its presence. Norman Augustine, a former chairman of the US
National Academy of Engineering and chair of its committee on Engineering
Ethics and Society, noted a potential problem that can plague someone unable
to recognize when s/he is faced with an ethical issue:
“most of the engineers whom I have seen get into trouble on ethical matters
did so not because they were not decent people, but because they failed to
recognize that they were confronting an ethical issue.”4
One impediment to attaining a clear understanding of what an ethical issue
stems from the fact that the expression “an ethical issue” is used in multiple
senses in everyday English discourse. When someone says that an action or
practice raises an ethical issue, the speaker may mean any of several things.
Sometimes s/he may simply be claiming that if the action occurs or the
practice persists, some (possibly non-obvious) harmful consequences may result,
ones that, in the speaker’s view, merit scrutiny from an ethics perspective.
3
These are discussed in detail in Section 3.3.
4
Augustine (2002), p. 5.

ETHICAL ISSUES AND HARM 23
On other occasions the speaker may be doing something different than call-
ing attention to harmful consequences that s/he believes merit scrutiny. Suppose
a woman or man uses a potent perfume or cologne that induces nausea in a
significant fraction of those who are exposed to it and cannot readily escape its
smell. Saying that the agent’s wearing such a perfume or cologne in that kind
of situation raises an ethical issue might be a way of expressing the speaker’s
belief that doing so under such circumstances is ethically questionable. That is,
one might be implying that there is a question about the propriety of the agent’s
action in that kind of situation that needs addressing: viz., whether wearing
such a perfume or cologne under circumstances that make its smell difficult
for nearby others to avoid is ethically justifiable, and that the ethical issue per
se is precisely whether wearing such a substance under such circumstances is
ethically acceptable.
On yet other occasions, the speaker may be implying something else; viz.,
that between supporters and opponents of the action or practice there is disagree-
ment of one or both of the following kinds: (i) differing estimates of its likely
consequences for the well-being of parties affected or likely to be affected by
it; and (ii) differing beliefs about whether the action or practice is intrinsically
good/right/proper or intrinsically bad/wrong/improper.
In what follows, when I refer to some engineering decision, action, or
practice as raising an ethical issue, it should be clear from context which of these
three kinds of claims is being made: that non-obvious harmful consequences
may be involved that merit scrutiny from an ethics perspective, that some action
or practice is ethically questionable and needs to be addressed, or that there is
disagreement among those who care about it regarding its harm- and well-being-
related consequences and/or intrinsic ethical acceptability.
That said, most of the ethical issues that arise in engineering practice involve
disagreements over whether some action, practice, or policy is likely to cause
harm, create an unreasonable risk of harm, or yield an unjust distribution of
harm (or risk of harm) among parties who are or might be affected by it.
To the best of my knowledge, few, if any, engineering-related ethical issues
involve disagreements about the intrinsic acceptability of some engineering
action, practice, process, or policy.
Therefore, in what follows, an ethical issue in engineering is a matter
of engineering action about which there is disagreement regarding what the
engineer(s) in question should do, where the disagreement stems from differing
views on the acceptability of the (harm- and well-being-related) consequences
of the alternative courses of action.5
5
This claim reflects my general position regarding what “ethics” (as a cultural institution) is about.
At bottom, (the cultural institution of) ethics has to do with the relationship between agents’ actions
and practices on the one hand and the well-being of parties affected by them on the other. Thus,

It is also important to indicate how “harm” is to be understood. In what fol-
lows, harm consists of the (incremental) damage done to a party when its well-
being is significantly violated or set back by some action, practice, product, or
policy. The incremental damage done may be physical, financial, (non-financial)
social, or psychical in nature. Harm occurs when consensually important inter-
ests of humans (and other sentient animals) are violated or significantly set back.
At this stage of human development, there is societal consensus that humans
have interests worthy of protection in the non-violation of certain physical,
social, and psychical states and conditions, such as continuation of their lives,
preservation of their bodily integrity, retention of and control over their properly
acquired property, preservation of their good reputations, protection of their pri-
vacy, and preservation of their freedoms of thought, action, and expression (as
long as their exercise does not unjustifiably harm or pose an unreasonable risk
of harming others).
Besides such “private” or “individual” harms that result when such consen-
sual interests are violated, some actions or practices can also cause “public” or
“societal” harms, such as making a national border porous, unleashing a societal
health epidemic, significantly weakening a banking or legal system, undermin-
ing a zoning regime or a national currency, significantly degrading an important
societal resource, such as air, water, or electricity, and damaging an important
element of societal infrastructure, such as its transportation or communication
system.
More generally, it is critical that engineering students and practicing engi-
neers acquire and keep in mind comprehensive notions of harm, ones that include
but go beyond violations of familiar but important interests in the protection
of the individual’s life, physical integrity, and legitimately acquired property.
Only with a comprehensive notion of harm can an engineer recognize when
engineering activities or practices are causing non-obvious harms (or creating
unreasonable risks of such harms) and act accordingly.
Put differently, no less than medical students and doctors, engineering stu-
dents and practicing engineers must grow sensitive ethics antennae. They must
be sensitive enough to detect when non-obvious ethical issues are present in
situations because engineering actions or practices have occurred or are being
for example, judgments that certain actions or practices are ethically right, wrong, or permissible,
depend at bottom on beliefs about their harm- and well-being-related consequences. Ethical
judgments made below about engineering actions and practices reflect beliefs about the extent
to which their consequences enhance, preserve, jeopardize, or undermine the well-being of the
various parties they affect. Of course, sometimes a single action or practice may harm some parties
and enhance the well-being of others, in which case one must look closely at whose well-being is
enhanced, whose is harmed, and to what extents. For thoughts on navigating such situations, see
the discussion in Section 3.3 (pp. 50–54) of “trumping factors” and Rawls’s Difference Principle
in relation to utilitarian decision-making.

THE FUNDAMENTAL ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF ENGINEERS 25
considered that would arguably cause or risk bringing about non-obvious harms.
The fact that engineering activity has gradually come to be recognized as bearing
on human well-being in ways that are sometimes more subtle, indirect, and/or
intangible than when humans lose their lives, have their health compromised,
or are deprived of their legitimate property, is another major reason, besides the
changed sociological situation of the engineer, that engineering has become a
rich arena of ethical issues in contemporary times.
3.3 THE FUNDAMENTAL ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES
OF ENGINEERS
Many people, including more than a few engineering students and practicing
engineers, believe that making ethical judgments is like expressing ice cream
flavor preferences, that is, a matter of subjective taste that cannot be ratio-
nally debated. To the contrary, I submit that it is important for engineering
students and engineers to realize that, with thoughtful use of certain intellectual
resources, ethical appraisals of engineers’ actions and practices are possible
that are not reducible to mere expressions of individual taste. The intellec-
tual resources I have in mind are the fundamental ethical responsibilities of
engineers.
Along with the injunction to preserve life, the most widely recognized foun-
dational ethical responsibility of medical doctors is to “do no harm” to their
patients through their work, whether by acts of commission or omission. Engi-
neers (and scientists) have a similar but not as widely recognized foundational
ethical responsibility: to “do no harm” to their “patients,” that is, to their fel-
low workers, employers, clients, and users of their products and systems; most
generally, to all those affected or likely to be affected by their work and its
products.6
Some contend that because the relationship between physicians and
their patients is typically more direct than that between engineers (and scien-
tists) and those affected by their work, engineers (and scientists) do not have
the same fundamental ethical responsibility as doctors, that is, to do no harm to
their patients. However, the fact that the relationship between engineers’ (and
scientists’) actions and the parties affected by their work products is often, if not
typically, more indirect than in the case of physicians and patients, does not by
itself exempt engineers (or scientists) from the fundamental ethical responsibil-
ity to do no harm to their patients (in the broader sense specified above). After
all, harm indirectly caused is still harm caused.
6
This responsibility is essentially a special case of the bedrock ethical principle that it is wrong
and impermissible to unjustifiably harm another human being (or, perhaps, another sentient being)
through one’s actions.

Instead of limiting the engineer’s ethical responsibility to “do no harm” to
her/his patients, I contend that the engineer has the broader ethical responsibility
to “combat harm” that might be caused to others by her/his professional work
(and/or by the work of others in which s/he is involved or by work about which
s/he is technically knowledgeable).
Why is the (more inclusive) notion of “combating harm” preferable to that
of “not doing harm”? First, it would ring hollow if someone, while not directly
causing harm to another party, just observed, stood idly by, and did not even
attempt to prevent harm that s/he was well positioned to prevent from occurring
to that party, and attempted to justify that passive posture by noting that s/he
had not caused the harm in question. Second, it would ring equally hollow for
someone, knowing that a party was in some unpreventable harm’s way, opted to
remain silent about it and did nothing to let the party at risk of harm know what
was coming, and attempted to justify that posture by stating that, after all, s/he
had not actually done any harm to the party in question and could not prevent
it from happening. In short, “to combat harm” better captures the broad ethical
responsibility humans have in relation to harm than does “to do no harm.” There
is more to it than simply not doing (unjustified) harm to others.
What “combating harm” involves must, of course, be made explicit. The
overarching ethical responsibility to “combat harm” can be unpacked into three
Fundamental Ethical Responsibilities of Engineers (henceforth: FEREs).
The engineer has fundamental ethical responsibilities…
…to not cause harm or create an unreasonable risk of harm to others (or
to public welfare or the public interest) through her/his engineering work.
(FERE1)
…to try to prevent harm and any unreasonable risk of harm to others (and to
public welfare and the public interest) that is caused by her/his engineering
work, or by the engineering work of others in which s/he is involved or about
which s/he is technically knowledgeable. (FERE2)
…to try to alert and inform about the risk of harm those individuals and
segments of the public at unreasonable risk of being harmed by her/his engi-
neering work, or by the engineering work of others in which s/he is involved
or about which s/he is technically knowledgeable. (FERE3)
Engineers employed by an organization or engaged by a client have an
additional fundamental ethical responsibility:

…to work to the best of her/his ability to serve the legitimate interests of
her/his employer or client.7 (FERE4)
Let us discuss in greater detail and with more precision what each of these
FEREs means and implies.
FERE1
FERE1 is the engineer’s ethical responsibility to not cause harm or create an
unreasonable risk of harm to others or to public welfare or the public interest
through her/his work. More precisely, engineers have an ethical responsibility
to not do anything in their work that will cause or contribute to causing harm, or
that will create or contribute to creating an unreasonable risk of harm, to parties
affected or likely to be affected by that work.
It is essential to realize that FERE1 applies not only to acts of commission
– acts deliberately undertaken and carried out – that cause harm or create an
unreasonable risk of harm. It also applies to acts of omission – failure to do
things or failure to do them with the care normally and reasonably expected
of someone in the engineer’s position – that cause or contribute to causing
harm (or that create or contribute to creating an unreasonable risk of harm).
An individual whose failure to do something or to do it with the care normally
and reasonably expected of someone in that individual’s position causes harm
or an unreasonable risk of harm to another, is guilty of the form of ethical
irresponsibility called negligence. Negligence, including carelessness, on the
part of an engineer is no less a violation of FERE1 than is an act done deliberately
that the engineer realizes will harm another or put her/him at unreasonable risk
of harm.
A parent has an ethical responsibility to not harm a small child deliberately,
for example, by locking her/him into the family car parked in the sun and leaving
her/him there for a long time on a very hot day, because, say, the child had been
crying a lot that day. But suppose that a parent leaves her/his child in the car on a
very hot day but with no intention of harming it. Suppose further that, having run
into an old friend in the store with whom s/he fell into extended conversation, the
parent forgets that s/he left her/his child in the car and when s/he finally returns
finds that the child is injured. Such a parental deed, although unintentional,
7
This is a more defensible version of the vague employee-loyalty-to-employer canons found in
many codes of engineering ethics. For example, as noted, Fundamental Canon I.4 of the NSPE
Code of Ethics for Engineers states, “Engineers, in the fulfillment of their professional duties,
shall act for each employer or client as faithful agents or trustees.”

would count as negligence and violate the parent’s ethical responsibility not
to cause harm or create an unreasonable risk of harm to a child. Similarly,
failure by an engineer to carry out a regular check of a vital engineering system
for which s/he is responsible, or failure to do so with suitable care, although
acts of omission, would count as negligence. As such they would be ethically
irresponsible and help cause whatever harm or unreasonable risk of harm results
from the omission.
Some engineering students take offense at the notion that engineers would
ever behave in an ethically irresponsible manner in their professional prac-
tice. Some who feel this way are uninterested in or even opposed to studying
ethical issues in engineering. Granted, engineers who deliberately harm someone
through their work or deliberately do something in their work that foreseeably
puts others at unreasonable risk of incurring harm, are probably few and far
between. However, the frequency of negligence in engineering is probably sig-
nificantly greater than the frequency of actions deliberately undertaken even
though the engineer realizes they will cause harm or create an unreasonable risk
of harm. Becoming aware of the diverse, sometimes subtle forms of negligence
in engineering practice is one reason the study of ethical issues in engineering
is worthwhile. Negligence on the part of an engineer shows that engineering
conduct need not be intentional to be ethically irresponsible.
It is worth noting that engineers have an ethical responsibility to not cause
harm (or unreasonable risks of harm) to individual parties affected by their work,
but also to not cause harm to public welfare or the public interest. For example,
FERE1 implies that the engineer has a basic ethical responsibility not to do
anything that would pose (or contributing to posing) a significant risk to national
security, or to the safe, effective, and healthy state or smooth functioning of
important resources on which the public depends, such as clean air and water,
safe roads, and reliable power, transport, and communication systems. Thus,
incompetently, malevolently, or negligently mismanaging a public electrical
grid, water supply, sanitation, fishery, or traffic control system to a point where
its safety, reliability, quality, or sustainability is called into question would count
as harming public welfare and be incompatible with FERE1.
Engineering work subject to FERE1 is not limited to work initiated by the
engineer in question. It can include work launched and directed by another but
in which the engineer is a participant. This is so because the activities of an
engineer participating in work initiated by another can also be a factor that
contributes to causing harm to parties affected by that work, or to the creation
of an unreasonable risk of harm from that work.
Sometimes actions or practices that cause harm or create an unreasonable
risk of harm to some parties also have beneficial consequences, either to the
same or other parties. Indeed, an engineer’s action or practice, while causing
or creating an unreasonable risk of harm to some, might well yield much more

aggregate benefit than harm or risk of harm to others. This possibility raises a
difficult question: does the fact that an action or practice, although expected
to harm some parties, is expected to produce positive net benefit mean that the
engineer has no ethical responsibility to refrain from performing that action or
practice and that s/he should support it?
Some ethics thinkers take a strictly utilitarian view about this question and
believe that the only consideration relevant to determining whether it is ethically
proper to carry out some action, project, or practice is whether its projected net
benefit is positive.8 I have a different view. Sometimes an engineer can have an
ethical responsibility to refrain from carrying out a certain act or from engaging
in a certain practice even though its projected beneficial consequences seem
likely to substantially outweigh its projected harmful consequences. Put differ-
ently, that an engineer’s action seems likely to have more beneficial than harmful
consequences does not necessarily imply that s/he has no ethical responsibil-
ity to refrain from carrying it out and should support it. Let us explore this in
more detail.
Many decision-makers in contemporary US society, in various professions,
seem to operate in accordance with the following decision-making rule (R1): as
long as the projected benefits of a proposed course of action exceed its projected
harms, or, put differently, as long as the ratio of the project’s projected benefits
to its projected harms is greater than 1, then it is permissible or right to carry
out that action/practice/policy, and there is no ethical responsibility to refrain
from that action because of those projected harms.9
I call R1 “The ‘If Positive
Net Benefit, Then Go Ahead’ Rule.” This thinking often colors deliberations
about engineering projects like the building of dams, the construction of high-
rise buildings and freeways, and the creation of nuclear power plants and waste
disposal facilities.
What rarely seems to enter into assessments by engineers (and other pro-
fessionals) about such undertakings is whether any considerations apply in a
particular situation that should trump calculations that yield positive net benefit.
For example, suppose one social group is likely to bear a disproportionate share
of the harm, the risk of harm, or, more generally, the costs and risks of the action,
practice, or project. If so, perhaps that fact should trump a benefit–harm–risk
analysis that finds positive net benefit for the action under consideration and
block the use of R1 to justify proceeding with that action.
That there might be considerations that sometimes reasonably trump a stan-
dard benefit–harm–risk analysis that yields a positive net benefit is suggested by
8
Some add that for it to be ethically right or obligatory to carry out that action, its net benefit must
be greater than, or at least as great as, any alternative course of action.
9
Some go further and hold that when projected benefit exceeds projected harm, failure to act is
ethically irresponsible.

“Rawls’s Difference Principle,” devised by the late Harvard philosopher John
Rawls, author of A Theory of Justice.10
Rawls’s “Difference Principle” states
that for the unequal distribution of a social good or social bad among members
of a group to be distributively just, two things must be the case: in the case of
a good or benefit, everyone in the group must benefit from the distribution to
some positive degree and those currently worst off must benefit the most. If what
is being distributed is bad or burden, then for Rawls, an unequal allocation of
it is distributively just only if everyone bears the distributed bad or burden to
some degree and those currently worst off are burdened or disadvantaged the
least. Put differently, for an unequal distribution of a good or benefit or a bad
or burden to be distributively just, it must make the greatest positive or least
negative difference to the currently worst off in society.11,12
Is Rawls’s Difference Principle applicable to situations that might be faced
by practicing engineers? If Chinese civil engineers involved in the Three Gorges
Dam project (1994–2012) were challenged about the effects of that project on
the public, some of them might argue that although it did cause harm to some
people – to make way for the dam, about 1.3 million rural people were uprooted
10
Rawls (1999).
11
This principle helps explain why moral outrage is often expressed when, in a difficult economic
environment, cutbacks in salary, benefits, or resource allocations fall disproportionately more on
the shoulders of workers or the least powerful citizens, and disproportionately less on those of the
executive or the politically powerful class.
12
Rawls’s ingenious justification for this principle is that it would be adopted as a rule for running
society by a committee of disembodied rational beings gathered at a pre-societal conference and
tasked with making the rules that will govern society when it comes into being. More precisely,
Rawls holds that this principle would be adopted if these decision makers deliberated “behind a
veil of ignorance,” that is, in circumstances in which they had no knowledge of their eventual
human characteristics (e.g., race and gender) and their eventual societal characteristics (e.g., social
class and economic resources). Rawls argues that these legislators would vote to adopt a policy
under which the greatest benefit (smallest burden) of an unequal distribution of a social good
(bad) would go to those currently worst off, since the legislators themselves could easily wind up
being amongst the worst off when they were born, assumed a gender, acquired an ethnicity, had
a nationality, and became members of a particular or economic social class. Rawls’s Difference
Principle is a rational insurance policy adopted to protect against the possibility of winding up
among the worst off in society. It also reflects the moral intuition that the currently worst off
deserve the greatest break when a social good or bad is being unequally distributed, whether it
be tax breaks or water resource allocations. This principle is useful to deploy as a check against
the possibility that one’s view of the ethical propriety of a distributive action or policy is colored
by the favorable position of the viewer. Rawls’s Difference Principle invites one to become aware
of the elements of one’s current privileged situation that are due to good fortune and to adopt a
policy that is not shaped by that privilege, but, rather, driven by recipients’ degree of genuine need
or other pertinent distributive criteria.

from their communities and moved to newly built settlements13
– the benefit to
Chinese society as a whole dwarfed the harm incurred by the forcibly displaced.
To that argument, one could respond in Rawlsian spirit, “Perhaps the project
benefit did exceed the harm, but the ways in which project-caused harm and
risk of harm were distributed were unjust. Rural people who were living along
certain parts of the Yangtze River, now the Yangtze River valley, were amongst
the economically worst off, yet were forced to bear the bulk of the burden
of harm so that the economically better off urban dwellers downstream could
realize the lion’s share of the benefits.” Under Rawls’s Difference Principle such
distributions of the harm and risk of harm burden would be distributively unjust.
For someone who adopts Rawls’s Difference Principle, the attempt to invoke
rule R1 to justify proceeding with the Three Gorges Dam, or to justify its
construction after the fact, should be rejected, because the harm/risk burden
was unjustly distributed. Adherents of Rawls’s Difference Principle might view
it as a “trumping factor,” that is, as an aspect of the situation that, when it is
not satisfied, deserves to take precedence over any attempt to ethically justify
a decision on a project by invoking rule R1, which requires only that there be
positive net benefit, that is, more benefit than harm (or a benefit–harm ratio
greater than 1).
Even if the benefit–harm ratio for a proposed course of action is greater than
1, or the net benefit is positive, it could well be that, rather than the harm/risk
being unjustly distributed in the Rawlsian sense, the magnitude of the actual or
risked harm might make it ethically appropriate to decline to act in order to realize
the greater benefit. If the projected harm exceeds some significant threshold, it
might be ethically right, all things considered, to decline to carry out the action
in order to avoid incurring the accompanying smaller but threshold-exceeding
harm. I call this second decision-making rule of benefit–harm–risk analysis,
“The ‘Thanks, But No Thanks’ Rule.”
The upshot is that an engineer can have an ethical responsibility to not carry
out a certain action, project, or practice, even if the projected benefit of doing so
exceeds the projected harm or risked harm. But this will be so only if at least one
trumping factor makes it reasonable to set aside rule R1 and decline to realize
the greater benefit in order to avoid incurring the harm that would accompany it.
I have mentioned two possible trumping factors that might induce an engineer
to decline to act in accordance with rule R1: 1. an unjust distribution of the harm
(or risk of harm) burden being distributed; and 2. The harm burden, although
less than the benefit, exceeding in magnitude some significant threshold deemed
the maximum acceptable burden. Each engineer must reflect and decide for
13
Eckholm (1999).

herself/himself what factors are on her/his personal list of trumping factors in
relation to widely embraced rule R1.
FERE2
FERE2 is the engineer’s general ethical responsibility to try to prevent harm
(and any unreasonable risk of harm) to others, or to public welfare, or to the
public interest, that is or would be caused by her/his own engineering work,
by engineering work of others in which s/he is involved, or engineering work
about which s/he is technically knowledgeable. Even if an engineer is not doing
anything in her/his work that will deliberately or negligently cause harm or
create an unreasonable risk of harm, s/he has an ethical responsibility to try to
prevent any harm or unreasonable risk of harm that may have been set in motion
by such work.
Standing by and simply observing the harm that is about to occur or is taking
place is no more an ethically responsible option for the engineer than it would
be for someone who goes to a neighbor’s home to borrow some sugar, discovers
an unaccompanied infant screaming in a bathtub full of water, chooses not to
intervene, and simply watches the child drown in the tub. While the person who
goes to the neighbor’s house normally has the physical ability to prevent the
harm by removing the endangered child from the bath tub, an engineer may
have sufficient technical credibility and/or insider knowledge about some work
or project or product, such that her/his public warning that it will cause harm
would have a chance of preventing or lessening it.
Two additional comments are in order here. First, FERE2 is not an ethical
responsibility to prevent harm, but to try to prevent harm. There is no ethical
responsibility to actually prevent harm when doing so is impossible for her/him
to do so. One can have an ethical responsibility to do x only if doing x is
practically possible.
Second, suppose the very attempt to prevent harm or the creation of an
unreasonable risk of harm would itself cause harm or create a risk of harm to the
would-be preventer and/or to others. In that case, the strength or weight of the
would-be harm-preventer’s ethical responsibility to try to prevent the original
harm is directly proportional to the magnitude of the original harm that he might
prevent, but inversely proportional to both the magnitude of the (new) harm that
the would-be harm preventer might cause and the likelihood that s/he would
cause it by trying to prevent the original harm.
FERE3
FERE3 is the general ethical responsibility of the engineer to try to alert and
inform individuals and segments of the public put at significant risk of harm

by her/his engineering work, work with which s/he is involved, or work of
others about which s/he is technically knowledgeable. Even if an engineer is not
causing harm or creating an unreasonable risk of harm, and even if some harm or
unreasonable risk of harm from pertinent engineering work cannot realistically
be prevented, the engineer may still have an ethical responsibility to try to alert
and inform parties at risk of incurring harm that they are vulnerable. Being thus
alerted and informed might at least allow them to prepare for and take steps to
minimize the impact of the harm that they are at risk of incurring.
Here too, several clarifying comments are in order. First, as with FERE2,
note the qualifying phrase “to try.” An engineer who took all reasonable steps
to try to alert and inform about the risk of harm would fulfill FERE3 even
if circumstances kept her/him from succeeding in doing so. Second, the harm
involved in a FERE3 situation could be any of a range of kinds of harm, from a
physical injury to a major property value loss to a serious violation of privacy.
Third, the engineer who has this ethical responsibility can owe it to various kinds
of “party,” for example, another individual, a social group, a valuable cultural
institution, or society as a whole.
FERE4
FERE4 is the engineer’s ethical responsibility to work to the best of her/his
ability to serve the legitimate interests of her/his employer or client. Several
clarifications and qualifications are in order here.
First, FERE4 is a conditional responsibility. It is binding on the engineer only
as long as the engineer’s employer or client treats her/him reasonably regard-
ing compensation and working conditions (including safety, health, and career
development opportunities). It ceases to apply to and is no longer binding upon
the engineer if her/his employer or client treats her/him poorly or unreasonably
in more than a fleeting way.
Second, note the qualifier “legitimate” in “legitimate interests.” The engi-
neer does not have an ethical responsibility to do the best he or she can to serve
or promote every interest of the employer or client, only ones that are “legiti-
mate,” for example, the interest in having the engineer-employee do high-quality,
cost-effective work in a timely way. FERE4 does not apply if the interests are
illegitimate. Thus, although an engineer’s employer or client orders her/him to
do so, s/he does not have an ethical responsibility to do her/his best to steal and
use a competitor’s intellectual property, or to get a new product to market faster
by not testing its safety, or by not giving human test subjects a chance to give
their informed consent to being tested.
Third, consider the word “client” in FERE4. In contemporary societies,
public resources enable or facilitate, directly or indirectly, wholly or in part,
the work of many if not most engineers. “Public resources” include government

grants, contracts, fellowships, scholarships, loans, and various sorts of publicly
initiated or supported infrastructure, such as the Internet, libraries, national
research laboratories, the transportation network, and the electrical power grid.
Therefore, even if employed by a private or governmental employer or client, it
makes sense for the contemporary engineer to view society at large as her/his
omnipresent background client.
Under FERE4, the engineer (and scientist) must always work to serve the
legitimate interests of this client – the public – to the best of her/his ability.
Moreover, when the interests of the private or governmental employer or
client in question conflict with the legitimate interests of society at large,
the latter must take precedence over the former.
Societal resources are the sine qua non of much if not most contemporary
engineering activity. If engineering activity repeatedly harmed public welfare
or violated the public interest as a by-product of serving private interests, the
engineering profession would risk losing not only significant enabling resources
provided to it by the public, but the authority that society has given the pro-
fession to set its own standards for admission and practice, in exchange for the
profession’s pledge to protect public welfare and public interest.
Fourth, FERE4 is binding on the engineer only if a second condition is
satisfied. Suppose an engineer, Smith, is an employee of the US National Security
Agency (NSA). Protecting US national security is a legitimate NSA interest.
Suppose further that, pursuant to that interest, NSA instructs Smith to devise
a new computer software program that covertly gathers personal medical and
financial data about a large number of US Internet and e-mail users. Use of this
work product would arguably cause significant harm by violating the privacy
of those whose records were captured. Put differently, Smith’s activity, while in
accord with FERE4, would also conflict with FERE1.14
The point is that even if a legitimate employer interest is asserted, FERE4
is binding on an engineer-employee only if her/his action, undertaken to serve
that interest, does not violate FERE1 by causing significant harm or creating an
unreasonable risk of harm. If it does or is likely to do so, FERE4 by itself does
not justify such an action.15
* * *
14
I am indebted to Samuel Chiu for posing a question that prompted me to ponder this qualification
on FERE4.
15
Whether, all things considered, it would be ethically acceptable for the engineer to follow the
NSA’s instructions and design such a piece of software would depend on a range of factors. Among
them would be the magnitude and scope of the harm caused by use of the designed software, the
parties harmed through its use, the gravity of the employer interest, whether the software was
plausibly linkable to advancing that legitimate employer interest, and whether there were other
ways of serving that interest that would not violate FERE1.

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF THE
LIFEBOAT ***

STORIES
OF
THE LIFEBOAT
BY
FRANK MUNDELL
AUTHOR OF "STORIES OF THE VICTORIA CROSS"
"INTO THE UNKNOWN WEST" ETC
FOURTH EDITION
title page
illustration
LONDON:
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION
57 AND 59 LUDGATE HILL, E.C.

VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES.
BY FRANK MUNDELL,
AUTHOR OF "THE HEROINES' LIBRARY."
Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 1s. 6d. each.
WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
STORIES OF THE FAR WEST.
STORIES OF THE COAL MINE.
STORIES OF THE ROYAL HUMANE SOCIETY.
STORIES OF THE FIRE BRIGADE.
STORIES OF NORTH POLE ADVENTURE.
STORIES OF THE VICTORIA CROSS.
STORIES OF THE LIFEBOAT.
Of all Booksellers.
LONDON:
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION,
57 AND 59 LUDGATE HILL, E.C.
PREFACE
In sending forth this little work to the public, I desire to
acknowledge my obligations to the following:--The Royal National
Lifeboat Institution for the valuable matter placed at my disposal, also
for the use of the illustrations on pages 20 and 21; to Mr. Clement

Scott and the proprietors of Punch for permission to use the poem,
"The Warriors of the Sea"; to the proprietors of The Star for the
poem, "The Stranding of the Eider"; and to the proprietors of the Kent
Argus for so freely granting access to the files of their journal. Lastly,
my thanks are due to the publishers--at whose suggestion the work
was undertaken--for the generous manner in which they have
illustrated the book.
F. M.
LONDON, September, 1894.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. MAN THE LIFEBOAT
II. LIFEBOAT DISASTERS
III. THE WARRIORS OF THE SEA
IV. THE GOODWIN SANDS
V. THE BOATMEN OF THE DOWNS
VI. A GOOD NIGHT'S WORK
VII. THE "BRADFORD" TO THE RESCUE
VIII. THE LAST CHANCE
IX. HARDLY SAVED
X. A WRESTLE WITH DEATH
XI. A DOUBLE RESCUE
XII. DEAL MEN TO THE RESCUE
XIII. THE WRECK OF THE "BENVENUE"

XIV. THE STRANDING OF THE "EIDER"
XV. THE WRECK OF THE "NORTHERN BELLE"
XVI. A GALLANT RESCUE
XVII. A BUSY DAY
VIII. A RESCUE IN MID-OCEAN
XIX. THE "THREE BELLS"
XX. ON THE CORNISH COAST
XXI. A PLUCKY CAPTAIN
XXII. BY SHEER STRENGTH
XXIII. WRECKED IN PORT
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE LIFEBOAT IN THE STORM . . . . . . Frontispiece
LAUNCHING THE LIFEBOAT
THE LIFEBOAT HOUSE
MEDAL OF THE ROYAL NATIONAL LIFEBOAT INSTITUTION
NEWS OF A WRECK ON THE COAST
A RAMSGATE BOATMAN
AN OLD WRECK
SURVIVORS OF THE "INDIAN CHIEF"

A LIFEBOAT GOING OUT
SAVING THE CAPTAIN
A PERILOUS REFUGE
THEY BENT THEIR BACKS TO THE OARS
SIGHTING THE WRECK
LIVES IN PERIL
COMING ASHORE--"ALL SAVED"
The Lifeboat! oh, the Lifeboat!
We all have known so long,
A refuge for the feeble,
The glory of the strong.
Twice thirty years have vanished,
Since first upon the wave
She housed the drowning mariner,
And snatched him from the grave,
The voices of the rescued,
Their numbers may be read,
The tears of speechless feeling
Our wives and children shed;
The memories of mercy

In man's extremest need.
All for the dear old Lifeboat
Uniting seem to plead.
STORIES
of
THE LIFEBOAT
CHAPTER I.
MAN THE LIFEBOAT!
o Lionel Lukin, a coachbuilder of Long Acre, London,
belongs the honour of inventing the lifeboat. As early as the year
1784 he designed and fitted a boat, which was intended "to save the
lives of mariners wrecked on the coast." It had a projecting gunwale
of cork, and air-tight lockers or enclosures under the seats. These
gave the boat great buoyancy, but it was liable to be disabled by
having the sides stove in. Though Lukin was encouraged in his efforts
by the Prince of Wales--afterwards George the Fourth--his invention
did not meet with the approval of those in power at the Admiralty,
and Lukin's only lifeboat which came into use was a coble that he

fitted up for the Rev. Dr. Shairp of Bamborough. For many years this
was the only lifeboat on the coast, and it is said to have saved many
lives.
In the churchyard of Hythe, in Kent, the following inscription may
be read on the tombstone, which marks the last resting-place of the
"Father of the Lifeboat":--
"This LIONEL LUKIN
was the first who built a lifeboat, and was the
original inventor of that quality of safety, by
which many lives and much property have been
preserved from shipwreck, and he obtained for
it the King's Patent in the year 1785."
The honour of having been the first inventor of the lifeboat is also
claimed by two other men. In the parish church of St. Hilda, South
Shields, there is a stone "Sacred to the Memory of William
Wouldhave, who died September 28, 1821, aged 70 years, Clerk of
this Church, and Inventor of that invaluable blessing to mankind, the
Lifeboat." Another similar record tells us that "Mr. Henry Greathead, a
shrewd boatbuilder at South Shields, has very generally been credited
with designing and building the first lifeboat, about the year 1789." As
we have seen, Lukin had received the king's patent for his invention
four years before Greathead brought forward his plan. This proves
conclusively that the proud distinction belongs by right to Lionel
Lukin.
In September 1789 a terrible wreck took place at the mouth of
the Tyne. The ship Adventure of Newcastle went aground on the Herd
Sands, within three hundred yards of the shore. The crew took to the
rigging, where they remained till, benumbed by cold and exhaustion,

they dropped one by one into the midst of the tremendous breakers,
and were drowned in the presence of thousands of spectators, who
were powerless to render them any assistance.
Deeply impressed by this melancholy catastrophe, the gentlemen
of South Shields called a meeting, and offered prizes for the best
model of a lifeboat "calculated to brave the dangers of the sea,
particularly of broken water." From the many plans sent in, those of
William Wouldhave and Henry Greathead were selected, and after due
consideration the prize was awarded to "the shrewd boatbuilder at
South Shields." He was instructed to build a boat on his own plan with
several of Wouldhave's ideas introduced. This boat had five thwarts,
or seats for rowers, double banked, to be manned by ten oars. It was
lined with cork, and had a cork fender or pad outside, 16 inches deep.
The chief point about Greathead's invention was that the keel was
curved instead of being straight. This circumstance, simple as it
appears, caused him to be regarded as the inventor of the first
practicable lifeboat, for experience has proved that a boat with a
curved keel is much more easily launched and beached than one with
a straight keel.
Lifeboats on this plan were afterwards placed on different parts
of the coast, and were the means of saving altogether some hundreds
of lives. By the end of the year 1803 Greathead had built no fewer
than thirty-one lifeboats, eight of which were sent to foreign
countries. He applied to Parliament for a national reward, and
received the sum of £1200. The Trinity House and Lloyd's each gave
him £105. From the Society of Arts he received a gold medal and fifty
guineas, and a diamond ring from the Emperor of Russia.
The attention thus drawn to the needs of the shipwrecked
mariner might have been expected to be productive of good results,

but, unfortunately, it was not so. The chief reason for this apathy is
probably to be found in the fact that, though the lifeboats had done
much good work, several serious disasters had befallen them, which
caused many people to regard the remedy as worse than the disease.
Of this there was a deplorable instance in 1810, when one of
Greathead's lifeboats, manned by fifteen men, went out to the rescue
of some fishermen who had been caught in a gale off Tynemouth.
They succeeded in taking the men on board, but on nearing the shore
a huge wave swept the lifeboat on to a reef of rocks, where it was
smashed to atoms. Thirty-four poor fellows--the rescued and the
rescuers--were drowned.
It was not until twelve years after this that the subject of the
preservation of life from shipwreck on our coast was successfully
taken up. Sir William Hillary, himself a lifeboat hero, published a
striking appeal to the nation on behalf of the perishing mariner, and
as the result of his exertions the Royal National Institution for the
Preservation of Life from Shipwreck was established in 1824. This
Society still exists under the well-known name of the Royal National
Lifeboat Institution. It commenced its splendid career with about
£10,000, and in its first year built and stationed a dozen lifeboats on
different parts of the coast.
For many years the Society did good work, though sadly crippled
for want of funds. In 1850 the Duke of Northumberland offered the
sum of one hundred guineas for the best model of a lifeboat. Not only
from all parts of Great Britain, but also from America, France, Holland,
and Germany, plans and models were sent in to the number of two
hundred and eighty. After six months' examination, the prize was
awarded to James Beeching of Great Yarmouth, and his was the first
self-righting lifeboat ever built. The committee were not altogether

satisfied with Beeching's boat, and Mr. Peake, of Her Majesty's
Dockyard at Woolwich, was instructed to design a boat embodying all
the best features in the plans which had been sent in. This was
accordingly done, and his model, gradually improved as time went on,
was adopted by the Institution for their boats.
LAUNCHING THE LIFEBOAT
The lifeboats now in use measure from 30 to 40 feet in length,
and 8 in breadth. Buoyancy is obtained by air-chambers at the ends
and on both sides. The two large air-chambers at the stem and stern,
together with a heavy iron keel, make the boat self-righting, so that
should she be upset she cannot remain bottom up. Between the floor

and the outer skin of the boat there is a space stuffed with cork and
light hard wood, so that even if a hole was made in the outer covering
the boat would not sink. To insure the safety of the crew in the event
of a sea being shipped, the floor is pierced with holes, into which are
placed tubes communicating with the sea, and valves so arranged
that the water cannot come up into the boat, but should she ship a
sea the valves open downwards and drain off the water. A new
departure in lifeboat construction was made in 1890, when a steam
lifeboat, named the Duke of Northumberland, was launched. Since
then it has saved many lives, and has proved itself to be a thoroughly
good sea boat. While an ordinary lifeboat is obliged to beat about and
lose valuable time, the steam lifeboat goes straight to its mark even in
the roughest sea, so that probably before long the use of steam in
combating the storm will become general.
Nearly every lifeboat is provided with a transporting carriage on
which she constantly stands ready to be launched at a moment's
notice. By means of this carriage, which is simply a framework on four
wheels, the lifeboat can be used along a greater extent of coast than
would otherwise be possible. It is quicker and less laborious to convey
the boat by land to the point nearest the wreck, than to proceed by
sea, perhaps in the teeth of a furious gale. In addition to this a
carriage is of great use in launching a boat from the beach, and there
are instances on record when, but for the carriage, it would have
been impossible for the lifeboat to leave the shore on account of the
high surf.

THE LIFEBOAT HOUSE.
The boats belonging to the National Lifeboat Institution are kept
in roomy and substantial boathouses under lock and key. The
coxswain has full charge of the boat, both when afloat and ashore. He
receives a salary of £8 a year, and his assistant £2 a year. The crew of
the lifeboat consists of a bowman and as many men as the boat pulls
oars. On every occasion of going afloat to save life, each man
receives ten shillings, if by day; and £1, if by night. This money is paid
to the men out of the funds of the Institution, whether they have
been successful or not. During the winter months these payments are
now increased by one half.

MEDAL OF THE ROYAL NATIONAL
LIFEBOAT INSTITUTION.
The cost of a boat with its equipment of stores--cork lifebelts,
anchors, lines, lifebuoys, lanterns, and other articles--is upwards of
£700, and the expense of building the boathouse amounts to £300,
while the cost of maintaining it is £70 a year. The Institution also
awards medals to those who have distinguished themselves by their
bravery in saving life from shipwreck. One side of this medal is
adorned with a bust of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, who is the
patroness of the Institution. The other side represents three sailors in
a lifeboat, one of whom is rescuing an exhausted mariner from the
waves with the inscription, "Let not the deep swallow me up."
Additional displays of heroism are rewarded by clasps bearing the
number of the service.

"When we think of the vast extent of our dangerous coasts, and
of our immense interest in shipping, averaging arrivals and departures
of some 600,000 vessels a year; when we think of the number of lives
engaged, some 200,000 men and boys, besides untold thousands of
passengers, and goods amounting to many millions of pounds in
value, the immense importance of the lifeboat service cannot be over-
estimated." Well may we then, "when the storm howls loudest," pray
that God will bless that noble Society, and the band of humble heroes
who man the three hundred lifeboats stationed around the coasts of
the British Isles.
CHAPTER II.
LIFEBOAT DISASTERS.
e have already referred to the numerous disasters which did
so much to retard the progress of the lifeboat movement. Now let us
see how these disasters were caused. The early lifeboats, though
provided with a great amount of buoyancy, had no means of freeing
themselves of water, or of self-righting if upset, and the absence of
these qualities caused the loss of many lives.
Sir William Hillary, who may be regarded as the founder of the
National Lifeboat Institution, distinguished himself, while living on the
Isle of Man, by his bravery in rescuing shipwrecked crews. It was

estimated that in twenty-five years upwards of a hundred and forty
vessels were wrecked on the island, and a hundred and seventy lives
were lost; while the destruction of property was put down at a quarter
of a million. In 1825, when the steamer City of Glasgow went ashore
in Douglas Bay, Sir William Hillary went out in the lifeboat and
assisted in taking sixty-two people off the wreck. In the same year the
brig Leopard went ashore, and Sir William again went to the rescue
and saved eleven lives. While he lived on the island, hardly a year
passed without him adding fresh laurels to his name, and never did
knight of old rush into the fray with greater ardour than did this
gallant knight of the nineteenth century to the rescue of those in peril
on the sea. His greatest triumph, however, was on the 20th of
November 1830, when the mail steamer St. George stranded on St.
Mary's Rock and became a total wreck. The whole crew, twenty-two
in number, were rescued by the lifeboat. On this occasion he was
washed overboard among the wreck, and it was with the greatest
difficulty that he was saved, having had six of his ribs broken.
In 1843 the lifeboat stationed at Robin Hood Bay went out to the
assistance of the Ann of London. Without mishap the wreck was
reached, and the work of rescue was begun. Several of the
shipwrecked men jumped into the boat just as a great wave struck
her, and she upset. Some of the crew managed to scramble on to the
bottom of the upturned boat and clung to the keel for their lives.
The accident had been witnessed by the men on the beach, and
five of them immediately put out to the rescue. They had hardly left
the shore when an enormous sea swept down upon them, causing
the boat to turn a double somersault, and drowning two of the crew.
Altogether twelve men lost their lives on this occasion. Those who
were saved floated ashore on the bottom of the lifeboat.

The Herd Sand, memorable as the scene of the wreck of the
Adventure, witnessed a lamentable disaster in 1849, when the Betsy
of Littlehampton went aground. The South Shields lifeboat, manned
by twenty-four experienced pilots, went out to the rescue. While
preparing to take the crew on board, she was struck by a heavy sea,
and before she could recover herself, a second mighty wave threw her
over. Twenty out of the twenty-four of her crew were drowned. The
remainder and the crew of the Betsy were rescued by two other
lifeboats, which put off from the shore immediately upon witnessing
what had happened.
The advantages of the self-righting and self-emptying boats may
be best judged from the fact, that since their introduction in 1852, as
many as seventy thousand men have gone out in these boats on
service, and of these only seventy-nine have nobly perished in their
gallant attempts to rescue others. This is equal to a loss of one man
in every eight hundred and eighty.
During the terrible storm which swept down upon our coast in
1864, the steamer Stanley of Aberdeen was wrecked while trying to
enter the Tyne. The Constance lifeboat was launched from
Tynemouth, and proceeded to the scene of the wreck. The night was
as dark as pitch, and from the moment that the boat started, nothing
was to be seen but the white flash of the sea, which broke over the
boat and drenched the crew. As quickly as she freed herself of water,
she was buried again and again. At length the wreck was reached,
and while the men were waiting for a rope to be passed to them, a
gigantic wave burst over the Stanley and buried the lifeboat. Every
oar was snapped off at the gunwale, and the outer ends were swept
away, leaving nothing but the handles. When the men made a grasp

for the spare oars they only got two--the remainder had been washed
overboard.
It was almost impossible to work the Constance with the rudder
and two oars, and while she was in this disabled condition a second
wave burst upon her. Four of the crew either jumped or were thrown
out of the boat, and vanished from sight. A third mighty billow swept
the lifeboat away from the wreck, and it was with the utmost difficulty
that she was brought to land. Two of the men, who had been washed
out of the boat, reached the shore in safety, having been kept afloat
by their lifebelts. The other two were drowned.
Speaking of the attempted rescue, the coxswain of the Constance
said: "Although this misfortune has befallen us, it has given fresh
vigour to the crew of the lifeboat. Every man here is ready, should he
be called on again, to act a similar part."
Thirty-five of those on board the Stanley, out of a total number of
sixty persons, were afterwards saved by means of ropes from the
shore.
One of the most heartrending disasters, which have befallen the
modern lifeboat, happened on the night of the 9th of December 1886.
The lifeboats at Southport and St. Anne's went out in a furious gale to
rescue the crew of a German vessel named the Mexico. Both were
capsized, and twenty-seven out of the twenty-nine who manned them
were drowned. It was afterwards found out that the Southport boat
succeeded in making the wreck, and was about to let down her
anchor when she was capsized by a heavy sea. Contrary to all
expectations the boat did not right, being probably prevented from
doing so by the weight of the anchor which went overboard when the
boat upset.

What happened to the St. Anne's lifeboat can never be known,
for not one of her crew was saved to tell the tale. It is supposed that
she met with some accident while crossing a sandbank, for, shortly
after she had been launched, signals of distress were observed in that
quarter. Next morning the boat was found on the beach bottom up
with three of her crew hanging to the thwarts--dead.
NEWS OF A WRECK ON THE COAST.
Such is the fate that even to-day overhangs the lifeboatman on
the uncertain sea. Yet he is ever ready on the first signal of distress to
imperil his life to rescue the stranger and the foreigner from a watery
grave. "First come, first in," is the rule, and to see the gallant

lifeboatmen rushing at the top of their speed in the direction of the
boathouse, one would imagine that they were hurrying to some grand
entertainment instead of into the very jaws of death. It is not for
money that they thus risk their lives, as the pay they receive is very
small for the work they have to perform. They are indeed heroes, in
the truest sense of the word, and give to the world a glorious
example of duty well and nobly done.
CHAPTER III.
THE WARRIORS OF THE SEA.
[On the night of the 9th of December 1886, the Lytham, Southport,
and St. Anne's lifeboats put out to rescue the crew of the ship Mexico,
which had run aground off the coast of Lancashire. The Southport and
St. Anne's boats were lost, but the Lytham boat effected the rescue in
safety.]
Up goes the Lytham signal!
St. Anne's has summoned hands!
Knee deep in surf the lifeboat's launched
Abreast of Southport sands!
Half deafened by the screaming wind,
Half blinded by the rain,
Three crews await their coxswains,
And face the hurricane!
The stakes are death or duty!
No man has answered "No"!

Lives must be saved out yonder
On the doomed ship Mexico!
Did ever night look blacker?
Did sea so hiss before?
Did ever women's voices wail
More piteous on the shore?
Out from three ports of Lancashire
That night went lifeboats three,
To fight a splendid battle, manned
By "Warriors of the Sea."
Along the sands of Southport
Brave women held their breath,
For they knew that those who loved them
Were fighting hard with death;
A cheer went out from Lytham!
The tempest tossed it back,
As the gallant lads of Lancashire
Bent to the waves' attack;
And girls who dwelt about St. Anne's,
With faces white with fright,
Prayed God would still the tempest
That dark December night.
Sons, husbands, lovers, brothers,
They'd given up their all,
These noble English women
Heartsick at duty's call;
But not a cheer, or tear, or prayer,
From those who bent the knee,

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