403 HSIR 14

Engineering as
Social Experimentation

B.Tech. - V Semester
Mechanical Engineering
NIT TRICHY
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 HSIR 14 Syllabus Topics
Courtesy : Dr. T. Suthakar
1. Scope and Aims 2. Moral Reasoning and Ethical 3. Engineering as Social
Theories Experimentation
1. What is Engineering Ethics 1. Professional Ideals and Virtues 1. Engineering as Experimentation
2. Why Study Engineering Ethics 2. Theories about right action 2. Engineers as responsible
3. Professions and Professionalism 3. Self interest Experimenters
4. Customs / Religion 3. The Challenger case
5. Uses of Ethical Theories 4. Code of Ethics
5. A Balanced Outlook on Law
4. Responsibility to Safety 5. Responsibility to Employers
1. Safety and Risk Text Book, Ethics in 1. Collegiality and Loyalty
2. Assessment of Safety and Risk Engineering 2. Respect for Authority
3. Risk Benefit Analysis and by 3. Collective Bargaining
Reducing Risk Qin Zhu, Mike W. Martin 4. Confidentiality
4. Three mile Island, Chernobyl & 5. Conflicts of Interest
and Safe Exits Roland Schinzinger 6. Occupational Crime
5e McGrawHill
6. Rights of Engineers 7. Global Issues 8. Engineers as Managers,
Consultants and Leaders
1. Professional Rights 1. International Corporation 1. Consulting Engineers
2. Whistle Blowing 2. Environmental Ethics 2. Engineers as Expert Witnesses
3. The Bart case 3. Computer Ethics and Advisers
4. Employee Rights 4. Weapons Development 3. Molal Leadership
5. Discrimination 4. Concluding remarks
 3. Engineering as Social
Experimentation
1. Engineering as Experimentation
2. Engineers as responsible
Experimenters
3. The Challenger case
4. Code of Ethics
5. A Balanced Outlook on Law
 Modern Engineering Marvels
- Example 1

One of the many fascinating pieces of modern architecture in

Brasília, Brazil (The Juscelino Kubitschek Bridge) 4
Modern Engineering Marvels
- Example 2

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 Modern Engineering Marvels
- Example 2

The world’s highest outdoor lift which is more than 300 meters (1,000
feet) up the cliff face that inspired the scenery for the blockbuster film
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“Avatar,” whisks brave visitors to breathtaking views
Modern Engineering Marvels
- Example 3

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8
Have a Triple Sandae

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 Triple Treat
• Engg Mechanics...
• Music ...
• Love ...
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11
Engineering as Social Experimentation
Corporates Stake
Engineers Holders

• GOVERNMENT
• LEGAL
• CODES
• Societies
• RISK
• BENEFITS
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Engineering as Social Experimentation contd...

• Titanic - April 1912

• proclaimed the greatest engineering achievement
ever
• length of almost three football fields
• most glamorous of ocean liners
• touted # as the first fully safe ship - unsinkable

# touted
• praised
• publicized
• promoted

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• As an introduction sinking of
Titanic is briefly outlined.
• During design, worst collision
envisaged was at the juncture of
two of its sixteen watertight
compartments, and since it could
float with any four compartments
flooded,the Titanic was believed to
be virtually unsinkable 14
• Elated by such confidence, captain sailed full
speed at night in an area frequented by icebergs,
one of which tore a large gap in the ship’s side,
flooding five compartments
• Enough Time remained to evacuate the ship, but
there were not enough lifeboats to accommodate
all the passengers and crew. British regulations
then in effect did not foresee vessels of this size.
Accordingly only 825 places were required in
lifeboats, sufficient for a mere one-quarter of the
Titanic’s capacity of 3,547 passengers and crew.
No extra precautions had seemed necessary for
an unsinkable ship resulting in the deaths of
1,522 people out of the 2,227 on board . 15
Conjectures regarding the haunting tragedy of
technological complacency

• water entering the coal bunkers through the

gash caused an explosion
• embrittlement of the ship’s steel hull in the icy
waters caused a much larger crack
• poor quality of steel rivets with excess slag, led
to rivet cracking /popping out easily.
• carrying the watertight bulkheads## up higher
for larger space on the passenger decks for
arranging cabins
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## bulkheads

A bulkhead is an upright wall within the hull of a ship

or within the fuselage of an airplane. Other kinds of
partition elements within a ship are decks and
deckheads.
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• What matters most is that along with the lack of
lifeboats and the difficulty of launching those
available from the listing ship prevented a safe
exit for two-thirds of the persons on board,
where a Safe Exit is a mechanism or procedure for
escape from harm in the event a product fails.

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A safe exit in social experimentation
refers to the ethical and practical
steps taken to ensure participants
can withdraw from a study without
negative consequences. This involves:

1. Informed Consent: Clearly

informing participants of their right
to leave the study at any time without
penalty or loss of benefits. 19
2. Debriefing: Providing participants
with complete information about the
study after their participation,
including its purpose and any
deceptions used.

3. Emotional Support: Offering

psychological support or counseling
if the experiment could have caused
stress or discomfort. 20
4. Confidentiality: Ensuring that
personal information is kept
confidential and that leaving the
study will not affect their privacy.

5. Compensation: Guaranteeing that

participants receive any agreed-upon
compensation even if they choose to
exit early.
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6. Clear
Communication:
Providing clear
instructions on how to
exit the study and whom
to contact for assistance.
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 11.1 Engineering as Experimentation
• Experimentation playing an essential role in the
design process
• Tests or simulations are conducted from the time
it is decided to convert a new engineering
concept into its first rough design.
• Materials and processes are tried out, employing
experimental techniques
• tests serve as the basis for more detailed
designs, which in turn are tested.
• At production stage further tests are run, until a
finished product evolves.
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 11.1 Engineering as Experimentation contd..

• The normal design process is thus iterative

• carried out on trial designs with
modifications being made on the basis of
feedback
• Beyond those specific tests and
experiments, however, each engineering
project taken as a whole may be viewed as an
experiment.

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 11.1.1 Similarities to Standard Experiments
• First, any project is carried out in partial
ignorance.
• Uncertainties
in precise characteristics of the materials
in precision of materials processing
and fabrication
• about the nature of the stresses finished
products encounters
• one talent crucial to an engineer’s success lies
precisely in the ability to accomplish tasks safely
with only a partial knowledge of scientific laws
about nature and society. 25
11.1.1 Similarities to Standard Experiments contd.
• Second, final outcomes generally uncertain
• great risks may attend even seemingly benign
projects
• A reservoir may do damage to a region’s social
fabric or to its ecosystem. It may not even serve
its intended purpose if the dam leaks or breaks.
• A nuclear reactor, the scaled-up version of a
successful smaller model, may exhibit unexpected
problems that endanger the surrounding population,
leading to its untimely shutdown at great cost to
owner and consumers alike.
• In the past, a hair dryer may have exposed users to
lung damage from the asbestos insulation in its
barrel. 26
11.1.1 Similarities to Standard Experiments contd.
• Third, ongoing success in engineering depends
upon gaining new knowledge, as does ongoing
success in experimentation.
• Monitoring is essential
• Monitoring cannot be restricted to the in-house
development or testing phases of an engineering
venture.
• It also extends to the stage of client use.
• Just as in experimentation, both the intermediate
and final results of an engineering project
deserve analysis if the correct lessons are to be
learned from it. 27
11.1.2 Learning from the Past
• Engineers learn from their own earlier design
and operating results, and as from those of other
engineers
• Unfortunately that is not always the case.
• A lack of established channels of
communication, misplaced pride in not asking for
information, embarrassment at failure or fear of
litigation, and neglect often impede the flow of
such information and lead to many repetitions of
past mistakes. Here are a few examples:

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11.1.2 Learning from the Past (contd…)
a) The Titanic lacked a sufficient number of
lifeboats decades after most of the passengers and
crew on the steamship Arctic had perished because of
the same problem.
b) Tragedy caused by impact due to shipping in1980.
• Same year saw disaster at Tampa Bay, Florida -
largest and most tragic
• Repeated tragedies by
 Errant ships colliding with bridges.
 Piers of bridges not designed for
horizontal impact force by a colliding ship
 Floating concrete bumpers to deflect
ships – also went unnoticed 29
11.1.2 Learning from the Past (contd…)
c) June 1966 a section of the Milford Haven Bridge
in Wales collapsed during construction.
• A bridge of similar design was being erected by
the same builder in Melbourne, Australia, also
partially collapsed, killing 33 people and
injuring 19.
• Shortly after chief construction engineer Jack
Hindshaw (also a casualty) had assured worried
workers that the bridge was safe.

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11.1.2 Learning from the Past (contd…)
d) Valves are notorious for being among the least
reliable components of hydraulic systems. It was
a pressure relief valve, and a lack of definitive
information regarding its open or shut state,
which contributed to the nuclear reactor accident at
Three Mile Island on March 28, 1979. Similar
malfunctions had occurred with identical valves on
nuclear reactors at other locations. The required
reports had been filed with Babcock and Wilcox,
the reactor’s manufacturer, but no attention had
been given to them.
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11.1.3 Contrasts with Standard Experiments
• “Standard experiments” here we are comparing
with engineering mainly refer to medical
experiments which often involve human subjects.
• Some scientific experiments in chemistry,
physics, and geological sciences may not directly
involve human subjects. Exploring the differences can
also aid our thinking about the great moral
responsibilities of all those engaged in engineering.

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11.1.3 Contrasts with Standard Experiments contd…
• In engineering, this is not often the usual
practice-unless the project is confined to
laboratory experimentation-because the
experimental subjects are human beings or finished
and sold products out of the experimenter’s
control. Indeed, clients and consumers exercise most
of the control as they choose the product or item they
wish to use. This makes it impossible to obtain a
random selection of participants from various
groups.
• Nor can parallel control groups be established
based on random sampling. 33
11.1.3 Contrasts with Standard Experiments contd…
• Thus it is not possible to study the effects that
changes in variables have on two or more
comparison groups
• One must simply work with the available
historical and retrospective data about various
groups that use the product.

Informed Consent
• A subject’s safety and freedom of choice as to
whether to participate in medical experiments is
of the utmost importance.
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11.1.3 Contrasts with Standard Experiments contd…
• Ever since the revelations of the horrors
conducted in prisons and concentration camps in the
name of science and medicine, an increasing number of
moral and legal safeguards were put in place to
ensure that subjects in experiments participate on
the basis of informed consent.
• Informed consent is understood as including two
main elements: knowledge and voluntariness.
First, subjects should be given not only the
information they request, but all the information
needed to make a reasonable decision. Second,
subjects must enter into the experiment without
being subjected to coercion, fraud, or deception. 35
11.1.3 Contrasts with Standard Experiments contd…
• Supplying complete information is neither
necessary nor in most cases possible. In both
medicine and engineering there may be an enormous
gap between the experimenter’s and the subject’s
understanding of the complexities of an
experiment.
• Still it should be possible to convey all pertinent
information needed for making a reasonable
decision on whether to participate.

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11.1.3 Contrasts with Standard Experiments contd…
• Engineers cannot succeed in providing essential
information about a project or product unless
there is cooperation by superiors and also receptivity
on the part of those who should have the information.
Management is often understandably reluctant to
provide more information than current laws require,
fearing disclosure to potential competitors and
exposure to potential lawsuits.
• Moreover, it is possible that, paralleling the
experience in medicine, clients or the public may not
be interested in all of the relevant information about an
engineering project, at least not until a crisis looms.
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11.1.3 Contrasts with Standard Experiments contd…
• Still all avenues for disseminating ## such
information be kept open and ready.

- spread (something,
especially information) widely).

• Informed consent is surfacing indirectly in the

continuing debate over acceptable forms of
energy. Representatives of the nuclear industry can 38
11.1.3 Contrasts with Standard Experiments contd…
• Should consider common enough human
readiness to accept voluntarily undertaken risks (as
in daring sports), even while objecting to
involuntary risks resulting from activities in which the
individual is neither a direct participant nor a
decision maker.
• In other words, we all prefer to be the subjects of
our own experiments rather than those of
somebody else. When it comes to approving a
nearby oil-drilling platform or a nuclear plant,
affected parties expect their consent to be sought no
less than it is when a doctor contemplates surgery.
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11.1.3 Contrasts with Standard Experiments contd…
 Prior consultation
(a remarkably good and effective example).
Northern States Power Company (Minnesota)
was planning a new power plant, it got in touch
with local citizens and environmental groups
before it committed large sums of money to
preliminary design studies.

 The company was able to present convincing

evidence regarding the need for a new plant and
then suggested several sites. Citizen groups
responded with a site proposal of their own.
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11.1.3 Contrasts with Standard Experiments contd…
 The latter was found acceptable by the company.
Thus, informed consent was sought from and
voluntarily given by those the project affected,
and the acrimonious## and protracted battles so
common in other cases where a company has
already invested heavily in decisions based on
engineering studies alone was avoided 5. Note
that the utility company interacted with groups
that could serve as proxy for various segments of
the rate-paying public. Obviously it would have
been difficult to involve the rate-payers
individually.
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# Acrimonius : (typically of speech or
discussion) angry and bitter

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11.1.3 Contrasts with Standard Experiments contd…
A broad notion of informed consent, valid
consent defined by the following conditions:

1. The consent was given voluntarily.

2. The consent was based on the information that a

rational person would want, together with any
other information requested, presented to them
in understandable form.

3. The consenter was competent to process the

information and make rational decisions.
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11.1.3 Contrasts with Standard Experiments contd…
It is not always easy to acquire informed consent
from all social groups. Very difficult to get
informed consent from future generations who can
be indirectly impacted by engineering designs.
4. Information that a rational person would need,
stated in understandable form, has been widely
disseminated.
5. The subject’s consent was offered in proxy by a
group that collectively rep- resents many
subjects of like interests, concerns, and exposure to
risk.
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