Engineering Ethics

Part II

National Case Studies

September 2002 to August 2003 was a terrible 12-month period in

engineering ethics. During this time, a scientist at Bell Laboratories committed

nanotechnology fraud, the Columbia space shuttle exploded, Guidant

received the largest pay-out to date from the Food and Drug Administration

for hiding medical device defects, and the New York City blackout occurred.

While reflecting on these events, I wondered how often disasters occurred

after warnings by engineers. I knew that warnings about the Columbia

explosion mirrored the warnings about the Challenger explosion. As

an experiment, I challenged myself to find similar major ...