UNIT- III

ENGINEERING AS SOCIAL EXPERIMENTATION

Part-A
1. Differentiate scientific experiments and engineering projects. (Apr/May ‟16)
Engineering experiments differ from standard experiments highlights the
engineer‘s responsibility. The differences reveals through 2 aspects.
 Experimental Control - Selection of members for 2 different groups.
One may receive special experimental treatment while the member of other group
called control group do not receive the special treatment even though they are
subjected to same environment.
 Informed Consent - It comprise 2 main elements
Knowledge
Voluntaries
2. What are the conditions are essential for a valid informed consent? (Nov/Dec‟15)
The informed consent can be called as ― valid consent‖ when the following conditions
are met.
 The consent should be given voluntarily and not by any force.
 The consent should be based on all the information needed for a rational person to
make a reasonable decision.
 The consent should be competent enough to process the information and to make
rational decisions. Here competent in the sense, the consenting should be
physically and mentally fit.
3. List the advantage of industrial standards. (Apr/May ‟15)
Standards are very useful for manufacturers for production of goods.
Standards also benefit user and public.
Standards will give equal opportunities to all manufacturers.
Standards ensure quality and hence facilitate more realistic trade-decision.
4. What are the limitations of code of ethics? (Nov/Dec‟14)
Code of ethics is broad guidelines, restricted to general and vague wordings/phrases.
The codes cannot be applied directly all situations.
 Engineering codes often have internal conflicts, which may result in moral
dilemmas. That is several entries in codes overlap with each other.
The codes cannot serve as the final moral authority for professional conduct.
The proliferation of codes of ethics for different branches of engineering gives a
feeling that ethical codes are relative.
5. What are the features of Engineering Experimentation? (Nov/Dec‟14)
A conscientious commitment to live by moral values: The primary duty of
morally responsible engineers is to protect the safety of human subjects and respect
their right of consent
6. What is learning from the past? (April/May „14)
Engineer should not learn not only from their own result but also from other
engineer‘s results. But because of misplaced pride in not asking for information, fear of
litigation and simple negligence usually impede the flow of information and leads to
repetitive mistakes. Engineer‘s should not always rely on handbooks alone but should
remain alert and informed at every stage of project or experimentation.
7. What is agency loyalty? (April/May „14)
Agency Loyalty is to fulfil one‘s contractual duties to an employer. The
contractual duties may include particular tasks for which one is paid, general activities
of cooperating with colleagues, and following lawful authority within the
organization.
Eg: People may not like the job do and hate their employer. But still they would
perform their duty as long as they are employed.
8. Define „informed consent‟ (Apr/May ‟15)
When a medicine or an engineering product is to tested on a person, then the
moral and legal rights is to get informed consent from him. In other words the
experimenters whose experiments involve human subjects have moral and legal
obligations to inform about all relevant facts about the experiments to the person who
participates in experiments.
9. Define „collegiality‟. What are its elements? (Apr/May ‟15)
Collegiality defines as ― a kind of connectedness grounded in respect for
professional expertise and in a commitment to the goals and values of the profession‖.
 The elements are
 Respect
 Commitment
 Connectedness
10. What are the general responsibilities of engineers to society?
o Engineers are primarily as technical enablers or facilitators, rather than being the
sole experiments.
o Engineers responsibility is shared with management the public and others.
o The other unique responsibilities of engineers include monitoring projects,
identifying risks, providing customers and clients required information to make
reasonable decisions.
Part-B
1. What are the different roles and function of „code of ethics‟? (Nov/Dec‟15)
Definition
Codes of ethics state the moral responsibilities of engineers as seen by the
profession and as represented by a professional society
Codes of ethics play at least eight essential roles: serving and protecting the
public, providing guidance, offering inspiration, establishing shared standards,
supporting responsible professionals, contributing to education, deterring wrongdoing,
and strengthening a profession‘s image.
1. Serving and protecting the public.
Engineering involves advanced expertise that professionals have and the public
lacks, and also considerable dangers to a vulnerable public.
2. Guidance.
Codes provide helpful guidance by articulating the main obligations of
engineers. Because codes should be brief to be effective, they offer mostly general
guidance.
3. Inspiration.
Because codes express a profession‘s collective commitment to ethics, they
provide a positive stimulus (motivation) for ethical conduct.
4. Shared standards.
The diversity of moral viewpoints among individual engineers makes it
essential that professions establish explicit standards, in particular minimum (but
hopefully high) standards.
5. Support for responsible professionals.
Codes give positive support to professionals seeking to act ethically.
6. Education and mutual understanding.
Codes can be used by professional societies and in the classroom to prompt
discussion and reflection on moral issues.
7. Deterrence and discipline.
Codes can also serve as the formal basis for investigating unethical conduct.
Where such investigation is possible, a deterrent for immoral behaviour is thereby
provided.
8. Contributing to the profession‟s image.
Codes can present a positive image to the public of an ethically committed
profession. Where warranted, the image can help engineers more effectively serve the
public.
Abuse of Codes
 When codes are not taken seriously within a profession, they amount to a kind
of window dressing that ultimately increases public cynicism about the
profession. Worse, codes occasionally stifle dissent within the profession and
are abused in other ways.
 Probably the worst abuse of engineering codes is to restrict honest moral effort
on the part of individual engineers to preserve the profession‘s public image
and protect the status quo. Preoccupation with keeping a shiny public image
may silence healthy dialogue and criticism. And an excessive interest in
protecting the status quo may lead to a distrust of the engineering profession on
the part of both government and the public.
 The best way to increase trust is by encouraging and helping engineers to speak
freely and responsibly about public safety and well-being. This includes a
 tolerance for criticisms of the codes themselves, rather than allowing codes to
become sacred documents that have to be accepted uncritically.

Limitations of Codes
 Codes are no substitute for individual responsibility in grappling with concrete
dilemmas. Most codes are restricted to general wording, and hence inevitably
contain substantial areas of vagueness. Thus, they may not be able to
straightforwardly address all situations.
 At the same time, vague wording may be the only way new technical
developments and shifting social and organizational structures can be
accommodated. Other uncertainties can arise when different entries in codes
come into conflict with each other.
 Usually codes provide little guidance as to which entry should have priority in
those cases. For example, as we have noted, tensions arise between stated
responsibilities to employers and to the wider public.
 Again, duties to speak honestly—not just to avoid deception, but also to reveal
morally relevant truths—are sometimes in tension with duties to maintain
confidentiality.
Ethical Relativism
 Does a professions code of ethics create the obligations that are incumbent on
members of the profession, so that engineers‘ obligations are entirely relative to
their code of ethics? Or does the code simply record the obligations that
already exist?
 One view is that codes try to put into words obligations that already exist,
whether or not the code is written. As Stephen Unger writes, codes ―recognize‖
obligations that already exist: ―A code of professional ethics may be thought of
as a collective recognition of the responsibilities of the individual
practitioners‖; codes cannot be ―used in cookbook fashion to resolve complex
problems,‖ but instead they are ―valuable in outlining the factors to be
considered.‖
  Notice the word ―imposes,‖ as distinct from ―recognizing‖ an obligation that
already exists. To violate the code is wrong because it creates an unfair
advantage in competing with other professionals in the marketplace.
Justification of Codes
 If codes of ethics do not merely state conventions, as ethical relativists hold,
what does justify those responsibilities that are not mere creations of
convention? A code, we might say, specifies the (officially endorsed)
―customs‖ of the professional ―society‖ that writes and promulgates it as
incumbent on all members of a profession (or at least members of a
professional society).
 When these values are specified as responsibilities, they constitute role
responsibilities—that is, obligations connected with a particular social role as a
professional. These responsibilities are not self certifying, any more than other
customs are.
 To conclude, any set of conventions, whether codes of ethics or actual conduct,
should be open to scrutiny in light of wider values. At the same time,
professional codes should be taken very seriously.
 They express the good judgment of many morally concerned individuals, the
collective wisdom of a profession at a given time.
 Certainly codes are a proper starting place for an inquiry into professional
ethics; they establish a framework for dialogue about moral issues; and more
often than not, they cast powerful light on the dilemmas confronting engineers.

2. With a case study explain the “learn from the past” in engineering
experimentation. (Nov/Dec ‟15)
Learning from the Past
Usually engineers learn from their own earlier design and operating results, as
well as from those of other engineers, but unfortunately that is not always the case.
Lack of established channels of communication, misplaced pride in not asking for
information, embarrassment at failure or fear of litigation and plain neglect often
impede the flow of such information and lead to many repetitions of past mistakes.
Here are a few examples:
1. 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.
2. ―Complete lacks of protection against impact by shipping caused Sweden‘s worst
ever bridge collapse on Friday as a result of which eight people were killed.‖ Thus
reported the New Civil Engineer on January 24, 1980. Engineers now recommend the
use of floating concrete bumpers that can deflect ships, but that recommendation is
rarely heeded as seen by the 1993 collapse of the Bayou Cannot Bridge that cost 43
passengers of the Sunset Limited their lives.
3. 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
4. NASA uses the metric system while Lockheed Martin uses the English system
when building a satellite
Inflation-adjusted: $165.6 million
In 1999 a team of Lockheed Martin engineers used the English system of
measurement, while the rest of the team used the metric system for a Mars orbiter.
The use of two different measurement systems prevented the spacecraft's navigation
coordinates from being transferred from a spacecraft team in Denver to a lab in
California. The orbiter was then lost in space, and NASA was out $125 million.
These examples illustrate why it is not enough for engineers to rely on handbooks and
computer programs without knowing the limits of the tables and algorithms
underlying their favorite tools. They do well to visit shop floors and construction
sites to learn from workers and testers how well the customers‘ wishes were met. The
art of back-of-the-envelope calculations to obtain ballpark values with which to
quickly check lengthy and complicated computational procedures must not be lost.
Engineering demands practitioners who remain alert and well informed at every stage
of a project‘s history and who exchange ideas freely with colleagues in related
departments.
3. How can engineer become a responsible experimenter? Highlight the code of
ethics for engineer. (Apr/May „16, Nov/Dec „16)
Engineering as Social Experimentation
 What are the responsibilities of engineers to society? Viewing engineering as
social experimentation does not by itself answer this question. Although
engineers are the main technical enablers or facilitators, they are far from being
the sole experimenters. Their responsibility is shared with management, the
public, and others.
 Yet their expertise places them in a unique position to monitor projects, to
identify risks, and to provide clients and the public with the information needed
to make reasonable decisions.
 From the perspective of engineering as social experimentation, four features
characterize what it means to be a responsible person while acting as an
engineer: a conscientious commitment to live by moral values, a
comprehensive perspective, autonomy, and accountability.
Or, stated in greater detail as applied to engineering projects conceived as social
experiments:
1. A primary obligation to protect the safety of human subjects and respect their right
of consent
2. A constant awareness of the experimental nature of any project, imaginative
forecasting of its possible side effects, and a reasonable effort to monitor them
3. Autonomous, personal involvement in all steps of a project
4. Accepting accountability for the results of a project
Codes of ethics - Definition
Codes of ethics state the moral responsibilities of engineers as seen by the
profession and as represented by a professional society
Codes of ethics play at least eight essential roles: serving and protecting the
public, providing guidance, offering inspiration, establishing shared standards,
supporting responsible professionals, contributing to education, deterring wrongdoing,
and strengthening a profession‘s image.
1. Serving and protecting the public.
Engineering involves advanced expertise that professionals have and the public
lacks, and also considerable dangers to a vulnerable public.
2. Guidance.
Codes provide helpful guidance by articulating the main obligations of
engineers. Because codes should be brief to be effective, they offer mostly general
guidance.
3. Inspiration.
Because codes express a profession‘s collective commitment to ethics, they
provide a positive stimulus (motivation) for ethical conduct.
4. Shared standards.
The diversity of moral viewpoints among individual engineers makes it
essential that professions establish explicit standards, in particular minimum (but
hopefully high) standards.
5. Support for responsible professionals.
Codes give positive support to professionals seeking to act ethically.
6. Education and mutual understanding.
Codes can be used by professional societies and in the classroom to prompt
discussion and reflection on moral issues.
7. Deterrence and discipline.
Codes can also serve as the formal basis for investigating unethical conduct.
Where such investigation is possible, a deterrent for immoral behaviour is thereby
provided.
8. Contributing to the profession‟s image.
Codes can present a positive image to the public of an ethically committed
profession. Where warranted, the image can help engineers more effectively serve the
public.
4. Explain the responsibilities of engineers to society. (16)
1. Conscientiousness
 People act responsibly to the extent that they conscientiously commit
themselves to live according to moral values, instead of a consuming
preoccupation with a narrowly conceived self-interest. By conscientious moral
commitment we mean sensitivity to the full range of moral values and
responsibilities relevant to a given situation, and the willingness to develop the
skill and expend the effort needed to reach a reasonable balance among those
considerations.
 Conscientiousness implies consciousness: open eyes, open ears, and an open
mind. The contemporary working conditions of engineers tend to narrow moral
vision solely to the obligations that accompany employee status. More than 90
percent of engineers are salaried employees, most of who work within large
bureaucracies under great pressure to function smoothly within the
organization.
 There are obvious benefits in terms of prudent self-interest and concern for
one‘s family that make it easy to emphasize as primary the obligations to one‘s
employer. Gradually the minimal negative duties, such as not falsifying data,
not violating patent rights, and not breaching confidentiality, may come to be
viewed as the full extent of moral aspiration
2. Comprehensive Perspective
 Conscientiousness is blind without relevant factual information. Hence showing
moral concern involves a commitment to obtain and properly assess all available
information that is pertinent to meeting moral obligations.
 This means, as a first step, fully grasping the context of one‘s work, which makes
it count as an activity having a moral import. For example, in designing a heat
 exchanger, if I ignore the fact that it will be used in the manufacture of a potent,
illegal hallucinogen, I am showing a lack of moral concern.
3. Moral
 Autonomy People are morally autonomous when their moral conduct and
principles of action are their own, in a special sense derived from Kant: Moral
beliefs and attitudes should be held on the basis of critical reflection rather than
passive adoption of the particular conventions of one‘s society, church, or
profession.
 This is often what is meant by ―authenticity‖ in one‘s commitment to moral values.
Those beliefs and attitudes, moreover, must be integrated into the core of an
individual‘s personality in a manner that leads to committed action.
 It is a comfortable illusion to think that in working for an employer, and thereby
performing acts directly serving a company‘s interests, one is no longer morally
and personally identified with one‘s actions.
4. Accountability
 Finally, responsible people accept moral responsibility for their actions. Too often
―accountable‖ is understood in the overly narrow sense of being culpable and
blameworthy for misdeeds.
 But the term more properly refers to the general disposition of being willing to
submit one‘s actions to moral scrutiny and be open and responsive to the
assessments of others. It involves willingness to present morally cogent reasons for
one‘s conduct when called on to do so in appropriate circumstances.
5. A Balanced Outlook on Law
Hammurabi, as king of Babylon, was concerned with strict order in his realm,
and he decided that the builders of his time should also be governed by his laws. In
1758 BCE he decreed: ―If a builder has built a house for a man and has not made his
work sound, and the house which he has built has fallen down and so caused the death
of the householder, that builder shall be put to death.
If a builder has built a house for a man and does not make his work perfect and
the wall bulges, that builder shall put that wall into sound condition at his own cost.‖
What should be the role of law in engineering, as viewed within our model of social
experimentation? The legal regulations that apply to engineering and other professions
are becoming more numerous and more specific all the time.
6. Industrial Standards
There is one area in which industry usually welcomes greater specificity, and that is in
regard to standards. Product standards facilitate the interchange of components, they
serve as readymade substitutes for lengthy design specifications, and they decrease
production costs. Standards consist of explicit specifications that, when followed with
care, ensure that stated criteria for inter-changeability and quality will be attained.
Examples range from automobile tire sizes and load ratings to computer protocols.
5. Describe the concept of Fault Tree Analysis. (Apr/May `15)
Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), as an example of a popular traditional analysis
method, and reconstruct what we believe to be the basis for judging the adequacy of
fault trees. The subsequent section demonstrates that the same grounds for confidence
do not currently exist for MBSA and that the justification of the adequacy of novel
models poses significant new challenges. It is important to stress that we do not argue
that the current basis for ‗trusting‘ traditional techniques and artefacts they generate is
adequate. However, we suggest that confidence in any new proposed techniques
should at least match that in FTA.
The remaining sections of the paper discuss how these challenges can be
pragmatically addressed through improved methodological guidance and approaches
to simulation-based model review together with explicit arguments of model
adequacy. In a fault tree analysis, we begin with an undesirable event, such as a car
not starting or the loss of electrical power to a nuclear power plant‘s safety system.
We reason back to the events that might have caused this undesirable event.
Fault trees are often used to anticipate hazards for which there is little or no
direct experience, such as nuclear meltdowns. They enable an engineer to analyze
systematically the various failure modes attendant to an engineering project. A failure
mode is a way in which a structure, mechanism, or process can malfunction.
For example, a structure can rip apart in tension, crumble to pieces in
compression, crack and break in bending, lose its integrity because of corrosion
(rusting), explode because of excessive internal pressure, or burn because of excessive
temperature.
Part - C
1. What are the safety lessons that can be learned from Bhopal disaster? Discuss
the role of Governments regulator‟s in reducing the risk. (Apr/May 16)
Union Carbide in 1984 operated in 37 host countries in addition to its home
country, the United States, ranking 35th in size among U.S. corporations. On
December 3, 1984, the operators of Union Carbide‘s plant in Bhopal, India, became
alarmed by a leak and overheating in a storage tank.
The tank contained methyl isocyanate (MIC), a toxic ingredient used in
pesticides. As a concentrated gas, MIC burns any moist part of bodies with which it
comes in contact, scalding throats and nasal passages, blinding eyes, and destroying
lungs. Within an hour the leak exploded in a gush that sent 40 tons of deadly gas into
the atmosphere.
The result was the worst industrial accident in history: 500,000 persons
exposed to the gas, 2,500 to 3,000 deaths within a few days, 10,000 permanently
disabled, 100,000 to 200,000 others injured (the exact figures will always be
disputed).
The government of India required the Bhopal plant to be operated entirely by
Indian workers. Hence Union Carbide at first took admirable care in training plant
personnel, flying them to its West Virginia plant for intensive training.
It also had teams of U.S. engineers make regular on-site safety inspections. But
in 1982, financial pressures led Union Carbide to relinquish its supervision of safety at
the plant, although it retained general financial and technical control.
One source of the erosion was personnel: high turnover of employees, failure to
properly train new employees, and low technical preparedness of the local labor pool.
The other source was the move away from U.S. standards (contrary to Carbide‘s
written policies) toward lower Indian standards. By December 1984, there were
several extreme hazards, including overloading of the tanks storing the MIC gas and
lack of proper cooling of the tanks.
 According to the official account, a disgruntled employee unscrewed a pressure
gauge on a storage tank and inserted a hose into it. He knew and intended that the
water he poured into the tank would do damage but did not know it would cause such
immense damage. According to another account, a relatively new worker had been
instructed by a new supervisor to flush out some pipes and filters connected to the
chemical storage tanks.
Apparently the worker properly closed valves to isolate the tanks from the pipes
and filters being washed, but he failed to insert the required safety disks to back up the
valves in case they leaked. Either way, by the time the workers noticed a gauge
showing the mounting pressure and began to feel the sting of leaking gas, they found
their main emergency procedures unavailable. The primary defense against gas leaks
was a vent-gas scrubber designed to neutralize the gas.
It was shut down (and was turned on too late to help), because it was assumed to
be unnecessary during times when production was suspended. The second line of
defence was a flare tower that would burn off escaping gas missed by the scrubber. It
was inoperable because a section of the pipe connecting it to the tank was being
repaired.
As was common in India, desperately poor migrant labourers had become
squatters—by the tens of thousands—in the vacant areas surrounding the plant. They
had come with hopes of finding any form of employment, as well as to take advantage
of whatever water and electricity was available.
Virtually none of the squatters had been officially informed by Union Carbide
or the Indian government of the danger posed by the chemicals being produced next
door to them. The scope of the disaster was greatly increased because of total
unpreparedness.
2. Explain in detail the powerful support and the proper role of law in
engineering. (Nov/Dec‟15)
We should also mention the role of law in engineering ethics. The practice of
engineering is governed by many laws on the international, federal, state, and local
levels. Many of these laws are based on ethical principles, although many are purely
of a practical, rather than a philosophical, nature.
 There is also a distinction between what is legal and what is ethical. Many
things that are legal could be considered unethical. For example, designing a process
that releases a known toxic, but unregulated, substance into the environment is
probably unethical, although it is legal.
Conversely, just because something is illegal doesn‘t mean that it is unethical.
For example, there might be substances that were once thought to be harmful, but
have now been shown to be safe, that you wish to incorporate into a product. If the
law has not caught up with the latest scientific findings, it might be illegal to release
these substances into the environment, even though there is no ethical problem in
doing so.
As an engineer, you are always minimally safe if you follow the requirements
of the applicable laws. But in engineering ethics, we seek to go beyond the dictates of
the law. Our interest is in areas where ethical principles conflict and there is no legal
guidance for how to resolve the conflict.
Proper Role of Law In Engineering
 It is wrong to write off rule-making and rule following as futile. Good laws,
effectively enforced, clearly produce benefits.
 It also provides a self-interested motive for most people and corporations to
comply.
 They also serve as powerful support and defense for those who wish to act
ethically in situations where ethical conduct might not be welcome.
 Viewing engineering as social experimentation provides engineers with a better
perspective on laws and regulations.
 Precise rules and enforceable sanctions are appropriate in cases of ethical
misconduct that involve violations of well established and regularly reexamined
procedures that have as their purpose the safety of public.
 In areas of experimentation, rules must not attempt to cover all possible outcomes
of an experiment, nor must they force the engineer to adopt a rigidly specified
course of action.