Should we treat Engineering as a form of Social Experimentation?

Please note that if all you do is mindlessly parrot the things the authors say about this, you will receive ZERO points for this assignment.

Thus, you are need to choose between two propositions:

1. We should best see engineering as a professional practice (like medicine or law) in which engineers dedicate themselves to keeping the public as safe as possible as they introduce new products into the marketplace, and test their products as fully as possible before introducing them into the marketplace.

2. We should best see engineering as a form of social experimentation, in which engineers, instead of dedicating themselves to keeping the public as safe as possible as they introduce new products into the marketplace, deliberately experiment on people by introducing products that are not yet fully tested into the marketplace and seeing what happens.

Again, remember, that if all you do is paraphrase these pages, without doing any analysis of your own, you will get no points for this assignment.

To prepare, read pages 77-93, and answer the following questions in your notes. (Especially the questions in bold.)

1. What, if anything, is meant by "Engineering as Social Experimentation?"
2. How is this different from engineering as a professional practice.
3. What point were the authors trying to make with that poncy story about the Titanic?
4. What are "standard experiments?"
5. What are the three ways engineering projects are scarily similar to standard experiments?
6. What are the five ways engineers sometimes fail to learn from the past.
7. What is "experimental control" and why is it missing from engineering?
8. Do competent scientists ever do experiments without controls?
9. What is "informed consent" and why is it missing from engineering?
10. Do honest scientists ever do experiments without informed consent?
11. If you can, write up a first draft of a consent form for so that we can obtain informed consent in engineering projects.
12. What conditions define "valid consent," the broad notion of informed consent endorsed by our authors?
13. What two requirements do they suggest for situations in which the subject cannot be readily identified as an individual?
14. What significant failures contributed to the failure of the Grand Teton dam?
15. What items might we add to the relevant code of conduct to reduce the risk of future massive screw-ups?
16. Analyze the Grand Teton failure without considering the "social experiementation" model.
17. Now, try to add the light of the social experimentation model to your analysis. Does it really help anything?
18. What is meant by "buyer beware," and how is it relevant to this discussion?
19. What exactly is the "social experimentation" model supposed to contribute to engineering ethics?
20. How is the social experimentation model supposed to contribute to conscientiousness?
21. How is the social experimentation model supposed to contribute to comprehensive perspective?
22. How is the social experimentation model supposed to contribute to moral autonomy?
23. How is the social experimentation model supposed to contribute to accountability?
24. What happened in the Milgram Experiments?
25. How is the social experimentation model supposed to contribute to reducing handbook mentality?
26. What is "minimal compliance," and why is it evil? What would Hammurabi do about it?

Once you fully understand the main points and argument(s) in this chapter, figure out for yourself whether it is useful or appropriate to regard engineering as a form of social experimentation, and then write a paper saying what you think and why you think it.

As you think about this issue, the following questions may help you figure out what is going on.

1. What is an "experiment?"
2. What is the goal of experimenting?
   
3. How are "social" experiments different from regular experiments?
   
4. How are experiments different from actions that are not experiments?
5. How is doing experiments on structural integrity different from just driving across a bridge?
6. How would consumers feel if they knew that the engineers had not done all feasible testing BEFORE releasing their product?
7. Is it ethical to experiment on unwitting people when the same experiment could be done without people, or with crash test dummies?
8. Would it be useful to have a definition of "experiment" that made everything an experiment?
9. Do scientists consider driving around in a brand-new car an experiment?

Remember, you are supposed to actually THINK about this issue, and NOT simply repeat the things the authors say. That would not be good.

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