Assignments and Due Dates
Fall 2002

Science and Engineering Ethics (SEE)

Case Western Reserve University
Tues. and Thurs. 1:15 - 2:30
Caroline Whitbeck

Below is an outline of required readings and assignments only. This page is not to be confused with your syllabus, which is available here. Your syllabus contains all scheduled class activities, and discussion headings, with links back to these assignments.

    Sept. 4,    Sept. 20,    Oct. 2,    Oct. 25,    Nov. 13,    Nov. 27

  Aug. 27: No assignment is due today. :-)

  Aug. 29: Assignment #1

1. Read Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research ( Hereafter "EEPR") Introduction, Part 1 pp. 1 to 11. Be prepared to explain the meaning of the concepts written in bold.

2. Read EEPR "Making and Assessing Ethical Judgments" in Ch. 1 (pp. 70-71) and Ch. 2, pp. 74-82. Be prepared to discuss this reading, especially the two cases (Commission Payment Under a Marketing Agreement, Gifts to Foreign Officials) and the NSPE cases (NSPE Case No. 76-6, NSPE Case No. 78-7) on which they are based —together with relevant portions of the NSPE Code of Ethics. Compare the NSPE code with the code or guidelines of some other professional society. (Do not choose the ACM Code of Ethics, because we will examine it in the next session, but you may want to use the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice from the IEE-CS/ACM, which you will find at http://onlineethics.org/codes/softeng.html). This may be one of those in the Codes Section of the Online Ethics Center, or one you obtain elsewhere. Be prepared to summarize your comparison in class.

3. Write up a brief discussion (100-200 words) of the reasoning and judgment of NSPE's Board of Ethical Review ("BER") on the two cases and send it to the instructor (cw@onlineethics.org) by 9 AM Thursday.

Required Materials (as above):

For Further Reading:
American Chemical Society Code of Conduct
Link to the NSPE Web Site

  Sept. 3: Assignment #2 is due today.

1. Read the rest of Ch. 2 (to pp. 107). Skim Introduction to Ethical Concepts, Part 3, evaluate the statement: You can learn basic moral rules and values as a child, but it requires a mature intelligence to understand and exercise complex responsibilities, such as moral responsibilities and come to class prepared to discuss your evaluation.

2. Write a brief discussion (100-200 words each) of the reasoning and judgment of the NSPE BER in three of the cases in second part of Ch. 2. (see links below) - or three of the nine cases that accompany the ACM Code of Ethics. (You will find these cases, together with the ACM code in a pdf file here and the ACM code by itself is available on the OEC.

Notice that the Board of Ethical Review (BER) of the NSPE limits itself to making a judgment on whether certain actions are ethical or unethical on the basis of how they measure up against the NSPE Code of Ethics. Consider both the content of their judgment, and the reasons they give for it.

Send your discussion to cw@onlineethics.org by Saturday morning. Later in the course we will use Web conferencing software and, therefore use the Web most of the time, rather than email.)

Required Web Reading (as above):

  Sept. 5: Assignment #3

Video - Do Scientists Cheat? to be shown in class. After the video screening, you will work in groups of two or three to write a brief statement (100 - 300 words) about suggestions or guidelines given in the video for identifying or curtailing the subtler kind of failing that jeopardizes scientific integrity. Email the group's statement to the instructor by Friday Sept. 6, with a copy to each of your group members. (The video also describes some gross misconduct, such as simply making up [fabricating] research results, but those are less important for our purposes.)

1. By 10 PM Wednesday Sept. 4, send to the instructor, cw@onlineethics.org, an example of a situation (from your experience, from the news, or elsewhere) that raises the issue of research integrity. These can be extreme cases in which research results were fabricated or falsified, or subtler matters.

2. Prepare a brief scenario dealing either with safety or with the recording, selection, or interpretation of data for the mini-project that you will be doing. Instructions for mini-project

3. Read EEPR Introduction, Part 2 and bring to class an example of a right with your proposed classification of it.

For Further Reading:
Discussion Questions: On Being a Scientist
Truth and Trustworthiness in Research

  Sept. 10: Assignment #4

1. Read Ch. 3 of EEPR and Therac-25

Remember Assignment #6 for Sept. 19

  Sept. 12: Assignment #5 Quiz on concepts and syllabus today.

For Next Class (Assignment #5)

1. Attend lecture by Edward Hundert, "A Practical Model for Ethical Problem Solving in Medicine" in the School of Medicine, (enter Richard Celeste Bldg.) Room E301from 1:05 - 2:00.

2. Brief Quiz after the talk (about 12 minutes) on the course syllabus and concepts through Part 2 of the Introduction.

  Sept. 17: Assignment #5 Due Today

For Next Class, Sept. 19 (Assignment #6)

1. Read EEPR Ch. 4. Reread Introduction to Ethical Concepts, Part 3

2.In groups of two or three, choose either Roger Boisjoly and the Challenger Disaster, or William LeMessurier and the Citicorp Tower and borrow corresponding videotape. Read EEPR Ch. 4 Part 1 or 2 and review relevant Web pages.

As a group prepare a 5-minute presentation on the case to give in class. If for some reason you are not part of a group, read both accounts and Web pages and give a 5-minute comparison of the two cases in class or send a 500-word comparison of them to the instructor by Monday at 11 PM.

For Further Reading:
7/31/85 Memo about O-Ring Erosion
8/22/85 Memo from Arnold R. Thompson on the Flight Seal
Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident
What Went Wrong With the Solid Rocket Booster
Morton Thiokol Wasatch Division Corporate Structure
Morton Thiokol and the Space shuttle Challenger Disaster (A background summary of important events leading to the Challenger disaster starting with January, 1985, plus the specifics of the telecon meeting held the night prior to the launch at which an attempt was made to stop the launch by the Morton Thiokol engineers. A detailed account will show why the off-line telecon caucus by Morton Thiokol Management constituted the unethical decision-making forum which ultimately produced the management decision to launch Challenger without any restrictions.)

  Sept. 19: Assignment #6

Mini-projects presented in class.

  Sept. 24: Assignment #7

1. Read Ch. 5 of EEPR (pp. 157 - 168) and Inez Austin, Protecting the Public Safety at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation

2. Read the Guidelines for Engineers Dissenting on Ethical Grounds in the OEC and consider these tips in relation to the requirements for organizational complaint procedures that you read about.

  Sept. 26: Assignment #8

For Next Class (Assignment #9)

1. Review the GAP's Web links for Whistleblowers and consider these tips in relation to the stories of whistleblowers that you know.

2. Read Ch. 5 of EEPR (pp. 168 - 182)

3. Comments on what you take to be the underlying values and principles that the company is seeking to promote in at least five of the Lockheed Martin mini-cases in the OEC, four of those should be ones not discussed in the readings.

For Further Reading:
The Structural Engineer's Standard of Care
The History of Skyscrapers: Putting Environmental Ethics at the Center of Design: A Case Study Approach

  Oct. 1: Assignment #9 Quiz today on concepts through Part 3 and,
    perhaps, the syllabus

For Next Class (Assignment #10)

1. Finish reading Ch. 5 of EEPR (pp. 182 - 193).

2. Bring to class an example of a stipulation against discrimination or harassment from some ethics code or guidelines.

3. Consider the Supreme Court decisions you have read at least in outline in this course or elsewhere. Compare criteria used by the Supreme Court decisions with those used by the NSPE Board of Ethical Review and some third judicial or quasi-judicial body with whose decisions you are familiar, and post your discussion to the Web Conference.

  Oct. 3: Assignment #10

For Next Class (Assignment #11)

1. Read Introduction on Concepts Part 4 EEPR.

2. Read Drug Testing on a Plant Trip, 1992. What do you believe were the grounds of the Todd Riggs's objection? Was it that his privacy was invaded? Was something else done to him?

3. Read Workplace Surveillance section of CyberEthics (pp.43 - 47).

4. Read Advice from the Texas Instruments Ethics Office on Individual Privacy, and compare their advice with the advice or guidelines that you have encountered on that subject in your own work experience or at Case. You will discuss your example in class and post it to the Web conference by Friday 10/4/02.

  Oct. 8: Assignment #11

For Next Class (Assignment #12)

1. Read Zimmermann presentation.

2. Read Ethical Challenges in Research with Human Biological Material

3. Read Special Issues in Conducting Human Genetic Research

  Oct. 10: Assignment #12

For Next Class (Assignment #13)

Brief quiz (about 12 minutes) on the course syllabus and concepts through Part 4 of the Introduction, and those we have introduced thusfar in the course; How is digital information like or unlike other intellectual property. Video of a talk on digital information as property by Prof. Randall Davis at MIT (with univited guest appearance of Richard Stallman).

  Oct. 15: Assignment #13

For Next Class (Assignment #14)

1. Read selections from Ch. 1 "Intellectual Property and Cyberspace" in CyberEthics (pp.1-24 and 34-38, skipping their "Ethical Analysis" section, which is worthless.) and "Forget the CD: consumers now buy music online" by Daniel B. Wood (Christian Science Monitor (hereafter: "CSM"), July 12, 2002 pp 1 and 4). Problems from that Chapter will be assigned for Oct. 17.

2. Examine TI's ethical advice on software piracy and on software use and compare these to some other organization's policies about software or digitalized information generally. Be prepared to discuss what makes digitalized information different from other property, and the morally relevant considerations that apply in various contexts.

  Oct. 17: Quiz on all concepts today. Assignment #14

For Next Class (Assignment #15)

1. Problems 2, 3, 5, 6 on pp. 38-40 of CyberEthics and read http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery in connection with #6

  Oct. 24: Quiz today. Assignment #15

For Next Class (Assignment #16)

Read "Cyberspeech" in CyberEthics and look over the Web site at: http://www.nursegossip.com/ and its discussion of legal liability of Web sites like itself at http://www.nursegossip.com/legal_liability.htm

Instructions for Final Projects

  Oct. 29: Assignment #16

For Next Class (Assignment #17)

1. Read "E-Learning" in CyberEthics

  Oct. 31: Assignment #17

For Next Class (Assignment #18)

Read "Democracy and Cyberspace" in CyberEthics

  Nov. 5: Assignment #18

For Next Class (Assignment #19)

Read "Encryption" in CyberEthics

  Nov. 7: Assignment #19

For Next Class (Assignment #20)

Read about the case of high energy physicist Victor Ninov "Atomic Lies" by Richard Monastersky in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Herafter "the Chronicle") August 16, 2002 (handout) A series of articles on the Chad Mirkin case from the Chronicle published in summer 2002.

  Nov. 12:

1. Read Ch. 6 of EEPR pp 194-208.

Read the current government-wide definition at http://onlineethics.org/fedresmis. html#Section%20I. Notice that it, unlike previous versions, this definition of research misconduct includes behavior in reviewing research, and it includes reckless behavior as well as intentional malfeasance.

  Nov. 14: Assignment #20

For Next Class (Assignment #21)

1. Read Ch. 6 of EEPR pp. 298-end.

  Nov. 19: Assignment #21

For Next Class (Assignment #22)

1. Read http://onlineethics.org/reseth/mod/data.html on responsible treatment of data

  Nov. 21: Assignment #22

For Next Class (Assignment #23)

Read http://onlineethics.org/reseth/mod/auth.html on responsible authorship

  Nov. 26:Assignment #24

1. Read http://onlineethics.org/reseth/mod/publ.html Responsibilities in the Editing and Reviewing of Journals and Grant Applications

2. Read http://onlineethics.org/reseth/mod/bugs-errs.html Responsibility for Bugs and Errors

3. Read http://onlineethics.org/reseth/mod/advis.html The Supervisor-Trainee Relationship

  Dec 3: Assignment #24

Responsibility for the Environment : Does regard for the moral standing of non-humans creatures underlie our responsibility for the environment? What the examples of acid rain, erosion of the ozone layer, and toxic contamination teach us about the responsibilities of scientists and engineers that must be addressed to protect the environment.Begin presentation of final reports.

  Dec. 5: Assignment #25

PLEASE PLAN TO COME TO CLASS AT 1 PM to ensure that there is adequate time allotted for everyoneÕs presentation. Presentation of final projects; Make notes in light of the comments on your oral presentation about any points you wish to clarify in the written version of your project.

Make notes in light of the comments and questions on your oral presentation about any points you wish to clarify in the written version of your project.

The written version of your final project is due by email or in the instructorÕs office (211 Clark Hall) by 10 AM on the Monday (12/9) after the presentations.

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