Examples of Advice from the Ethics Help-Line
Identifying details are changed on confidential inquiries.
- Tank Job
- An engineer with concerns about the safety of a water tank.
- Tanks Again
- An engineer has safety concerns about a tank containing air filtration equipment.
The cases above are based on submissions to the Online Ethics Center Help-line. Names and details have been changed. They are contained in a revision of the paper by Stephen Unger, Some Recent Engineering Ethics Cases, presented at the March 1999 conference. This article appeared as Examples of Real World Engineering Ethics Problems,in Science and Engineering Ethics, Vol. 6, No. 3 (July 2000).
- An Inquiry about the Connection Between Engineering Work and the Military
- I am one of the Engineering students at Simon Fraser University. I am currently having trouble on some ethical issues. My question is, "can any branch of engineering science be divorced from military?" I have seen some horrible statistics and I do not know whether all those deaths I see are the result of misusing engineering science or even engineers themselves. If someone were to ask you, "tell me one engineering technology that had not and is not used by the military" would you be able to name one? I certainly would not be able. As I mentioned earlier, I am a freshman and still in common core engineering but sooner or later, I'll have to decide which field I want to specialize. Please tell me there is even a single (little) branch of engineering that as nothing to do with wars and weapons.
Thanks, mgseo.
(The inquiry has been lightly edited for grammar.-cw)
- Response to an Ethics Query response by Stephen Unger
- Military Engineering: A Two-Edged-Sword response by Walter L. Elden
- Ethics Help-Line Index