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Case Studies for Engineering Ethics Across the Product Life Cycle

This activity is considered an NAE Exemplar in Engineering Ethics Education and was included in a 2016 report with other exemplary activities. This activity uses reviewed case studies and life cycle assessment tools to help students develop needed ethical decision-making skills. 

Exemplary features: Adaptability for use in secondary education; extensive collection of cases on the ethics of lifecycle impacts and sustainability

Why it’s exemplary: Real-world engineering decision making involves multiple actors and, for each, ethical considerations may arise at multiple levels—personal, professional, societal, or global. Our program of case studies and educational materials is exemplary in its interdisciplinary foundation, created collectively by engineers, policy experts, business professionals, and ethicists to provide clear examples for rising engineers to appreciate ethical issues from multiple angles. Accompanying materials are rigorously assessed in the classroom by internal and external evaluators based on national educational goals and guidelines, with versions developed to suit a variety of instructional modes. Full cases are designed for university engineering students, while streamlined versions for secondary schools spread an awareness of lifecycle issues and environmental ethics early in formal education. Widespread dissemination using various media adds to national infrastructure for ethics education in engineering and environmental fields, with the goal of emphasizing societal ethics and indirect effects.

Program description: A central goal of engineering education is to provide students with an understanding of context for their designs and decisions. A common theme currently relates to the environment and public health, specifically what constitutes a fair distribution of emissions or impacts, who or what has value, and what exactly gets counted in an engineering analysis of benefits and costs. These questions can be quite effectively discussed in the context of lifecycle engineering, a design strategy that uses a “cradle-to-grave” approach to evaluate environmental and social impacts, incorporating material, energy, and economic flows as well as social and biological effects at different stages. While the use of lifecycle engineering and lifecycle assessment (LCA) tools is widespread, the modeling structure and interpretation of results involve ethical and value judgments that must be navigated carefully by the analyst and by the receiver of the results.

LCA is increasingly important in corporate and government decision making, yet there is a dearth of materials specifically designed to integrate ethics education into life cycle–oriented coursework. Our ethics education project centers on the integration of life cycle–oriented case studies in design, engineering, management, and public policy fields. Case studies are effective pedagogical tools, and particularly useful in enabling students to develop practical understanding of the ethical challenges they will face as practicing professionals by placing them in mock decision-making roles. We have conducted a thorough review of nearly 1,000 existing case studies from engineering, business, and public policy to determine common topics and themes that relate to product life cycles and environmental and health impacts. Our case studies cover current events and engineering design decisions that involve balancing local or direct effects with larger, indirect effects on society, including (a) mismanagement of industrial waste and ecological impacts from industrial accidents, specifically the inundation of several villages in Hungary from a large-volume spill of red mud, a byproduct of aluminum production (production stage); (b) the upstream implication of material selection for consumer electronics, specifically the tradeoffs between Au-coated antennas and GaIn liquid metal reconfigurable antennas, a new technology being piloted by handset manufacturers (design stage); (c) implementation of state-level policy around compact fluorescent bulbs, balancing state targets for energy efficiency, indirect emissions as a result of reducing electricity demand, and direct potential emissions of Hg during lamp breakage, both accidental and intentional (use and disposal stages); and (d) whether federal/state agencies could and should require labelling of nanomaterials in consumer products, drawing parallels with labelling efforts for pharmaceuticals and food (use and disposal stages).

Following typical case study methods, students are presented with an engineering or design decision that they need to make, accompanied by background material that provides technical, environmental, and policy context. An accompanying teaching note guides instructors with ideas for classroom instruction, emphasizing the ethical concepts that are relevant to the case and written with proper terminology in collaboration with the Ethics Institute at Northeastern and assessed by an external evaluator. Instructional materials and video footage presenting each case, as well as shorter versions for younger audiences, are being created and will be hosted at the Ethics Institute as an additional teaching resource. The creation of the case studies involved a multidisciplinary collaboration among faculty members as well as graduate students. Undergraduate students and high school teachers are assisting in the creation of versions appropriate for secondary schools. These cases have been designed as one-week modules to be incorporated in existing courses and ethics workshops.

The educational goals of this project are to:

(1) Create engaging, practical, and effective case study and workshop materials that examine ethical dimensions of LCA practice and communication, for use in courses in engineering, management, and social science;

(2) Evaluate the effectiveness of these materials through robust educational assessment while improving student learning; and

(3) Engage other secondary school and college/university instructors through demonstration and provision of instructional guides and resources to accompany the case study and workshop materials.

The overall purpose of the project is to enable engineering students and the general public to have an understanding and meaningful discussions of indirect impacts of their activities, and how to balance direct benefits and indirect impacts. Our life cycle–oriented, case-based approach to engineering ethics education will fill gaps in case study resources by addressing fundamental ethical principles and macro-ethical issues on sustainability topics, developing novel, robustly assessed educational materials where few currently exist.

Assessment information: Our case studies and workshops are being piloted in engineering, business, and public policy classrooms. We have also been working with the Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning through Research at Northeastern and our external assessment advisor, Dr. Michael Loui, to develop assessment instruments and evaluation schemes that can be used across all of the cases. We now have a scheme that covers the common ethical concepts introduced in the cases—distributive justice, weighting/balancing risks, moral status, the precautionary principle, responsibility to report, and exploitation. The evaluation scheme is based on the framework presented by the Ethical Reasoning Value rubric published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and will be applied to five separate classes of students over the coming year in order to test learning outcomes. This project grew out of the team’s experience with trying to fit existing engineering ethics cases into a life cycle–based framework. To provide a baseline for evaluating the new case studies, a review of learning assessments was carried out in spring 2015 for a mechanical/industrial engineering course, which currently uses a case study–based ethics module about the Bhopal chemical disaster, and retrospectively for the 150+ students who have passed through the course over the past several years. Review of assignments and responses informed the creation of case study teaching notes and the draft evaluation scheme. Continuing assessment will allow the project team to adjust the cases and teaching materials as necessary and add further instructional guidance where learning objectives are not being met.

Additional resources:

• Devising State Policy on Compact Fluorescent Lamps:  https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/devising-state-policy-on-compact-fluorescent-lamps-case.pdf

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 2055332. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Engineering Ethics

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Cases Available Online

• Cases on Engineering Practice Cases from the Online Ethics Center for Science and Engineering
• National Society of Professional Engineers Search the archive of case studies brought before the NSPE's Board of Ethical Review. Cases run from 1959 to 2006.
• Engineering Ethics Cases from Texas A & M University Though the design of this website is a bit dated, this is an extremely good collection of famous case studies maintained by Texas A&M University's Murdoch Center for Engineering.
• Engineering.com Ethics Cases A collection of eighteen famous case studies which include a time line of events, a detailed examination of the incident, and oftentimes a bibliography for further investigation.
• Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases Cases from the first edition of the book, "Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases by Charles Harris. Listed by name, engineering specialty, and a taxonomy of cases by subject dealt with.
• Engineering Disasters and Learning from Failure A collection of cases on famous engineering failures maintained by the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of New York, Stony Brook.
• Ethics Education Library - Engineering Cases A collection of over 500 cases on various aspects engineering ethics. Searchable by topic and keyword.

Books Containing Cases

• Engineering Ethics: Concepts, Viewpoints, Cases and Codes by Jimmy Smith, Patricia Harper, and Richard Burgess Call Number: CSEP.TA157.E54x2008 Along with a number of seminal readings on engineering ethics, this book includes a large collection of codes of ethics and case studies.

Engineering Ethics Films

• Incident at Morales Call Number: DVD.CSEP.TA157.I53x2003 Incident at Morales involves a variety of ethical issues faced by a company that wants to quickly build a plant in order to develop a new chemical product to gain a competitive edge over the competition
• Gilbane Gold by National Institute for Engineering Ethics Call Number: Available at the Ethics Center Library Publication Date: http://www.onlineethics.org/Resources/Cases/22240.aspx Available at the CSEP Library, this video is the fictional story of a chemical company The city of Gilbane has implemented a plan where the sewage of the city is processed and sold as fertilizer to local farmers, a product locally known as Gilbane Gold. The fertilizer project creates a sizable revenue for the city, who has also sought to make itself attractive to business through numerous tax incentives. Not long ago, the city has put in place stringent regulations on the amount of heavy metals manufacturing plants located in Gilbane discharge into the city's sewage. Z Corp, a company in Gilbane, has been releasing a higher level of heavy metals into the city's sewage than allowed. As a new employee, should the engineer David Jackson tell the city about this fact? Below URL is a link to a summary of the film, and discussion questions. The link goes to a teaching guide that describes the film in more detail.
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• URL: https://guides.library.iit.edu/engineeringethics

Examples of real world engineering ethics problems

• Published: September 2000
• Volume 6 , pages 423–430, ( 2000 )

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• Stephen H. Unger 1  

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Nine examples are presented illustrating the kinds of problems encountered in actual practice by conscientious engineers. These cases are drawn fom the records of the IEEE Ethics Committee, and from the experience of the ethics help-line initiated recently by the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science. They range from situations in which companies try to cheat one another to those in which human health and safety are jeopardized. In one case, an engineer learned that even a quiet resignation can prove very costly in a personal sense. Some ways in which professional societies might make ethical practice of engineering somewhat easier are mentioned.

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Engineering Ethics

Unger, S.H. (1999) What Happened to Ethics Support? Letter, IEEE Institute , December, p. 15.

Unger, S.H. (1999) The Assault on IEEE Ethics Support, IEEE Technology and Society magazine , V. 18, No. 1, Spring: 36–40. On www at http://www.onlineethics.org/text/helpline/unger.html

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Unger, S.H. (1998) Reality check: ethics and air bags, IEEE Institute , August, p. 2.

The URL of the Online Ethics Center is: http://www.onlineethics.org

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Professor Unger was Chairman of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Ethics Committee (1997–1998).

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Unger, S.H. Examples of real world engineering ethics problems. SCI ENG ETHICS 6 , 423–430 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-000-0042-y

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-000-0042-y

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Engineering Ethics: Real World Case Studies

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Provides in-depth analysis with extended discussions and study questions of case studies that are based on real work situations., additional information, related resources & events, whistleblowing.

Provides an overview of whistleblowing and how to raise a concern.

Guidance on ethics

All members of the Institution of Structural Engineers should subscribe to the Statement of Ethical Principles.

In conversation with Gold Medallists: inspiring action

IStructE President Tanya de Hoog talks with celebrated engineers Paul Fast and Chris Wise about how they embed people and planet at the heart of their work.

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Existing ethics case study libraries

Murdough Center for Engineering Professionalism, Texas Tech University

• Previously published cases of the Applied Ethics in Professional Practice Program (formerly known as the AEPP Case of the Month Club)
• Many of the cases are based on real world situations and experiences of a consulting engineer. Ideas for other cases came from the program’s Board of Review, consisting of practicing engineers and throughout the US.
• Examples include: The Leaning Tower: A Timely Dilemma; To Flush or Not to Flush: That’s the Question; and The Plagiarized Proposal.

Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science

• Explore a variety of case studies and scenarios including: A Client Opts for a Less Secure System; Air Bags, Safety, and Social Experiments; and Anhydrous Ammonia Hose Failure.

National Society of Professional Engineers Board of Ethical Review

• All published opinions of the NSPE Board of Ethical Review. Cases are filterable e.g. by keyword and/or subject, and each case is broken down into several sections: Facts; Questions; NSPE code of ethics references; Discussion; and Conclusions.
• Case examples include: Public Health, Safety, and Welfare—Drinking Water Quality; and Misrepresentation—Claiming Credit for Work of Former Employer.

Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University

• This series of engineering ethics case studies were created after interviews of numerous engineers, with the cases anonymised and written in a way that highlights the ethical content from each interview. These cases are primarily targeted at engineering students and professionals for their continuing professional development.
• The case studies can be sorted into categories including; Academic ethics, Bioengineering, Electrical engineering and Science/research ethics and so on.
• Case examples include: To Ship or Not to Ship; Disclosure Dilemma; Unintended Effects; and Is the Customer Always Right?

Ethics 4TU Centre for Ethics and Technology

• Cases devised by researchers aiming to advance understanding of ethical issues in engineering and technology, in addition to material supporting their use e.g. a glossary of ethical concepts.
• These cases are exercises for teaching ethics in engineering studies, especially at Bachelor’s and Master’s levels.

Engineering Professors’ Council

• These case studies were created in partnership with the Royal Academy of Engineering.

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Five Disastrous Engineering Failures

Engineering failures are not new. From the Johnstown Flood in 1889 to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, engineering failures have been caused by problems in design, construction and safety protocol.

The blame can often be laid at ignorance, miscommunications and, in some extreme cases, indifference or negligence. After many of these engineering disasters however, professionals and leaders have learned from the wrong decisions that were made. Here, we discuss some of the worst engineering disasters and what caused them.

Not all engineering mistakes are associated with large-scale feats or impressive architectural marvels. From 1971 through 1976, the Ford Motor Company produced and sold more than 2.2 million Ford Pintos. The automaker set out to make a competitive, affordable car, but late into the development of its design, engineers discovered an issue with the fuel tank. Located between the rear axle and the bumper, the tank punctured and ruptured easily due to the car’s design. Ford’s engineers recommended an easy fix to the problem, one that would cost an additional $11 for each vehicle. In spite of this, the company decided to continue with the design as is, both to keep the cost low and to not delay production.

After just a few years on the road, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began investigating accidents involving the small car catching fire, but it took an article from the magazine Mother Jones to bring to light the Pinto’s danger to the public as well as Ford’s previous knowledge of it. After losing a lawsuit, Ford recalled the Pinto in 1978 and fixed vehicles with the original suggested solution. Some estimate that between 27 and 180 people died from the fuel tank issue. 1

The saga of the Love Canal is one of the first major environmental disasters in the U.S. The project originally began in 1894 when an entrepreneur attempted to build a canal in Niagara Falls, New York, to bring water and hydroelectric power to the city. The project was never completed, but in 1947, the canal was sold to Hooker Chemicals and Plastic Corporation. The company lined the unfinished canal with clay and began dumping chemicals and waste into the then isolated site. In 1953, the site was sold again, but this time to build an elementary school and houses.

Controversy remains over whether Hooker or the Niagara Falls Board of Education, which chose the site in spite of strict restrictions detailed in the land deed, is responsible for the consequences from building on the site. During the construction of the school, homes and a sewer line were built on and through the canal. The clay lining broke and chemicals began seeping into the ground. Eventually a state of emergency was declared by New York. Residents reported miscarriages, birth defects, cancer and other disorders and continued to fight to keep the site vacant years after they were evacuated. Today, the ramifications of this environmental and engineering failure still affects building and policy. 2

The Hyatt Regency Hotel Walkway

One year after the Hyatt Regency Hotel was completed in Kansas City, Missouri, two walkways suspended over the atrium lobby collapsed in July 1981. It happened in the middle of a dance, with attendees packed on the walkways and the floor below. More than 200 were injured, and 114 people were killed.

A series of decisions and miscommunications were found to be at fault. The original designs for the walkways violated the city’s weight-bearing codes: The second and fourth story walkways were suspended by slim sets of rods anchored to the ceiling. However, following a discussion with the fabricator during construction, the decision was made to attach the set of rods supporting the second-floor walkway to the bottom of the fourth—instead of the ceiling. That meant the rods attached to the fourth-floor walkway were supporting twice the weight than the original design intended. A lack of proper communication was blamed for the design change not being analyzed and approved properly, but the engineers involved with the site and the fabricators refused to accept responsibility. 3

New Orleans’ Levee System

The American Society of Civil Engineers notes that the destruction of the levees in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina is unique among engineering failures. No one single decision led to the disaster, but rather systemic failures were the cause.

During construction, the Army Corps of Engineers failed to follow their own guidelines when estimating the strength of the soil—and designed the system to withstand low hurricane wind speeds. The height of the levees was another of many engineering mistakes: In addition to using flawed data about land elevation, the Corps also did not take into account the land’s natural, gradual sinking. In addition, local, state and federal politics and mismanagement played a role in both the quality and speediness of the construction and in failing to fund and maintain the system.

Across the Gulf Coast, more than 1,800 died and more than $100 billion in damage was caused. New Orleans was one of the hardest hit regions from Hurricane Katrina. Roughly 80 percent of the city and its surrounding area were flooded. 4

The Titanic

More than 1,500 people died when the Titanic struck an iceberg in 1912. Over the years, many have researched and investigated the details of its sinking, and it has been determined that a number of design issues and poor decisions led to its sinking in just over two and-a-half hours.

As one of the biggest ocean liners of its day, the Titanic featured 16 watertight compartments. If four of those flooded, the ship would still be able to stay afloat. Six compartments flooded though because the bulkheads were not tall enough to hold the water. 5 Some potential causes behind the ship’s sinking include designs that failed to take into account its size and mobility, the speed the ship was traveling, ignored warnings about the likelihood of icebergs and other factors. 6

One flaw that is undisputed though: There were not enough lifeboats for everyone on board. The 20 lifeboats would only have had space for roughly 1,200 people, while more than 2,200 passengers and crew were on board the ship. Additional lifeboats had been removed from the design because the ship owners were worried that it made the ship look unsafe and seemed packed on the deck.

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Importance of Leadership

Decisions that impact the integrity of a design or its construction usually come from the top down. Lapses in leadership can lead to these kinds of engineering failures. That’s why it’s essential to have leaders trained in both ethical decision-making and technical decision-making.

At the Case School of Engineering, our online graduate programs focus on developing the leadership expertise that highly skilled engineers need to be successful. Joining our program means joining a network of experienced engineering leaders from a number of different industries. Learn more about who our students are .

• Retrieved on March 20, 2020, from popularmechanics.com/cars/a6700/top-automotive-engineering-failures-ford-pinto-fuel-tanks
• Retrieved on March 20, 2020, from encyclopedia.com/places/united-states-and-canada/us-political-geography/love-canal
• Retrieved on April 6, 2020, from ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/(ASCE)1527-6988(2007)8:3(61)
• Retrieved on April 9, 2020 from asce.org/question-of-ethics-articles/july-2015/
• Retrieved on April 9, 2020 from nationalgeographic.org/media/sinking-of-the-titanic/
• Retrieved on April 9, 2020 from nbcnews.com/sciencemain/10-causes-titanic-tragedy-620220

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A quality assurance engineer must decide whether or not to ship products that might be defective.

An intern at a power electronics startup faces unkind comments from a fellow engineer. She suspects that her colleague is prejudice toward female engineers.

A computer startup company risks violating copyright laws if it reuses a code that is the intellectual property of another company.

A manager at a consumer electronics company struggles over whether or not he should disclose confidential information to a valued customer.

A technical sales engineer feels pressure to falsify a sales report in order to prevent the delay of her company's IPO.

Employees of a computer hardware company are angered by a manager that demonstrates favoritism.

A project engineer believes his company is providing the wrong form of technology to an in-need community in East Africa.

In this ethics case, a woman is displeased with her work role at a computer hardware company.

A systems engineering company employee quits after getting pressured to falsify product testing paperwork.

An African-American electronics design lead wonders whether his colleague's contentious behavior is motivated by racism.

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We’re well-positioned for the tough questions of the future, thanks to a history of looking beyond the technical

The rise of generative artificial intelligence has shone a spotlight on the need for responsible technological progress. Happily, the College of Engineering and Applied Science at

CU Boulder has for many years been dedicating time and resources to support ethical engineering.

The Herbst Program

Started in 1989, the Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics and Society has led generations of engineers to think beyond the technical and into the purpose of their creations. 

“Part of our charge is to educate responsible engineers,” said Paul Diduch, a Herbst teaching associate professor. “We have to alert them to the different dimensions of what they’re doing.” 

Diduch, who also leads the Engineering Leadership Program, explained that the common argument for technology as a neutral force being misused ignores the larger effect that some technologies have. 

“Our culture relies on a complex and interconnected stack of technologies. If something goes wrong in the stack, bad things can happen, often in unanticipated ways,” he said. “It’s important for engineers to see our technological pursuits in the light of fundamental questions of ethical concern.”  

This is a thread that carries back to the 1992 Herbst Lecture Series on Technology and Responsibility and up through today, with the Moulakis Lecture Series on Responsible Engineering. 

The Moulakis Lecture Series, made possible by alumnus Lucky Vidmar and his wife, Aubrey Ardema, is named after an influential Herbst faculty member, Athanasios “Thanasi” Moulakis.

Engineering Connections

A new first-year seminar course, spearheaded by Engineering Connections residential community Faculty Director Scot Douglass, is another example of the college’s mission to graduate ethical engineers.  

With 27 separate sections taught by professors across the college, including Dean Keith Molenaar, first-year engineering students were able to connect with one another in a small cohort and consider what it means to be an ethical engineer. 

“Most times when you are doing truly innovative work, things are much messier,” said Assistant Professor Sarah Stanford-McIntyre, who led one of the sections. “Training in engineering ethics sets up engineers to get comfortable with, even embrace, the messiness and come up with real solutions.” 

Ethics for all

College faculty are also committed to engaging with the broader Boulder community and the world.

Last year, a panel of faculty hosted a public event to explain ChatGPT’s capabilities and limitations, exploring how it could be used in an ethical way and what quandaries we need to navigate.

Professor Bobby Schnabel, computer scientist and champion for access to computing, is offering new courses through Coursera that focus on ethics in computing. The massive open online course provider makes course content available to anyone in the world. 

“We have to start early and impress often that what we’re creating — the power that we have — is truly immense,” Schnabel said.

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