Lecture 5: Engineering as Social Experimentation I Chapter 3, Martin

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Lecture 5 Engineering as Social Experimentation
I(Chapter 3, Martin Schinzinger, Ethics in
Engineering)

• ELEC4011 Ethics Electrical Engineering Practice
• Hugh Outhred

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Introduction

• Objective
• Relate ethical theories to engineering practice
• A useful perspective
• View engineering activities as social
  experiments
• Engineers create experimental situations through
  innovation
• Society participates in these experiments as
  subjects
• Uncertainty about outcomes implies risk
• Important to identify quantify risks where
  possible
• Decision makers may make biased decisions unless
  accountable for (uncertain) outcomes

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Roles of experimenter subject

• Ethical issues for engineers as experimenters
• Duties to experimental subjects
• Rights of experimental subjects
• Assessment of costs benefits of the experiment
• Relationship between experimenter subject
• Legal framework
• Legal obligations on experimenter, but these may
  not address innovative situations
• Codes of ethics
• Primary responsibility lies with the experimenter

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The Engineering Process
Concept

• Corporate
• context
• Time pressure
• Cost pressure
• Secrecy

• External context
• Uncertainty
• Legal framework
• Social impacts
• Environmental impacts

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Examples

• Computers
• Developed adopted over about three decades
• Significant impacts on society
• Not well understood or nor always predicted, e.g
• The Y2K bug
• However largely accepted as a positive technology
• Nuclear power stations
• Developed adopted over about three decades
• Significant impacts on society
• Not well understood nor always predicted, eg.
  Chernobyl
• Widespread concern installed capacity in decline

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Experimental attributes of engineering

• Incomplete understanding of implications
• Insufficient time or money
• Commercial advantage (desire for secrecy)
• Uncertainty about impacts (sometimes unknowable)
• Participation of experimental subjects
• Products or services often target non-engineers
• Subjects share responsibility if voluntarily
  accept risk
• Reasons for monitoring outcomes
• Commercial purposes (e.g. product improvement)
• Precautionary purposes (e.g. manage risk)

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Nature of subjects impacts

• Subjects
• Individual consumers, groups or society as a
  whole
• Those who can make informed choices, and
• Those requiring advocates
• Disadvantaged, future generations, other species
  the environment
• Impacts
• Health, safety the environment
• Changes to social structure social status
• Income wealth distribution
• Lifestyles personal empowerment
• Education, culture

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Features of engineering experiments

• Absence of a control group ( equivalent
  non-participants)
• Products services usually offered to all
• Benefits may such that they cant be withheld
  from a particular group
• Society may have little prior understanding
• Innovative products services
• Uncertainty in future impacts (positive or
  negative)
• Informed judgements are difficult to make
• For both experimenter and subject

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Informed consent

• Stakeholders
• Experimental subjects, experimenters, others who
  can affect the outcome, or may be affected by it
• Stakeholders have a right to informed consent
• A voluntary conscious decision made on the
  basis of all relevant information
• Issues
• Identification of stakeholders (present future)
• Adequacy of information
• Decision making opportunity capability

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Issues for informed consent

• Voluntary participation not always possible, eg
• Technology that has widespread effects on the
  public
• For example, the Y2K bug
• Future generations or citizens of other countries
• Stakeholders may be hard to identify, eg
• Those affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident
• Proxy group can represent unknown stakeholders
• Adequate diversity information
• Adequate decision making competence
• Strongly differing opinions may hamper consensus

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Current examples

• Consideration of an Australian Republic
• Constitutional convention, referendum
• Introduction of genetically modified (GM) foods
• Companies have not always revealed GM ingredients
• Legal requirements under development
• Electromagnetic radiation from cellular phones
• Some companies provide information, headphones
• Telephone caller ID
• Defaults on but off would allow informed
  consent

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Summary

• Engineering is a form of social experimentation
• Innovation with social environmental impacts
• Uncertainty risk in outcomes
• Stakeholders have a right to informed consent
• Information, opportunity, decision making
  capability
• Problems in implementation
• Lack of a control group corporate pressures
• Difficulty in identifying stakeholders
• Irreducible uncertainty