Cruz, Jason Jundis

Paraton, John Michael Ejanda

Muncada, Reyno Jeroso
Mojica, Adrian Philip Esguerra
Pagaduan, Mark Vidses Cudia
Datuin, Rein?
Ethics Engineering Fourth Edition
Mike W. Martin
Roland Schinzinger

Reporting
Chapter 5-7

Chapter 5 Commitment to Safety

5.1 Safety Risk
5.1.1 The Concept of Safety
5.1.2 Risks
5.1.3 Acceptability of Risk
5.2 Assessing and Reducing Risk
5.2.1 Uncertainties in Design
5.2.2 Risk-Benefits Analyses
5.2.3 Personal Risk
5.2.4 Public Risk and Public Acceptance
5.2.5 Examples of Improved Safety
5.3 Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Safe Exits
5.3.1 Three Mile Island
5.3.2 Chernobyl
5.3.3 Safe Exits

Chapter 6 Workplace Responsibilities and Rights

6.1 Teamwork
6.1.1 An Ethical Corporate Climate
6.1.2 Loyalty and Collegiality
6.1.3 Managers and Engineers
6.1.4 Managing Conflict
6.2 Confidentiality and Conflicts of Interest
6.2.1 Confidential: Definition
6.2.2 Confidentiality and Changing Jobs
6.2.3 Confidentiality and Management Policies
6.2.4 Confidentiality: Justification
6.2.5 Conflicts of Interest: Definition and Examples
6.2.6 Moral Status of Conflicts of Interest
6.3 Rights of Engineers
6.3.1 Professional Rights
6.3.2 Employee Rights
6.4 Whistleblowing
6.4.1 Whistleblowing: Definition
6.4.2 Two Cases
6.4.3 Moral Guidelines
6.4.4 Protecting Whistleblowers
6.4.5 Commonsense Procedures
6.4.6 Beyond Whistleblowing
6.5 The BART Case
6.5.1 Background
6.5.2 Responsibility and Experimentation
6.5.3 Controversy
6.5.4 Aftermath
6.5.5 Comments

Chapter 7 Honesty
7.1 Truthfulness and Trustworthiness
7.1.1 Truthfulness

7.1.2 Trustworthiness
7.1.3 Academic Integrity
7.2 Research Integrity
7.2.1 Excellence versus Misconduct
7.2.2 Bias and Self-Deception
7.3 Consulting Engineers
7.3.1 Advertising
7.3.2 Competitive Bidding
7.3.3 Contingency Fees
7.3.4 Safety and Client Needs
7.4 Expert Witnesses and Advisers
7.4.1 Expert Witnesses in the Courts
7.4.2 Abuses
7.4.3 Advisers in Planning and Policy-Making

Chapter 5 Commitment to Safety

5.1 Safety Risk
- Freedom from unacceptable risk; Combination of the probability of
occurrence of harm and the severity of that harm.

5.1.1 The Concept of Safety

- System safety and reliability engineering is an engineering discipline.
Continuous changes in technology, environmental regulation and public safety
concerns make the analysis of complex safety-critical systems more and more
demanding.
A common fallacy, for example among electrical engineers regarding
structure power systems, is that safety issues can be readily deduced. In fact,
safety issues have been discovered one by one, over more than a century in
the case mentioned, in the work of many thousands of practitioners, and
cannot be deduced by a single individual over a few decades. A knowledge of
the literature, the standards and custom in a field is a critical part of safety
engineering. A combination of theory and track record of practices is involved,
and track record indicates some of the areas of theory that are relevant. (In
the USA, persons with a state license in Professional Engineering in Electrical
Engineering are expected to be competent in this regard, the foregoing
notwithstanding, but most electrical engineers have no need of the license for
their work.)
Safety is often seen as one of a group of related disciplines: quality,
reliability, availability, maintainability and safety. (Availability is sometimes
not mentioned, on the principle that it is a simple function of reliability and
maintainability.) These issues tend to determine the value of any work, and
deficits in any of these areas are considered to result in a cost, beyond the
cost of addressing the area in the first place; good management is then
expected to minimize total cost.

5.1.2 Risks
- Any uncertainty about the future.

Technically can be both positive and negative

Safety questions focus only on negative outcomes
5.1.3 Acceptability of Risk

- In order to be accepted by individuals and society risks must be

measured in some way and, as a result, risk as a concept embodies other
dimensions. The probability of a hazardous event may differ between two
individuals; the risk may not increase proportionately with exposure; the
outcome from a hazardous event may be delayed in time; and there may be a
multiplicity of possible outcomes. The expected outcome from a particular

hazard in a given time interval is determined by both risk and exposure. For
some hazards, the number of deaths may increase exponentially with
exposure, or there may be a safe limit below which the death rates are
unaffected by exposure. To evaluate the degree of impact of a hazard both
risk and exposure levels must be taken into account.
In contrast to the early statistical assessment of risk, the intrinsic
psychosocial nature of risk acceptability was initially studied through
psychophysics and psychometrics of risk perception (Slovic et al., 1990;
Tversky and Kahneman, 1974). There were two main ideas that emerged at
about the same time, first risk was recognized as a social construct and
secondly that implicit theories of risk perception have developed among
laypeople that describe how risks are evaluated, accepted and how personal
decisions concerning different risks occur. (Heimer, 1988; Lupton, 1999ab).
Thus, risk acceptability was determined to be a measure of an individuals
tolerance for risk derived from a social construct influenced by a number of
acquired factors.

5.2 Assessing and Reducing Risk

- Risk Assessment is an effective mean of identifying system or
process safety risks

Characterizes hazards within risk areas and critical technical processes

Analyzes them for their potential mishap severity and probabilities of
occurrence
Prioritizes them for Risk Acceptance.
- The process of developing options and actions to enhance opportunities and
to reduce threats to the project objectives

Proactive, not reactive

Appropriate to significance of risk
Cost effective
Time
5.2.1 Uncertainties in Design

- Uncertainty is ubiquitous in engineering design. The past decade has

seen a significant growth of research developments in design under
uncertainty, and a wide range of applications from designing simple product
components to designing complex and emerging engineered systems. While
methods like robust design and reliability-based design optimization have
become mature and widely adopted in computational design software, it has
become evident that these techniques are mostly limited to handling

parametric uncertainty. New methods and strategies for uncertainty

characterization, problem formulation, preference elicitation, and risk
mitigation are needed for managing many other sources of uncertainty in
design such as those associated with modeling and prediction, the design
process itself, the product use environment, emergent system behavior, and
the changing market.

5.2.2 Risk-Benefits Analyses

Risk perception is the subjective judgment people make about the
severity and/or probability of a risk, and may vary person to person. Any
human endeavor carries some risk, but some are much riskier than others.
- is the potential of losing something of value. Values (such as physical
health, social status, emotional well-being or financial wealth) can be gained
or lost when taking risk resulting from a given action, activity and/or inaction,
foreseen or unforeseen. Risk can also be defined as the intentional interaction
with uncertainty. Uncertainty is a potential, unpredictable, unmeasurable and
uncontrollable outcome, risk is a consequence of action taken in spite of
uncertainty.

5.2.3 Personal Risk

- is the potential of losing something of value. Values (such as physical
health, social status, emotional well-being or financial wealth) can be gained
or lost when taking risk resulting from a given action, activity and/or inaction,
foreseen or unforeseen. Risk can also be defined as the intentional interaction
with uncertainty. Uncertainty is a potential, unpredictable, unmeasurable and
uncontrollable outcome, risk is a consequence of action taken in spite of
uncertainty.
Risk perception is the subjective judgment people make about the
severity and/or probability of a risk, and may vary person to person. Any
human endeavor carries some risk, but some are much riskier than others.

5.2.4 Public Risk and Public Acceptance

- Scientific and technological innovation is increasingly rapid and
having far-reaching effects on society. Major change is occurring in all aspects
of our lives, most notably in the way we communicate with each other, in the
food we consume, in the nature of the materials which form everyday objects,
and in future energy systems. All of these carry potential risks and benefits,

and there has been growing public concern about trust in experts. In
response, there have been attempts to 'engage' the public in various ways
and to assess the acceptability of these innovations. This volume brings
together leading social scientists to present the most up-to-date research
about these topics, and to examine the debates about risk and public
acceptance of new technologies.

5.2.5 Examples of Improved Safety

- Two Examples of Safety Improvement: Automobile Travel and

Agricultural Pest Control
Ill make this personal. Im really glad that my granddaughter will do all
her automobile travel in vehicles that are far safer than what I survived. She
also gets to ride in an infant car seat which I never did. Im equally glad that
she has a food supply that is cheaper, safer, more environmentally
sustainable, and vastly more diverse than what was available to my family
when I was a child. I just wish that more people appreciated the second
change.

5.3 Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Safe Exits

5.3.1 Three Mile Island
5.3.2 Chernobyl
5.3.3 Safe Exits

Chapter 6 Workplace Responsibilities and Rights

6.1 Teamwork
6.1.1 An Ethical Corporate Climate
6.1.2 Loyalty and Collegiality
6.1.3 Managers and Engineers
6.1.4 Managing Conflict

6.2 Confidentiality and Conflicts of Interest

A Conflict of Interest is a conflict between a persons duties and
responsibilities with regard to the review process, and that persons private,

professional, business or public interests. There may be a real, perceived or

potential conflict of interest when the review committee member, external
reviewer or observer:
would receive professional or personal benefit resulting from the
funding opportunity or application being reviewed;
has a professional or personal relationship with an applicant or the
applicants institution; or
has a direct or indirect financial interest in a funding opportunity or
application being reviewed.
A conflict of interest may be deemed to exist or perceived as such when
review committee members, external reviewers or observers:
are a relative or close friend, or have a personal relationship with the
applicants;
are in a position to gain or lose financially/materially from the funding
of the application;
have had long-standing scientific or personal differences with the
applicants;
are currently affiliated with the applicants institutions, organizations or
companiesincluding research hospitals and research institutes;
are closely professionally affiliated with the applicants, as a result of
having in the last six years:
frequent and regular interactions with the applicants in the course of
their duties at their department, institution, organization or company;
been a supervisor or a trainee of the applicants;
collaborated, published or shared funding with the applicants, or have
plans to do so in the immediate future; or,
been employed by the institution, when an institution is the applicant;
and/or
Feel for any reason unable to provide an impartial review of the
application.
Note: For trainee awards committees, these criteria also apply to the
relationship with the proposed supervisor.
CIHR reserves the right to resolve areas of uncertainty and to
determine if a conflict exists.
Confidentiality

CIHR subject to the Privacy Act, and the Access to Information Act.
These laws govern the collection, use and disclosure of information under the
control of the federal government and certain federally funded organizations.
Documentation submitted to CIHR by the applicant may be provided to the
review committee members, external reviewers and observers. The
documentation may contain personal information and confidential commercial
information. By law, applicants have the right of access to the information
provided by review committee members and external reviewers about their
applications. The names of external reviewers must be kept confidential to
ensure they can provide an impartial review of an application. Review
committee members names can be released at the discretion of CIHR.
Written materials used in the review process are generally made available to
applicants when they are notified of the funding opportunity results.
Review committee members, external reviewers and observers must ensure
that:
all documentation and information that CIHR entrusts to review
committee members, external reviewers and observers is maintained in
strict confidence at all times. It must be used only for the purpose for which
it was originally collectednamely, to review applications and make funding
recommendations as applicable;
review documentation is stored in a secure manner to prevent
unauthorized access. It must be transmitted using secure techniques and
when it is no longer required, it must be destroyed in a secure manner. Any
loss or theft of the documentation must be reported to CIHR; and
all enquiries or representations received by review committee
members, external reviewers or observers about an application or its review
must be referred to CIHR. Review committee members, external reviewers or
observers must not contact the applicants for additional information or
disclose matters arising from the review process to the applicants.
Additional requirements for review committee members and observers:
Review deliberations are confidential. Comments made by review
committee members during the review of applications and the conclusions of
the committees review must never be discussed or disclosed with
individuals not involved in the review process unless required by legislation
or the courts.
The identity of successful applicants and the details of the
grants/awards must remain confidential until a decision is made by CIHR and
officially announced to the applicants and the public. The identities of

unsuccessful or ineligible applicants are not made public and must not be
divulged unless required by legislation or the courts.
During the meeting, observers must be as unobtrusive as possible to
minimize disruption and must not remove from the meeting room written
notes or documentation related to reviewer assignments, ratings or reviewer
comments on applications.
Confirmation
I have read and understood the Conflict of Interest and Confidentiality
Agreement. I agree to comply with the requirements of the Conflict of Interest
and Confidentiality Policy of the Federal Research Funding Organizations.
(Additional information can be found in procedural guidelines for the specific
review process.) I understand that any breach of this agreement will result in
a review of the matter, with CIHR reserving the right to take appropriate
action including, but not limited to, my removal from serving on or observing
current or future CIHR review committees or from serving as an external
reviewer. The use of review documentation for any other purpose could result
in a CIHR investigation and/or report to the federal Privacy Commissioners
Office. Any action that CIHR may or may not take will not prevent a person
whose privacy rights have been compromised from seeking legal action
against the respondent. By signing this form, I certify that I am not currently
ineligible to apply for and/or hold funds from the Canada Foundation for
Innovation (CFI), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) or any
other research or research funding organization worldwide for reasons of
breach of policies on responsible conduct of research-such as ethics, integrity
or financial management policies. I also certify that I am not currently under
investigation for a breach of the CFIs, CIHRs, NSERCs or SSHRCs policies. If I
become the subject of such an investigation, I will immediately withdraw from
participation in the CIHR review process(es) until the investigation is complete
and CIHR has determined that I am once again eligible to participate

6.2.1 Confidential: Definition

The duty of confidentiality is the duty to keep secret all information
deemed desirable to keep secret. Deemed by whom? Basically, it is any
information that the employer or client would like to have kept secret to
compete effectively against business rivals. Often this is understood to be any
data concerning the companys business or technical processes that are not
already public knowledge. Although this criterion is somewhat vague, it

clearly point to the employer or client as the main source of the decision as to
what information is to be treated as confidential.
Keep secret is a relational expression. It always make sense to ask,
Secret with respect to whom? In the case of some government
organizations, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), highly elaborate systems for classifying information
have been access to what information. Within other government agencies and
private companies, engineers and other employees are usually expected to
withhold information labeled confidential from unauthorized people both
inside and outside the organization.
6.2.2 Confidentiality and Changing Jobs
The obligation to protect confidential information does not cease to
pretext such information. Former employees would quickly divulge it to their
new employers or, perhaps for a price, sell it to competitor of their former
employers. Thus, the relationship of trust between employer and employee in
regard to confidentiality continues beyond the formal period of employment.
Unless the employer gives consent, former employees are barred indefinitely
from revealing trade secrets. This provides a clear illustration of the way in
which the professional integrity of the engineers involves much more than
mere loyalty to ones present employer.
Yet thorny problems arise in this area. Many engineers value
professional advancement more than long-term ties with any on company,
and so they change jobs frequently. Engineers in research and development
are especially likely to have high rates of turnover. They are the people most
likely to expose to important new trade secrets. Moreover, when they transfer
into new companies they often do the same kind of work as before precisely
the type os situation in which trade secrets of their old companies may have
relevance, a fact that could have strongly contributed to their having readily
found new employment.
6.2.3 Confidentiality and Management Policies
What might be done to recognize the legitimate personal interests and
rights of engineers and other employees while also recognizing the rights of
employers in this area? One approach is to use employment contracts that
place special restrictions centered on the geographical location of future
employers, the length of time after leaving the present employer before one
can engage in certain kinds of work, and the type of work it is permissible to
do for future employers. Thus, Goodrich might have required as a condition of
employment what Wohlgemuth sign an agreement that if he sought work
elsewhere he would not work on space suit projects for a competitor in the
United States for five years after leaving Goodrich.
Yet such contracts are hardly agreements between equals, and they
threaten the right of individuals to pursue their careers freely. For this reason
the courts have tended not to recognize such contracts as binding, although
they do uphold contractual agreements forbidding the disclosure of trade
secrets.

6.2.4 Confidentiality: Justification

On what moral basis the confidentiality obligation rest, with its wide
scope and obvious importance? The primary justification is to respect the
autonomy (freedom, self-determination) of individuals and corporations and to
recognize their legitimate control over some private information concerning
themselves. Without that control, they could not maintain their privacy and
protect their self-interest insofar as it involves privacy. Just as patients should
be allowed to maintain substantial control over personal information, so
employers should have some control over the private information about their
companies. All the major ethical theories recognize the importance of
autonomy, whether it is understood in terms of rights to autonomy, duties to
respect autonomy, the utility (as in utilitarian ethics) of protecting autonomy,
or the virtues of respect for others.
6.2.5 Conflicts of Interest: Definition and Examples
We turn now some equally thorny issues concerning conflicts of
interest.
Professional conflicts of interest are situations where professionals have
An interest that, if pursued, might keep them from meeting their
obligations to other employees or clients. Sometimes such an interest
involves in some other professional role, say, as a consultant for a
competitors company. Other times it is more personal interest, such as
making substantial private investments in a competitors company.
Concern about conflicts of interest largely centers on their
potential to distort good judgement in faithfully serving an employer or client.
Exercising good judgement means arriving at beliefs on the basis of expertise
and experience, as opposed to merely following simple rules. Thus, we can
refine our definition of conflicts of interest by saying that they typically arise
when two conditions are met: (1) the professional is in a relationship or role
that requires exercising good judgement on behalf of the interests of an
employer or client, and (2) the professional has some additional or side
interests that could threaten good judgment in serving the interests of the
employer or client- either the good judgement of a typical professional in that
situation. Why the reference to a typical professional? there might be
conclusive evidence that the actual persons involved would never allow a side
interest to affect their judgement, yet they are still in a conflict of interest.

6.2.6 Moral Status of Conflicts of Interest

What is wrong with employees having conflicts of interest? Most of the
answer is obvious from our definition: Employee conflicts of interest occur
when employees have interests that if pursued could keep them from meeting
their obligations to serve the interests of the employer or client for whom they
work. Such conflicts of interest should be avoided because they threaten to
prevent one from fully meeting those obligations.

More needs to be said, however. Why should mere threats of possible harm
always be condemned? Suppose that substantial good might sometimes
result from pursuing a conflict of interest.
In fact, it is not always unethical to pursue conflicts of interest. In practice,
some conflicts are thought to be unavoidable, or even acceptable. One
illustration of this is that the government allows employees of aircraft
manufacturers, such as Boeing or McDonnell Douglas, to serve as government
inspectors for the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA). The FAA is charged with
regulating airplane manufacturers and making objective safety and quality
inspections of the airplanes they build. Naturally the dual roles-government
inspector and employee of the manufacturer being inspected could bias
judgements. Yet with careful screening of inspectors, the like hood of such
bias is said to be outweighed by the practical necessities of airplane
inspection.

6.3 Rights of Engineers

6.3.1 Professional Rights
We turn to respect for the rights of engineers and others. Engineers
have several types of moral rights, which fall into the sometimes overlapping
categories of human, employee, contractual, and professional rights. As
humans, engineers have fundamental rights to live and freely pursue their
legitimate interests, which implies, for example, rights not to be unfairly
discriminated against in employment on the basis of sex, race, or age. As
employees, engineers have special rights, including the right to receive ones
salary in return for performing ones duties and the right to engage in the
nonwork political activities of ones choosing without reprisal or coercion from
employers. As professionals, engineers have special rights that arise from
their professional role and the obligations it involves. We begin with
professional rights.
6.3.2 Employee Rights
Employee rights are any rights, moral or legal, that involve the status of
being an employee. They overlap with some professional rights, of the sort
just discussed, and they also include institutional rights created by
organizational policies or employment agreements, such as the right to be
paid the salary specified in ones contract. However, here we will focus on
human rights that exist even if unrecognized by specific contract
arrangements.
Many of these human rights are discussed more fully in Freedom Inside
the Organization by David Ewing who, as editor of The Harvard Business
Review was very much part of the business mainstream. Ewing refers to
employee right as the black hole in American rights. The Bill of Rights in the
Constitution was written to apply to government, not to business. But when

the Constitution was written, no one envisaged the giant corporations that
have emerged in our century. Corporations wield enormous power politically
and socially, often in multinational settings; they operate much as minigovernments, and they are often comparable in size to those governments
the authors of the Constitution had in mind. For example, American Telephone
& Telegraph in the 1970s employed twice the number of people that inhabited
the largest of the original 12 colonies when the Constitution was written.
Ewing proposes that large corporations ought to recognize a basic set
of employee rights. As examples we will discuss rights to privacy and to equal
opportunity.

6.4 Whistleblowing
6.4.1 Whistleblowing: Definition
DEFINITION of 'Whistleblower'
Anyone who has and reports insider knowledge of illegal activities
occurring in an organization. Whistleblowers can be employees, suppliers,
contractors, clients or any individual who somehow becomes aware of illegal
activities taking place in a business either through witnessing the behavior or
being told about it. Whistleblowers are protected from retaliation under
various programs created by the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
6.4.2 Two Cases
Sarbanes and Oxley Act
As a response to the Enron scandal, the Congress of the United States
adopted the Sarbanes and Oxley Act of 2002 (enacted 30 July, 2002;
hereinafter: SOX), because the scandal shook public confidence in the nations
securities markets. As the whole scandal was triggered off by an internal
whistleblowing, no one was surprised that SOX contains whistleblower
sections (Questionnaire I/14). The Act attempts to encourage and protect
whistleblowers in a variety of ways by providing channels for anonymous
whistleblowing, establishing criminal penalties for retaliation against
whistleblowers, and protection for whistleblowers in order to preserve their
work status. While SOX was passed in response to domestic issues, it was
written in haste, which allowed for potential extraterritorial application. The
SOX applies to every publicly registered company issuing securities in an
American secondary exchange market. Former chairman of the Security
Exchange Commission once told at a conference, that our mandate is to
implement the Sarbanes-Oxley Act fully for all companies, foreign or
domestic.[12] The provisions of the SOX are mirrored in the Nasdaq and the
New York Stock Exchange (hereinafter: NYSE) rules.[13] If listed on NYSE,

companies must certify their accounts to those markets yearly, and this
certification process implies that companies are in position to assert that they
comply with whistleblowing rules (Questionnaire I/12). SOX made hundreds of
companies to adopt whistleblowing in their codes of conduct, and not only
companies listed in American exchange markets (Questionnaire I/10-11). It
became one symbol of transparency and compliance. 1. Section 301 of the
Act is a distinctive part of the SOX for its requirement of a channel for
anonymous whistleblowing. The section requires audit committees of covered
companies to establish whistleblowing procedures whereby employees can
anonymously submit issues of concern regarding questionable accounting or
auditing matters: Section 301.4. 4) COMPLAINTS.Each audit committee shall
establish procedures for (A) the receipt, retention, and treatment of
complaints received by the issuer regarding accounting, internal accounting
controls, or auditing matters; and (B) the confidential, anonymous
submission by employees of the issuer of concerns regarding questionable
accounting or auditing matters. This whistleblowing channel shall be set up
not later than 270 days after the date of enactment, and the Securities
Exchange Commission shall, by rule, direct the national securities exchanges
and national securities associations to prohibit the listing of any security of an
issuer that is not in compliance with the requirements of any portion of
paragraphs (2) through (6) of section 301 of the Act. Section 301 requires the
committees to have procedures for retaining and treating the reports. Most
commonly, the organizational response to this requirement has been to
contract with an independent hotline company to receive the reports.
Experiences show that these hotlines are unlikely to spur whistleblowing, but
they greatly increase costs in time and money. Unfortunately, we dont have
much information on these internal channels, because companies tend to
treat relevant information as trade secrets and consequently it is difficult to
determine their effectiveness. What information is available shows that
hotlines and other designated recipients of whistleblowing find that a large
percentage of the reports involve human resource issues, and only very few
case involve legal or ethical issues.[14] 2. If a whistleblower suffers retaliation
for reporting, Section 806 gives the employee the right to seek protection.
This section prohibits any kind of retaliation, such as discharging, demoting,
suspension, harassment, or any other kind of discrimination against an
employee in the terms and conditions of the employment against a
whistleblower who reports covered information to someone within the
organization who has the authority to investigate, discover, or terminate
misconduct. The section specifies a process. First, the employee within 90
days has to file a complaint with the Secretary of Labor. An administrative
law judge hears the evidence resulting from the investigation and decides
(Questionnaire II/9). The case will not go forward if the employer can show
clear evidence that the sanctions would have taken place in the absence of
the whistleblowing. As we already mentioned, the law is vague enough that it
may cover U.S. citizens working for a foreign subsidiary or for a private
foreign subsidiary of a covered U.S. company, or a foreign employee working
for a foreign subsidiary. Section 806 virtually makes no distinction between
domestic and foreign companies that have securities registered or listed in
the USA. Even though it has the potential to reach foreign companies, the
jurisdiction interprets the SOX in a more restrictive manner. In Carnero vs.
Boston Scientific Corporation, the First Circuit Court found that the SOX do not

protect a foreign worker who reported accounting irregularities at a foreign

subsidiary of an American corporation. The Court concluded that pertinent
factors would not support a finding of congressional intent in order to
overcome a presumption against extraterritorial application of the SOX.[15]
The judgment described the policy behind the presumption as preventing
unintended conflicts between U.S. law and laws of other countries, and stated
that congress is primarily concerned with domestic conditions: We believe if
Congress had intended that the whistle-blower provision would apply abroad
to foreign entities, it would have said so and certainly would have considered,
before enacting the law, the problems and limits of extraterritorial
enforcement, wrote Judge Levin H. Campbell.[16] Scholars argue that this
interpretation denies the reality that over a thousand foreign companies list
their securities in the United States and voluntarily subject themselves to U.S.
laws.[17] In Penesso v. LLC International, the administrative judge found that
a U.S. citizen working abroad could bring a claim under Section 806 of SOX. In
this case, the judgment stated that Cranero was not controlling on the issue of
extraterritoriality because Penesso was U.S. citizen working abroad and some
of the actions he complained of took place in the USA.[18] 3. Despite the
relative uncertainty as to the applicability of all the SOX provisions to
companies established in Europe, companies want to be in a position to
comply with the specific whistleblowing provisions of the Act. However, in
Europe, whistleblowers are looked at as informants, and certainly not
considered as folk hero as in America. Some countries taken lead in resisting
provisions of the SOX that shield from retaliation and set up channels to
report.[19] Europeans tend to think that some core provisions conflict with
their national laws regulating labor and privacy. German and French regulators
in 2005 refused to approve whistle-blower mechanisms sought by three U.S.
companiesMcDonalds Corp. and CEAC/Exide Techno-logies in France and
Wal-Mart in Germany.[20] The companies wanted to weave the protections
into their operations in those countries to comply with Sarbanes and Oxley. A
European Union committee composed of privacy protection officials (Article 29
Working Group) from member states expanded the debates scope to the rest
of the continent with a nonbinding opinion that offers suggestions for
resolving the conflict. U.S.-listed companies would have to deal separately
with the governments in each nation where they operate. The Sarbanes and
Oxley Act is only one an example, but maybe the most important one for
sectoral laws because of its worldwide effects. Particular problems these laws
arose from have also defined the frames of whistleblower laws, so differences
in regulation are necessary. Approximately thirty countries around the world
have national whistleblowing laws.[21] A basic question is whether a country
needs a comprehensive whistleblower law, or only partial regulation in
specific fields. Comprehensive, free-standing laws are not that widespread
yet, only the United Kingdom, New Zealand and South Africa have laws that
can truly be considered as comprehensive (Questionnaire I/2). Some countries
have adopted laws to cover only the public sector (eg. Romania), others like
Japan have a law for the private sector.
6.4.3 Moral Guidelines

The following three statements are obviously true, but their relative
importance is debated. (1) I exist. (2) Others exist. (3) I am not someone else.
Morality stresses 2 (e.g. duty to the population) and undermines 1 and 3 as
much as possible. For instance, Harris et al. (2005) take self-interest as one of
the impediments to responsible action (p. 37). Rejection of 3 is obvious in
the universalization at the core of Kants categorical imperative and in the
utilitarian view that my welfare is on a par with that of others. As writes Rawls
(1971), utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between
persons (p. 24). In other words, the fact that it is me and not someone else
we are talking about should not be brought into the picture (or rather should
be taken out of the picture): there is a tendency to associate professionalism
with setting aside personal values in order to be objective and to meet shared
standards of the profession (Martin, 2002). Codes embody this view: they pile
up duties for professionals without acknowledging that professionals are
individuals, rather than mere vectors for duty. It is then clear that the question
of whistle-blowing is just a matter of comparing duty toward the public to duty
toward the employer. But this view relies on a bias in favor of alienation: it
assumes that I do not exist, that I do not count, or that I am someone else. So
the employee must account for the interests of the public and of the company
only thinking of oneself is selfish, i.e. wrong. In any deliberative contest
between a moral obligation and some other consideration, the moral
obligation will always win out, according to the morality system. (Chappell,
2006). For instance, Fleddermann (1999) never mentions possible harm to the
employee: to him whistle-blowing is determined wholly on external criteria.
Likewise, to DeGeorge (2005) the difference between possible and mandatory
whistle-blowing is independent of the employee. The whistle blower is part of
the implementation, not part of the decision.2 As Martin (2000) points out,
final judgments about obligations to whistleblow must be made contextually,
not as a matter of general rule. And they must take into account the burdens
imposed on whistleblowers an their families. One may decide to reject codes
of morality so that whistle-blowing is optional. But this is difficult since, even
though a code is just a consensual opinion not the repository of objective
truths (Bouville, 2007), the fact that a given agent would prefer not to be in
[the morality] Whistle-blowing and morality 5 system or bound by its rules will
not excuse him (Williams, 1985, p. 177). Alternatively, one may abide by the
mandatory requirements expressed in codes of ethics (Martin, 2002) and
make whistle-blowing a moral obligation. A third option is to change the
meaning of obligation so that whistle-blowing is a moral obligation without
being obligatory. We will now examine this paradoxical view.

6.4.4 Protecting Whistleblowers

To Prevent Whistleblowing, Encourage Whistleblowing As the preceding
sections illustrate, whistleblowing to an external entity, such as the media or
government agencies, has been a hazardous activity, both for the individual
and the organization. The ambivalent attitude toward whistleblowers ensures
that, even with legal protection, they may face retaliation in subtle ways:
being shunned by co-workers, being closely supervised, or just feeling
alienated. So, the question is, How do organizations encourage internal

whistleblowingthat is, to an authority within the organizationto preclude

external whistleblowing and the resulting damage to an organization? This
section provides some best practices for encouraging employees to bring
unethical or illegal practices to the forefront and addressing them before they
become fatal to an organization. The objectives of an internal whistleblowing
program are To encourage employees to bring ethical and legal violations
they are aware of to an internal authority so that action can be taken
immediately to resolve the problem To minimize the organization's exposure
to the damage that can occur when employees circumvent internal
mechanisms To let employees know the organization is serious about
adherence to codes of conduct The barriers to a successful internal
whistleblowing program are A lack of trust in the internal system
Unwillingness of employees to be "snitches" Misguided union solidarity Belief
that management is not held to the same standard Fear of retaliation Fear of
alienation from peers Although companies should seek to remove these
barriers, it is also important to acknowledge that some whistleblowers have
less-than-honorable motives. What if the whistleblower is retaliating against a
supervisor with false accusations? What if the whistleblower is bringing
genuine problems to the fore but is also a subpar employee? In that case,
does the whistleblower get a free pass just because he or she exposed an
issue? What should be done when it becomes clear that encouraging
employees to bypass the proper channels is undermining management
decision making? What if whistleblowers participated in the very actions they
are now exposing, perhaps as a means of escaping the consequences of their
participation? What if there is reason to suspect a whistleblower is targeting a
specific employee because of his or her race, gender, or ethnicity? These are
just a few of the issues to be considered in creating a whistleblowing culture.
6.4.5 Commonsense Procedures
Work though established channels first;
understand formal and informal procedures.
Do it right away!
Keep it very impersonal and in professional
tones (use soft rhetoric); this helps to minimize
accusations of personality attacks.
Martin, Mike W. and Roland Schinzinger, "Ethics in Engineering", Third Edition,
McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc. 1996(Page
Use memos, which record your concerns at all possible,
times and copy yourself. When sending email, copy
yourself at all times (a good thing to do anytime)
Be meticulous in your calculations or observations; keep
an accurate diary with dates and events document
Martin, Mike W. and Roland Schinzinger, "Ethics in Engineering", Third Edition,
McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
1996(Page
Consult colleagues for advice technical and personal;
be careful, they now are obligated to report issues if the
safety of the public is of concerned. If information is not
confidential, then have a consultant look at your work

but at your own expense

Go to your professional organization for assistance and
help
Get a lawyer (all professionals should have a good
lawyer that they can consult at all times).
6.4.6 Beyond Whistleblowing

6.5 The BART Case

6.5.1 Background
6.5.2 Responsibility and Experimentation
6.5.3 Controversy
6.5.4 Aftermath
6.5.5 Comments
The cities surrounding San Francisco Bay form one of the largest
metropolitan areas in the United States. Due to the geographical limits
imposed by the bay, much of the commuting that takes place in this area
must be across just a few bridges. The Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART)
had its genesis in late 1947 when a joint ArmyNavy review board
recommended the construction of a tunnel underneath San Francisco Bay for
high-speed train service between San Francisco and Oakland [Friedlander,
1972]. The California state legislature then formed the San Francisco Bay Area
Rapid Transit Commission, which was to study the transportation needs of the
Bay area and make recommendations to the legislature. This effort
culminated in the formation of the Bay Area Rapid Transit district in 1957. By
1962, this group had done a preliminary design of a rapid train system,
including a transbay tube, and had laid the groundwork for fundraising for the
project. In 1962, a bond issue to fund the project was approved by the voters
and the project was begun.
As envisioned, BART was to be a high-tech rail system serving many of
the outlying communities along San Francisco Bay. There were three distinct
engineering issues involved in BART: the design and construction of railbeds,
tunnels, bridges, etc.; the design and manufacture of the railcars; and design
and implementation of a system for controlling the trains. The control system
will be the focus of our discussion.
BART was to incorporate much new technology, including fully
automated control systems. The trains would have "attendants," but would
not be under direct control by humans. In many respects, BART was an
experiment on a very large scale. None of the control technologies that were
to be used had been previously tested in a commuter rail system. Of course,

any innovative engineering design is like this and has components that have
not been previously tested.
The Automatic Train-Control (ATC) system was an innovative method for
controlling train speed and access to stations. In most urban mass transit
systems, this function is performed by human drivers reading trackside
signals and receiving instructions via radio from dispatchers. Instead, BART
relied on a series of onboard sensors that determined the train's position and
the location of other trains. Speeds on the track were automatically
maintained by monitoring the location of the train and detecting allowed
speed information. One of the unique and problematic features of the system
was that there were no fail-safe methods of train control [Friedlander, 1972].
Rather, all control was based on redundancy. This distinction is very
important. "Fail safe" implies that if there is a failure, the system will revert to
a safe state. In the case of BART, this would mean that a failure would cause
the trains to stop. Redundancy, on the other hand, relies on switching failed
components or systems to backups in order to keep the trains running.
There are two distinct phases of this type of engineering project,
construction and operation, each requiring different skills. For this reason,
early on, BART decided to keep its own staff relatively small and subcontract
most of the design and construction work. This way, there wouldn't be the
need to lay off hundreds of workers during the transition from construction to
operation [Anderson, 1980]. This system also encouraged the engineers who
worked for BART not only to oversee the design and construction of the
system, but also to learn the skills required to run and manage this complex
transportation system. Contracts for design and construction of the railroad
infrastructure were awarded to a consortium of large engineering firms known
as Parsons, Brinkerhoff, Tudor, and Bechtel (PBTB). PBTB began construction
on the system in January of 1967. The transbay tube was started in November
of that year. Also in 1967, a contract was awarded to Westinghouse to design
and build the ATC. In 1969, Rohr industries was awarded a contract to supply
250 railroad cars.
A little bit should be said about the management structure at BART. By
design, BART was organized with a very open management structure.
Employees were given great freedom to define what their jobs entailed and to
work independently and were encouraged to take any concerns that they had
to management Unfortunately, there was also a very diffuse and unclear
chain of command that made it difficult for employees to take their concerns
to the right person [Anderson, 1980].
The key players in this case were three BART engineers working on
various aspects of the ATC: Roger Hjortsvang, Robert Bruder, and Max
Blankenzee. The first to be employed by BART was Hjortsvang. As part of his

duties for BART, Hjortsvang spent 10 months in 196970 in Pittsburgh at the

Westinghouse plant working with the engineers who were designing the ATC.
During this time, he became concerned about the lack of testing of some of
the components of the ATC and also about the lack of oversight of
Westinghouse by BART. After returning to San Francisco, Hjortsvang began
raising some of these concerns with his management.
Soon after Hjortsvang returned from Pittsburgh, Bruder joined BART,
working in a different group than Hjortsvang. He also became concerned
about the Westinghouse test procedures and about the testing schedule, but
was unable to get his concerns addressed by BART management. Both
Hjortsvang and Bruder were told that BART management was satisfied with
the test procedures Westinghouse was employing. Management felt that
Westinghouse had been awarded the contract because of its experience and
engineering skills and should be trusted to deliver what was promised.
Around this time, both engineers also became concerned about the
documentation that Westinghouse was providing. Would the documentation
be sufficient for BART engineers to understand how the system worked?
Would they be able to repair it or modify it once the system was delivered and
Westinghouse was out of the picture? Being unable to get satisfaction,
Hjortsvang and Bruder dropped the matter. It is important to note that the
concerns here were not just about testing, per se, but also about the effect
that untested components might have on the safety and reliability of BART.
Blankenzee then joined BART and worked at the same location as
Hjortsvang. Before joining BART, Blankenzee had worked for Westinghouse on
the BART project, and so he knew about how Westinghouse was approaching
its work. He too was concerned about the testing and documentation of the
ATC. When Blankenzee joined BART, it rekindled Hortsvang's and Bruder's
interest in these problems. To attempt to resolve these concerns, Hortsvang
wrote an unsigned memo in November of 1971 to several levels of BART
management that summarized the problems he perceived. Distribution of an
anonymous memo was, of course, viewed with suspicion by management.
In January 1972, the three engineers contacted members of the BART
board of directors, indicating that their concerns were not being taken
seriously by lower management. This action was in direct conflict with the
general manager of BART, whose policy was to allow only himself and a few
others to deal directly with the board [Anderson, 1980]. As defined previously
in this chapter, this action by the engineers constituted "internal
whistleblowing." The engineers also consulted with an outside engineering
consultant, Edward Burfine, who evaluated the ATC on his own and came to
conclusions similar to those of the three engineers.

One of the members of the board of directors, Dan Helix, spoke with the
engineers and appeared to take them seriously. Helix took the engineer's
memos and the report of the consultant and distributed them to other
members of the board. Unfortunately, he also released them to a local
newspaper, a surprising act of external whistleblowing by a member of the
board of directors. Naturally, BART management was upset by this action and
tried to locate the source of this information. The three engineers initially lied
about their involvement. They later agreed to take their concerns directly to
the board, thus revealing themselves as the source of the leaks. The board
was skeptical of the importance of their concerns. Once the matter was in the
open, the engineers' positions within BART became tenuous.
On March 2 and 3, 1972, all three engineers were offered the choice of
resignation or firing. They all refused to resign and were dismissed on the
grounds of insubordination, lying to their superiors (they had denied being the
source of the leaks), and failing to follow organizational procedures. They all
suffered as a result of their dismissal. None was able to find work for a
number of months, and all suffered financial and emotional problems as a
result. They sued BART for $875,000, but were forced to settle out of court,
since it was likely that their lying to superiors would be very detrimental to
the case. Each received just $25,000 [Anderson, 1980].
As the legal proceedings were taking place, the IEEE attempted to
assist the three engineers by filing an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief
in their support. The IEEE asserted that each of the engineers had a
professional duty to keep the safety of the public paramount and that their
actions were therefore justified. Based on the IEEE code of ethics, the brief
stated that engineers must "notify the proper authority of any observed
conditions which endanger public safety and health." The brief interpreted
this statement to mean that in the case of public employment, the proper
authority is the public itself [Anderson, 1980]. This was perhaps the first time
that a national engineering professional society had intervened in a legal
proceeding on behalf of engineers who had apparently been fulfilling their
duties according to a professional code of ethics.
Safety concerns continued to mount as BART was put into operation.
For example, on October 2, 1972, less than a month after BART was put into
revenue service, a BART train overshot the station at Fremont, California and
crashed into a sand embankment. There were no fatalities, but five persons
were injured. The accident was attributed to a malfunction of a crystal
oscillator, part of the ATC, which controlled the speed commands for the train.
Subsequent to this accident, there were several investigations and reports on
the operation of BART. These revealed that there had been other problems
and malfunctions in the system. Trains had often been allowed too close to
each other; sometimes a track was indicated to be occupied when it wasn't

and was indicated not to be occupied when it was. The safety concerns of the
three engineers seemed to be borne out by the early operation of the system
[Friedlander, 1972, 1973].
Ultimately, the ATC was improved and the bugs worked out. In the
years since, BART has accumulated an excellent safety record and has served
as the model for other high-tech mass transit systems around the country.

Chapter 7 Honesty

7.1 Truthfulness and Trustworthiness

7.1.1 Truthfulness
The fact of being true; truth.
"we have had to judge the truthfulness of the evidence"
7.1.2 Trustworthiness
is a moral value, regarded as a virtue
7.1.3 Academic Integrity
Honesty and responsibility

7.2 Research Integrity

7.2.1 Excellence versus Misconduct
Excellence - The quality of being outstanding or extremely good.
Misconduct - Unacceptable or improper behavior, especially by an employee
or
professional person.
7.2.2 Bias and Self-Deception
Bias - prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared
with
another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.
Self-deception - the action or practice of allowing oneself to believe that a
false or unvalidated feeling, idea, or situation is true .

7.3 Consulting Engineers

7.3.1 Advertising

7.3.2 Competitive Bidding

7.3.3 Contingency Fees
7.3.4 Safety and Client Needs
7.4 Expert Witnesses and Advisers
7.4.1 Expert Witnesses in the Courts
7.4.2 Abuses
7.4.3 Advisers in Planning and Policy-Making