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Same thing happened with the space shuttle disaster. They launched despite cold weather outside the required limits to make a deadline. Most people including engineers don't have the moral courage to make a stand.

Bad example. The Thiokol engineers were yelling at NASA to delay the flight for exactly the reason the Shuttle exploded. They just did not have the authority to cancel the flight.

I'm not sure what the author means when he says that the student was "lost to history", because at the end of the article he says that it was Diane Hartley.

The BBC aired a special on the Citicorp Center crisis, and one of its viewers was Diane Hartley. It turns out that she was the student in LeMessurier’s story.

Her name is also mentioned in some papers on engineering ethics:

http://www.onlineethics.org/cm...
http://www.theaiatrust.com/whi...

I. Fundamental Canons Engineers, in the fulfillment of their professional duties, shall:

Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
Perform services only in areas of their competence.
Issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner.
Act for each employer or client as faithful agents or trustees.
Avoid deceptive acts.
Conduct themselves honorably, responsibly, ethically, and lawfully so as to enhance the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the profession. http://www.onlineethics.org/Resources/ethcodes/EnglishCodes/9972.aspx

I think it is you who is misrepresenting the facts.

Check out this description of the meeting from Roger Boisjoly, former Morton Thiokol engineer, who was present when the final decision was made:

http://www.onlineethics.org/Topics/profpractice/ppessays/thiokolshuttle/shuttle_telecon.aspx

Here are a couple of key quotes:

Joe Kilminster of MTI was asked by Larry Mulloy of NASA for his launch decision. Joe responded the he did not recommend launching based upon the engineering position just presented. Then Larry Mulloy asked George Hardy of NASA for his launch decision. George responded that he was appalled at Thiokol's recommendation but said he would not launch over the contractor's objection. Then Larry Mulloy spent some time giving his views and interpretation of the data that was presented with his conclusion that the data presented was inconclusive.

and

I must emphasize that MTI Management fully supported the original decision to not launch below 53 F ( 12 C) prior to the caucus. The caucus constituted the unethical decision-making forum resulting from intense customer intimidation. NASA placed MTI in the position of proving that it was not safe to fly instead of proving that it was safe to fly. Also, note that NASA immediately accepted the new decision to launch because it was consistent with their desires and please note that no probing questions were asked.

The reason that NASA needed this launch to proceed is clear. After two previous delays, they had almost no launch window left in order to get the Spartan 203 satellite into position for it's mission to observe Halley's Comet.

I don't have time right now for a lengthy response to each issue raised, though I wouldn't mind continuing the debate with you later - you refrain from pejoratives and hyperbole indicating if not a temporal maturity, at least an intellectual one and I appreciate that. I also appreciate that you provide some background and references rather than the standard everything-I-read-on-the-web-must-be-true bupkes that constantly pops up on blogs.

At any rate, I'll just address "entropy". Now I'm not a mathematician and certainly not a theoretical mathematician, so I'm going to have a hard time translating something like Entropy into an equation, but I do have 3/4s of an Electrical Engineering degree under my belt (don't ask why I dropped out in the 4th year, though it does have something to do with non-linear algebra) so I'm a bit better than a schlub when it comes to comprehending math, and I don't use the word "entropy" loosely. I'm specifically using it in the context of Newtonian physics and second law of thermodynamics (with credit to Joule and Carnot), where as a compliment to matter and energy, you can't move from an entropic state to one of less entropy without investing some energy, or as Newton's third law of motion put it, every action has an equal and opposite reaction and thus bodies in motion tend toward releasing kinetic energy rather than absorbing it and moving to a higher potential energy.

Quick example of entropy in action, drop a glass from a counter, it breaks (bonds broken, sound energy released, minor heat generated, glass chips scatter, etc.). Now pick up the glass shards, all of them if you can find them, raise the "pile" of glass 10 or 100 times higher than the original counter top to increase the available potential energy, drop them again. You can even put the pieces back in their original spots and do it again. Not one single bond will reform. It may seem obvious that it won't, but that's the point. The only way to pull entropy out of the given system is to meticulously re-assemble the glass and if there was a good bonding solvent, you could glue it back together. But you've transferred energy and organization from another system to achieve that.

I took enough chemistry to understand some quantum physics and know that moving to outer oribtals and creating long covalent bonds takes a molecule to a discrete state of higher potential energy (didn't this thread originally started with a discussion of forming fossil fuels under heat and pressure over time?). As it applies to speciation, evolution, and genetic mutations, I believe it is consistent with Newtonian physics that without an infusion of directed energy, molecular chains are going to tend towards breaking down rather than building up. That rather than moving towards complexity, objects, structures, and organisms tend toward simplicity or even chaos. That rather than self-composing, life decomposes. So whenever presented with a scientific conclusion that requires that disorder spontaneously move towards order without fully explaining the source of the energy or the intervention of an organizer, I'm going to immediately assume it's a premature conclusion and in the context of the scientific method, relegate it to a theory that still needs some work. I'll want to see some proof other than just anecdotes.

I'm also going to be suspicious of models that assume linear behavior outside of the observable linear range. This is why inductive reasoning is such a dangerous tool in the hands of science. The Challenger crew that died in 1986 can pretty much lay the blame for their deaths on this failure - the engineers (with the exception of the whistle blower, Roger Boisjoly, that got railroaded) assumed a linear behavior in the fuel tank seals success rate across ambient temperature ranges and failed to consider that even in Florida you can have a frosty morning (for an analysis http://www.onlineethics.org/cms/13470.aspx). In their risk calculations, they neglected to draw o

The night before the Challenger disaster, there was a teleconference between NASA and Morton Thiokol (MTI--the company that designed and built the boosters). NASA asked MTI on recommendation for launch. At first MTI did not support a launch if the temperature was below 53 F (12 C). NASA was surprised by this and took the meeting offline. The managers then met without the engineers. The managers then challenged MTI to prove that the shuttle was not safe instead of the more cautious stance of proving that the shuttle was safe. MTI relented under pressure and recommended launch.

In the Columbia disaster, engineers were concerned about the foam strike. They requested images to be taken to determine the extent of damage since they did not have enough information. They were met with resistance with one manager refusing to "be Chicken Little" and Columbia's flight director, Le Roy Cain saying "I consider it [the foam strike] to be a dead issue."

The final Columbia report said:

Management seemed more concerned about the staff following proper channels (even while they were themselves taking informal advice) than they were about the analysis.

and

Managers' claims that they didn't hear the engineers' concerns were due in part to their not asking or listening.

III. Professional Obligations

1. Engineers shall be guided in all their relations by the highest standards of honesty and integrity.
a. Engineers shall acknowledge their errors and shall not distort or alter the facts.
b. Engineers shall advise their clients or employers when they believe a project will not be successful.

5. Engineers shall avoid all conduct or practice which deceives the public.

As far as my ethics course was concerned, your obligation here to inform the injured parties was required. Documenting what went wrong but not notifying the injured parties was not acceptable, and to my understanding you would indeed be liable in such a situation.

I'd recommend that your friend talk to the people at the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science Helpline. They will give him an answer based on the IEEE Code of Ethics. Although aimed primarily at engineers, they are also able to help IT professionals. The website is also a valueable source of information on topics such as disclosure.

One further note: If any of the leaked information could cause a public saftey concern, disclosure may be even more important to consider. Also, if one of the clients is the federal or a state government, he may want to consult a lawyer to see if diclosure is mandated.

i was in 6th grade science class watching live. before and after, i still wanted to be an astronaut.

i've often wondered how different things would have been had the challenger been the success that was expected. more women in science? expanded exploration instead of a near shutdown of the entire agency?

i do know that an entire generation of school children went from being incredibly curious about space to being afraid of space to being uninterested in space. which is very sad; since the people who died lived their lives towards the opposite cause.

various reading:
http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery/NssEthicsAward .html
http://onlineethics.org/moral/boisjoly/MTImemo2.ht ml

Are you forgetting that NASA, and Morton Thiokol management is solely responsible for the disaster, the engineers protested the launch.

"Each of the pair of solid-fuel boosters was made from four separate segments that bolted end-to-end-to-end together, and flame escaping from one of the interfaces was what destroyed the shuttle"

"Although the obvious solution of making the boosters of one long segment (instead of four short ones) was later suggested, long solid fuel boosters have problems with safe propellant loading, with transport"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11031097/

The decision to make the boosters in segments was a political one and not a technological one. The fact is that the booster rockets had to be made in the home state of the 'powerful Republican senator` in order to get approval for the budget. At the time there was a lot of complaint about the excessive spending on space flight. The managers at NASA were told to come up with a cost effective solution that would allow cheaper routine missions with a reusable vehicle. With hindsight it is easy to see that the technology could not deliver.

Regarding 'the obvious solution .. was later suggested` this is incorrect. The engineers repeatedly reported problems with the infamous O-rings. Their objections were repeatedly ignored by the management. Why Oberg would propagate this distortion at this time is curious to say the least. After all he is a reporter at the prestigious MSNBC.

The facts are that Roger Boisjoly, the engineer with Morton Thiokol protested against the launch. Here is an extract from a memo he wrote in July 1985 *seven* months before the disaster. Later on Roger was forced out of MTI. No one at NASA or Morton Thiokol has ever been heald accountable for the shuttle disaster and the loss of seven lives.

"This letter is written to insure that management is fully aware of the seriousness of the current O-ring erosion problem in the SRM joints from an engineering standpoint"

"It is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action to dedicate a team to solve the problem with the field joint having the number one priority, then we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight along with all the launch pad facilities"

http://onlineethics.org/moral/boisjoly/MTImemo1.ht ml

'Don't launch.' .. 'Don't launch.' Roger Boisjoly,

"I felt I really did all I could to stop the launch." Roger Boisjoly,

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/5.78.html

"Approximately one month after my testimony to the House Committee, I could no longer endure the hostile environment at MTI,"

http://onlineethics.org/essays/shuttle/post-dis.ht ml

"Each of the pair of solid-fuel boosters was made from four separate segments that bolted end-to-end-to-end together, and flame escaping from one of the interfaces was what destroyed the shuttle"

"Although the obvious solution of making the boosters of one long segment (instead of four short ones) was later suggested, long solid fuel boosters have problems with safe propellant loading, with transport"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11031097/

The decision to make the boosters in segments was a political one and not a technological one. The fact is that the booster rockets had to be made in the home state of the 'powerful Republican senator` in order to get approval for the budget. At the time there was a lot of complaint about the excessive spending on space flight. The managers at NASA were told to come up with a cost effective solution that would allow cheaper routine missions with a reusable vehicle. With hindsight it is easy to see that the technology could not deliver.

Regarding 'the obvious solution .. was later suggested` this is incorrect. The engineers repeatedly reported problems with the infamous O-rings. Their objections were repeatedly ignored by the management. Why Oberg would propagate this distortion at this time is curious to say the least. After all he is a reporter at the prestigious MSNBC.

The facts are that Roger Boisjoly, the engineer with Morton Thiokol protested against the launch. Here is an extract from a memo he wrote in July 1985 *seven* months before the disaster. Later on Roger was forced out of MTI. No one at NASA or Morton Thiokol has ever been heald accountable for the shuttle disaster and the loss of seven lives.

"This letter is written to insure that management is fully aware of the seriousness of the current O-ring erosion problem in the SRM joints from an engineering standpoint"

"It is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action to dedicate a team to solve the problem with the field joint having the number one priority, then we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight along with all the launch pad facilities"

http://onlineethics.org/moral/boisjoly/MTImemo1.ht ml

'Don't launch.' .. 'Don't launch.' Roger Boisjoly,

"I felt I really did all I could to stop the launch." Roger Boisjoly,

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/5.78.html

"Approximately one month after my testimony to the House Committee, I could no longer endure the hostile environment at MTI,"

http://onlineethics.org/essays/shuttle/post-dis.ht ml

You can find more detail here http://onlineethics.org/essays/shuttle/bois.html from an account written by one of the Morton-Thiokol engineers involved in the seal investigation.

Challenger explosion, anyone? Long story short, the engineers saw the problem, told NASA not to launch, and all the business guys thought it'd be bad for PR to delay the lauch. Little did they know....

Read the full story from an engineer's perspective here.

For those who would like to go on an in-depth exploration of issues touched upon in this article, check out the Case Of The Killer Robot on the onlineethics.org website: http://onlineethics.org/cases/robot/robot.html which I edited back in school. Note that the case is a hypothetical one and all the characters are fictional.

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com/

Was presented on Oct 25, 1988, on PBS.
"Abstract:
This video examines the troubling question of scientific fraud: How prevalent is it? Who commits it? And what happens when the perpetrators are caught? Factors contributing to "bad science" include sloppy research, personal bias, lack of objectivity, "cooking and trimming", "publish or perish" pressure, and outright fraud. The limits of peer review and other quality control systems are discussed."

I haven't watch my VHS copy in several years, but IIRC the rate of cheating among all scientists was bout 48%.

In another case two NIH scientists followed up on report of cheating brought to them by other scientists. http://onlineethics.org/reseth/okie.html
"As a result of her allegations, O'Toole claims she has been effectively barred from getting a job as a researcher. She worked for her brother's moving company for a while and is currently unemployed. It was likely that any investigations of Baltimore and Imanishi-Kari would have been dropped at this point. However, after persuading O'Toole to send them the data, Stewart and Feder, NIH scientists who have taken it upon themselves to criticize current scientific standards, conducted an unofficial investigation of their own. They concluded that the presentation of the data was misleading and inaccurate and that it seemed to contradict some of the researchers' own main conclusions. Stewart and Feder attempted to publish an article that discussed their findings, but reviewers for NIH claimed that a paper based only on an examination of partial data and without consultation with the Cell paper's authors should not be published. Stewart and Feder sent their paper to the authors and asked for more data, but the authors refused. The NIH finally allowed Stewart and Feder to submit their paper to Cell, but Cell refused to publish it."

Because of their whistle blowing they eventually lost their jobs. http://felix.unife.it/Root/d-University/d-The-scie ntist/t-Fraud-investigators

ACM Software Engineering Code of Ethics
IEEE Code of Ethics
Even more codes of ethics!

That's what makes us different from the research that German and Japanese scientists did in WWII.

um no, we did it first in the settling of this land....

one
two
three

we certianly are sick and twisted people that do evil just as well as the others.

It's a non-event only if you realize how close they were to core meltdown ...

Chernobyl (towards the bottom)

Three Mile Island

Three Mile Island, it took seven and a half hours to apply the correct remidy for the problem (for over five of which the reactor core was exposed). At nine hours there was an explosion in the reactor core. After 15 hours the core was covered in coolent again.

Compare with Chernobyl. After an hour and 23 minutes of getting the reactor in a dangerously unstable state, a minute and a half later into the test the roof of the reactor had blown off, the core was a molten lump and the building was on fire.

The software is only one piece of the puzzle, of course. Its killing was enabled by the hubris of its developers and the blind trust of its users.

And nothing to fix stuck valves
The summary is broken system with incorrect water level gauages and operators assuming that warnings were normal. Human error and some key systems giving false readings combine. But the question was why did these systems give false readings, and why did the operators think this was normal operations. Reference 1

The real problem is best described:
here"

I just don't trust the builders and owners.
I do trust the science but not the product.

When a software program physically kills someone....I'll change my mind

Well, it first happened in 1986.

Let's see...you bought a car. You now own it. You drive it responsibly...the fact that you may or may not have maintained the brakes and tyres is relevant because you're responsible for it. The fact that there are design faults in the brakes and tyres is also relevant. In this scenario you could well be completely absolved of any responsibility for any damage it causes due to the design faults.

See the problem ?

If a fault was unintentionally, or even malicously coded into the robot's software, could you be held responsible ?

The Killer Robot story makes an interesting read..

How is that any different than putting a crowbar in my John Deere's steering wheel and letting it loose on my neighbor's lawn?
The difference my friend, is that legal precendents around the use of John Deeres equipment were set long ago....

A good place to find lots of accidents, and the ethics behind them, can be found at Online Ethics

This is one of the sites that we use for the Engineering Ethics class at CWRU.

Some cases can be found here

Also:
Three Mile Island
Challanger Disaster
Here are a few more Computing Cases

Also, an excellent write up of the disaster that didn't happen. The Citicorp tower in Chicago would have fallen if it wasn't for fast work by the engineers.
Citicorp tower

-Foose

A good place to find lots of accidents, and the ethics behind them, can be found at Online Ethics

This is one of the sites that we use for the Engineering Ethics class at CWRU.

Some cases can be found here

Also:
Three Mile Island
Challanger Disaster
Here are a few more Computing Cases

Also, an excellent write up of the disaster that didn't happen. The Citicorp tower in Chicago would have fallen if it wasn't for fast work by the engineers.
Citicorp tower

-Foose

A good place to find lots of accidents, and the ethics behind them, can be found at Online Ethics

This is one of the sites that we use for the Engineering Ethics class at CWRU.

Some cases can be found here

Also:
Three Mile Island
Challanger Disaster
Here are a few more Computing Cases

Also, an excellent write up of the disaster that didn't happen. The Citicorp tower in Chicago would have fallen if it wasn't for fast work by the engineers.
Citicorp tower

-Foose

A good place to find lots of accidents, and the ethics behind them, can be found at Online Ethics

This is one of the sites that we use for the Engineering Ethics class at CWRU.

Some cases can be found here

Also:
Three Mile Island
Challanger Disaster
Here are a few more Computing Cases

Also, an excellent write up of the disaster that didn't happen. The Citicorp tower in Chicago would have fallen if it wasn't for fast work by the engineers.
Citicorp tower

-Foose

A good place to find lots of accidents, and the ethics behind them, can be found at Online Ethics

This is one of the sites that we use for the Engineering Ethics class at CWRU.

Some cases can be found here

Also:
Three Mile Island
Challanger Disaster
Here are a few more Computing Cases

Also, an excellent write up of the disaster that didn't happen. The Citicorp tower in Chicago would have fallen if it wasn't for fast work by the engineers.
Citicorp tower

-Foose

Let's hope that they do not repeat the killer robot incident

Even better is Roger Boisjoly's lectures on Challenger. He was the engineer who, the night before launch, told management that it was too cold and that the O-Ring would break.
You can read his lectures online

Darn, and here I was under the delusion that the first computer game was a socially engineered version of hide-n-go-seek developed by the Altiar loving Home-Brew club, otherwise known as "steal Bill's BASIC."

You strongly disagree with North American optimisim you say? Well, then answer me this: Has it ever been wrong? Has there ever been some man made event that has lead to catastrophic loss of life?

Sure, how about Chernobyl, or the recent cyanide spill in Romania and Hungary that killed 90% of the fish life in the Tisa river. Or how about the Love Canal toxic waste dump?

we've conqured polio, small pox, and a host of other plauges that killed millions, we'll conquer AIDS, et al as well.

Show me one disease we've cured (simple 'treatment' doesn't count) since smallpox.

Tuberculosis is even now killing millions in India because there is no money to immunize people against it. Why? There's no money in it. There is, however, lots of money to be made in rich-world viruses such as AIDS, but we haven't cured those either. Hell, we can't cure the common cold, what makes you think we have a chance against Ebola?

The only thing I will say is re: the Bioshpere 2. So it failed. So what? It was the first experiment. I'm betting they will figure it out with subsequent expirments.(sp)

Right. It was the first experiment and it was called the Biosphere II.

On information and belief, this proprietary information was obtained by willfully
"hacking" and/or improperly reverse engineering software created by CSS licensee Xing Technology Corporation ("Xing"). Xing's software is and was licensed to users under a license agreement which specifically prohibits reverse engineering.

Article Number 142
Reverse engineering and patent infringement

In most instances, "reverse engineering" is an acceptable option for creating new products. However, there are legal and ethical limitations that must be considered.

Reverse engineering is a common procedure that typically involves the disassembly, examination, and analysis of a product to reveal its design and function. Normally, this is done for competitive analysis, and sometimes for the purpose of building and selling a similar product. It is legally and ethically acceptable for a company to purchase a commercially available product, to analyze it thoroughly, to design and develop a similar product and a method for its manufacture; provided the new product and method do not violate the patent rights of another company.

49. Defendants knew or should have known when they posted or provided "links" to the DeCSS program on their web sites that it was being made available by virtue of the unauthorized use of proprietary information and that they were misusing proprietary confidential information gained through improper means. This is because the DeCSS program has the capability to defeat DVD encryption software and, as a result, the DeCSS program allows users to illegally pirate the copyrighted motion pictures contained on DVD videos - - activity which is fatal to the DVD video format and the hundreds of computer and consumer electronics companies whose businesses rely on the viability of this digital format.

--

Following on from the link given above,

http://onlineethics.org/moral/ boisjoly/RB-intro.html

it would be good to know the names of the Morton Thiokol managers that repeatedly overrode Roger Boisjoly's detailed technical presentations on the flaws in the O-rings and decided to launch Challanger despite overwhelming reasons not to do so. In a sane world, those managers would be criminals.

Those same paper pushers are now probably making equally clueless judgements in other major corporations. Should we not be told their names so that we can stay clear of their next disaster?

Here are some links on the ethics issues of the Challenger Disaster: Challenger Disaster Ethics and the FAS Space Policy Project.