Incident question - historical event with lack of ethics

[k31453]

incident question -- historical event with lack of ethics

I have to Write a report outlining an historical event in which a lack of ethics has caused the injury or loss of life. You
should discuss the issues with reference to the Engineers Australia code of ethics.

i can't find any events ! an anybody help me out ?

 

[russ_watters]

Do they have to be Australian events or just events where the Aussie ethics code would say something relevant about it? Have you googled "engineering ethics case study"?

 

[pongo38]

Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Gate_Bridge
I read about it in a book: Bignell, Victor and Fortune, Joyce (1984). Understanding Systems Failures. Manchester: Manchester University Press. It was a chapter in the book.(web ref http://oro.open.ac.uk/12943/) From memory, one of the firms found at fault (Freeman Fox and Partners) bought up almost all the reports of the enquiry, but one slipped through to a library from which the chapter in the book was written. The whole thing raises a number of ethical issues including the attempt at suppressing the report of enquiry.

 

[Aero_UoP]

You can write about the Space Shuttle Challenger which killed 7 people in 1986. In a documentary I watched once, thay said that an engineer had submitted a report, warning about the faulty O-ring but no one called off the launch. I don't know if this is a conspiracy theory or a fact but you don't have anything to lose if you check it out.

 

[OCR]

I have to Write a report outlining an historical event in which a lack of ethics has caused the injury or loss of life.

Maybe poke around a little, here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_ethics#Case_studies_and_key_individuals

i can't find any events !

Of course not. No Aussie engineer has ever violated IEAust...



OCR

 

[NascentOxygen]

Asbestos mining.

 

[k31453]

Asbestos mining.

i am thinking of west gate bridge or chernobyl !

 

[256bits]

some more ideas
http://www.matscieng.sunysb.edu/disaster/

I cannot say which of the examples of disasters were caused by a lack of ethics, or just due to materials and standard parctices of the day.

 

[rcgldr]

An old one that 60 minutes covered back in the 1980's, regarding an employee death due to cyanide gas released as part of a process at Film Recovery Systems (this was in the USA) :

http://pagerankstudio.com/Blog/2011/01/film-recovery-systems-information-and-facts

You can do a web search for Film Recovery Systems to find other articles about these cases.