Sheila Widnall on the responsibilities of engineers: The COLUMBIA accident and its CAIB

Highly recommended. Always moving, at least for me. Engineering is a serious business: http://mit.tv/AjqL6n

Engineers and their programs are embedded in organizational structures. These structures control the success or failures of the program. In dealing with high risk technologies the characteristics of these organizations determine the risk to individuals and society from these technologies. Engineers cannot sit quietly within these organizations, but have an ethical responsibility to apply their engineering training to uncover operating defects in these organizations, as well as the systems they are developing and operating that can lead to system failures.

About ecoquant

See https://wordpress.com/view/667-per-cm.net/ Retired data scientist and statistician. Now working projects in quantitative ecology and, specifically, phenology of Bryophyta and technical methods for their study.
This entry was posted in citizenship, disingenuity, engineering, NASA, organizational failures, rationality, reasonableness, science, sociology, the tragedy of our present civilization. Bookmark the permalink.

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