Engineering Ethics, Sts, and the China Airlines Ci-611 Accident

Abstract

The field of engineering ethics emerged in the early 1990s in Taiwan, following the example of the United States, which had developed this field over the previous three decades. The Institute of Engineering Education Taiwan (IEET) recommends that students of engineering schools study engineering ethics so as to acquire an “understanding of professional ethics and social responsibility.” For the most part, the scenarios used for teaching are simplistically real or hypothetical ones framed by the codes of ethics, or case studies borrowed directly from the United States. In this paper I argue that adding components of STS studies, especially historical-sociological analyses of real cases to engineering ethics, is beneficial and more consonant with IEET requirements, and I draw on the concepts of STS studies to analyze a local case study as an illustration of this.

Keywords:

• engineering ethics
• Taiwan
• China Airlines

Notes

1 See Wang 1991 for one of these articles. The others were written by Teng Jyh-Tong 鄧治東 (1991), who along with Wang also taught at Chung Yuan Christian University; Jou Jwo-Huei 周卓煇 (1991), who taught at National Tsing Hua University; and Hu Huang-Der 胡黃德 (1991), an instructor at Yuan Ze University, who provided an introduction to the education of engineering ethics in the United States.

2 The IEET Accreditation Criteria was updated in 2010; see http://ieet.dyu.edu.tw/ieet_new/english/e_index.php?page=Accreditation.htm (accessed on 15 May 2013).

3 “Culture” in this context refers to ways of acting and thinking. Vaughan defines it as “a set of solutions produced by a group of people to meet specific problems posed by the situations that they face in common. These solutions become institutionalized, remembered, and passed on as the rules, rituals, and values of the group” (1996: 64).

4 “Amoral calculation” means that if “decision makers' calculation of costs and benefits are tainted by self-interest, economics and politics so that intentional wrongdoing and/or harm result, their calculation becomes amoral” (Vaughan 1996: 35).

5 Robert Lund later testified to the presidential commission: “There was no real extensive erosion of that O-ring, so it wasn't a major concern, but we said, gee, you know, we just don't know how much further we can go below the 51 or 53 degrees or whatever it was. So we were concerned with the unknown” (Presidential Commission 1986). Vaughan comments: “Apparently they [the engineers] did not believe the SRB joint would fail. They believed that they were entering into an area of increased risk, that more damage to the O-rings might occur, but…no one thought that a complete ring burn-through was possible” (1996: 380).

6 Swierstra and Jelsma (2006) offer a similar critique to Davis: “In our view, the findings of technology studies undermine engineering ethics rather than strengthening it. This is because the STS literature empirically demonstrates that in common cases of modern technological projects, the necessary conditions for individual moral agency and responsibility are lacking” (311).

7 Vaughan calls this “structural secrecy,” which refers to “the way that patterns of information, organizational structure, processes, and transactions, and the structure of regulatory relations systematically undermine the attempt to know and interpret situations in all organizations. At NASA, structural secrecy concealed the seriousness of the O-ring problem,” contributing to the persistent paradigm on which the belief in acceptable risk was based (1996: 238). This is related to the most important component—decision making—in engineering ethics. Vaughan says: “Decision making in organizations is always affected by how information is sent and received, the characteristics of that information, and how it is interpreted by the individuals who send and receive it” (67).

8 Davis later agrees that rich cases are better to a certain extent, but he adds, “if time is short, a ‘thin case’ may be better than a rich one” (2007: 21–22).

9 Davis's comment mirrors the concerns of aerospace historian James R. Hansen. Hansen criticizes Vaughan's book as the “Bible” for those who work at NASA and Morton-Thiokol and have done something wrong at some point (McDonald and Hansen 2009: 592). Vaughan's view absolves them of responsibilities.

10 At this juncture, Boisjoly was asked by W. P. Rogers, the chairman of the presidential commission: “Did anybody take issue with you?” He testified: “Well, I am coming to that. I also showed a chart of the joint with an exaggerated cross section to show the seal lifted off, which has been shown to everybody. I was asked, yes, at that point in time I was asked to quantify my concerns, and I said I couldn't. I couldn't quantify it. I had no data to quantify it, but I did say I knew that it was away from goodness in the current data base. Someone on the net commented that we had soot blow-by on SRM-22 [Flight 61-A, October 1985], which was launched at 75 degrees. I don't remember who made the comment, but that is where the first comment came in about the disparity between my conclusion and the observed data because SRM-22 [Flight 61-A, October 1985] had blow-by at essentially a room temperature launch. I then said that SRM-15 [Flight 51-C, January 1985] had much more blow-by indication and that it was indeed telling us that lower temperature was a factor. This was supported by inspection of flown hardware by myself. I was asked again for data to support my claim, and I said I have none other than what is being presented” (Presidential Commission 1986).

11 Tseng personally told the author this information.

12 According to the Aviation Safety Council 2002: “Interview records showed…the Boeing FSR [Field Service Representative] had not been informed by the CAL during the 1980 tail strike permanent repair process. However, when interviewed the CAL chief structural engineer (also retired), who was responsible for the 1980 tail strike repairs,…stated that for the permanent repair of the damaged area, to follow the SRM would require the skin in the damaged area to be cut out, and then a 125″ × 23″ re-enforcement doubler was to be applied. Since the cut out area was quite large, there would have been difficulty following the SRM repair instructions. Because of this difficulty, they decided not to follow the SRM…rather, they used the method similar to the temporary repair.… He stated that he did inform Boeing FSR of the difficulties CAL encountered and he requested the Boeing FSR to inform Boeing of the repair method and no response was received. Since CAL did not receive any response regarding the suggested permanent repair process, the CAL chief structural engineer considered that Boeing had agreed to the repair method” (2.3.2).

13 Under the organization of CAA, the Flight Standards Division conducts operations and airworthiness inspections in accordance with the Civil Aviation Law to sustain the safety of aviation operations. Besides, the division is in charge of the airman certification testing, certification and issuance of certificate, airman registration, and supervision of the civil aviation training school.

14 Some scholars contend that the issues of “microethics” and of “macroethics” cannot be distinguished clearly and definitely (Conlon 2011; Kline 2010). “Public welfare,” for example, can be subsumed within the purview of both macroethics and the microethics to which the individual is committed. However, there is no room to discuss this subject here.