What caused the controversy was the fact that engineers with the firm, Morton Thiokol, responsible for the design and operation of the space shuttle’s solid rocket boosters, unanimously opposed the launching because of bad weather conditions and abnormally low atmospheric temperatures.

The reason for their concern was that the O-ring seals on the rockets were not designed to operate at such low temperatures. Despite objections from the engineers, NASA wanted to go ahead with the launch. The engineers at Morton Thiokol continued to protest. However, the engineers were over-ruled by their managers, and the launch went ahead.

After the disaster, senior management at NASA denied that they had known about the protest and said that, had they known about it, they would have halted the launch. One of the engineers subsequently went public, to ‘set the record straight’. He was lionised by the press for his public-spirited defence of the integrity of the engineers and the public good, however, he lost his job with Morton Thiokol and was unable to subsequently get other employment on the NASA program.

Ethical Considerations for Potential Whistle Blowers:

1. Beneficence - Is there really a serious matter of public interest? Is there risk of harm to the public?
2. Respect for Persons - Are actions open to public scrutiny? Are your actions based on reliable evidence or just hearsay? Are they honest and transparent?
3. Justice - Are your actions fair to all parties? Have you exhausted all the normal channels? Are you observing the rights of due process and allowed the accused an opportunity to defend themselves?
4. Proportionality - Will your action do more good than harm?

Thinks you need to think about:

1. Evidence is correct, reliable and traceable.
2. Are you objecting to illegal/immoral conduct?
3. Discuss the action with close stakeholders, including your family
4. Exhaust organisational procedures for dealing with complaints and objections
5. * Decide whether to act publicly or annonymously.
6. Document every action you take
7. Dont spread your heat to your colleagues, friends or other stakeholders without explicit consent. Make sure they are aware of these factors for consideration.
8. If you are fired and resolt to publicity, recognise that your right of free public discussion might be limited - reporters are sometimes sensationalist and may not express your views accurately.
9. Consider you legal options, especially in the evidence of immoral or illegal conduct.
10. Appreciate that your hands will get dirty whatever you do.

Not to scare you off, but here are some statistics on the adverse consquences Whistle Blowers in the United States have faced.

90% lost their jobs or were demoted
27% faced lawsuits
26% faced psychiatric or medical referral
25% admitted to alcohol abuse
17% lost their homes
15% were subsequently divorced
10% attempted suicide
8% went bankrupt.

- John McMillan

Recognising the public service performed by whistle-blowers, the public in the United States demanded legal protection for ‘whistle-blowers’. Similar demands for ‘whistleblower protection rights’ are now being made all over the world.

Good luck.

Honesty:

To examine what honesty is we need to look at dishonesty. Dishonesty has four main forms:

• Lying
• Diliberate Deception
• Withholding Information
• Failure to seek out truth
• Academic

If you are in academia you’ll probably recognise there are a few different forms of academic dishonesty:

• Trimming - smoothing data to remove irregularities
• Cooking - keep results that fit the theory
• Forging - inventing results or reporting experiments not conducted
• Plagarism - using others’ intellectual property without due credit
• Mutliple Authorship - motivated by desire to gain as many publications as possible

Integrity:

Intellectual Property - Property that results from mental labour (ideas, theories and inventions). It is protected usually in a number of ways including:

• Trade secrets
• Copyright
• Trademark
• Patents

Expert Witnessing - As a professional practices inherit to the profession may be required to be described in the court of law. In some cases professionals are called as expert witnesses to present an industry view - often, legal representatives may look to hire expert witnesses based on the testimony they are willing to provide. Expert witnesses are often reimbursed well for their contribution.

Confidentiality - A component of most businesses wishing to protect processes and resources that give them a competitive advantage.

Informing the Public - See my upcoming post on whistleblowing.

Conflicts of Interest - Where a professional is subject to influences, loyalties or temptations that affect decisions / professional judements less likely to benefit the customer or client. There are three different degrees:

• Actual - in which judgement is directly influenced by benefit e.g. Selecting a bolt from a bolt making company that you have invested in, rather than one better suited for the application.
• Apparent - in which judgement is not immediately influenced by benefit, but becomes influenced in a foreseeable future e.g. Selecting a bolt from a bolt making company that is owned by a family you eventually marry into and inherit from.
• Potential - in which judgement is influenced in the long run by benefit, but has not eventuated yet

Loyalty

People can have loyalty to differing things, but there is an order or heirarchy of obediance:

1. Loyalty to public and public saftey - above all.
2. Loyalty to profession
3. Loyalty to colleagues
4. Loyalty to firm
5. Loyalty to firm’s client

This loyalty can be fostered in many ways within an organisation, typical means include: values and standards, expections, respect for individuals and long term commitment rewards.

A company’s mission, vision and practical goals all define its corporate integrity, and indicate the quality you can expect to recieve and the processes and system you will be subject to, but this requires involvement of the organisation. Defining these are not simple problems.

A companies Code of Ethics is a promise, a pact, that the company will act in the manner outlined in the code when it comes to ethical decision making.

To discern how a professional is bound by a company’s code of ethics we need to look at the profession it self:

Entrace into professions usually require extended periods of education or training. Typically this training is academic and grounded on theory and acquired through some body of knowledge. Professionals usually possess knowledge and skills vital to the community. Usually professionals in a particular occupation have a monoply in the provision of professional services and posses a degree of autonomy in the workplace (they can do their own thing).

As a professional working for an organisation, you are regulated by the standards of the organisation.

Professional Ethics however, should be distinguished from “personal morality”. Professional ethics are dervied from standards adopted by professionals in their role as professionals. Personal morality is different, its a set of ethical commitments you acquire through out your life from family, religion and are modified by your experiences.

Did you say standards? Why yes I did, because thats what they are - commonly agreed rules of conduct for professionals. They provide a rationale for professionals to adhere to professional standards, even when presumed by others to violate their own personal rules. Don’t get me wrong - just because they are standards doesnt mean they are set in stone. You should adhere to these standards when possible but not enslavishly.

Now, if personal and professional ethics are different we’re obviously going to have conflicts. Consider a doctor who’s examining the husband of a friend, only to find he has contracted an STD under questionable circumstances. A doctor might feel compelled to tell his/her friend but violate professional doctor patient confidentiality.

Similarly, there are going to be times when we are unclear what the right thing to do is - at this point professional codes must be considered. You should look at what the codes say and the direction that the codes give in those circumstances.

But there are a lot of impediments to responsible action: ultimately the onus is on you to be an ethical professional and an ethical person. In either case your duty is to protect the public - you’ll find (in engineering anyway) that this is the main gist of professional ethics.

A key thing to note here is that law is not always the defining line between what is ethical and what isn’t. There are cases which are just legal grey areas. But the bottom line is would you want the same thing done to you?

Other, personal, impediments include:

• Self Interest
• Fear
• Self Deception - intrinsically difficult to discover in oneself
• Ignorance
• Egocentric tendencies
• Microscopic vision
• Uncritical acceptance of authority
• Groupthink - when people get tied to the mentality of a group

Try get past these.

So what are these principles? We’ll lets look at some possible universally held moral values:

1. We ought to allow everyone the right to express their views on ethical and political matters, right? This is called “The Principle of Respect for Persons and their Rights.” It is our duty to empower others by showing respect for their freedom and rights as free moral agents. Additionally we have a duty to promote the development of other people, and to be truthful and sincere with other people - honesty.

2. We probably shouldn’t discriminate against people with moral, cultural, political and religious views different from our own. “The Principle of Justice” or “Universal Fairness.” Duty of fairness or equity, to treat people with dignity, to avoid discrimination, abuse of prejudice. Test of universalisability - big word - if a “good” is available to you - it should be available to everyone.

3. It’s our duty to defend the rights of those who are too young or too weak to defend themselves. This is known as the “Principle of Beneficence”. Again we have a duty to do good to others (beneficence) and avoid doing them harm (non-maleficence). There exists a duty of advocacy.

That’s it for the ethics side of things, we now move into Professional Ethics!

I propose a question: Is “spam” spam if you’re actually interested in enlargement / cheap sources of viagra?

You could, theoretically, design a “context engine”

Input: Users context, target material
Output: Valid material (whether it be spam or search results or an ad-free webpage).

It’s the permise intelligent spam filters and Google Adsense works on - so its technically implementable. The real question is: What defines a persons context?

• Occupation
• Relationships (Friends, Family and Groups)
• Interests and Dislikes
• Background
• Experiences
• Situation (Location, Employment, Status)

Build this kind of profile is “scary” to a lot of people. But implemented safely and correctly can be a useful tool - especially when creating content that is customised to the user.

Big words. I know.

A virtuist would say “Its OK: As long as a selfish persons acts benefit others”.

Virtue Ethics:

A virtuous person develops a beneficial nature that will direct them and try to do the right thing in most cases. Whats the relevance to Professional Ethics?

Well, virtue ethics involves our conduct, attitudes and dispositions. Development of a virtuous character can influence the role of professionals in their workplace - and its not just what professionals do, but what the are ready or disposed to do or say.

But Ro, What if a person thinks they know what is right, but is misguided?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

There are plenty of examples of this in our lives: We all have friends or relatives who meddle with family matters and other peoples business. We know about people who report neighbours as terrorists simply because they are muslim.

Unfortunately the course is a bit vague on what happens here.

Moral Pluralism:

Its pretty evident that we can’t restrict ourselves to one kind of consideration. In the real world deciding what is moral is untidy, unique to the situation. We can pick and choose from our basket of normative theories depending on the situation. This is known as moral pluralism.

Cultural Relativism:

How can we have truth in ethics if what is right is culturally based? What’s right and wrong is relative to the individual and further their background.

If we reflect on disagreements and conclude they cant be settled we might react by adopting relativism. Relativism (especially cultural) is not specific to ethics, it can apply across a range of fields. It explains away disagreement - by treating them as acceptable in their own place.

It’s a view made popular by anthropologists - that is to say they belive that cultures benefit from the adoption of a “detached” viewpoint. ie. It’s not helpful to view another culture in terms of one’s own cultural norm and for similar reasons ethical relativism has appealed to socioligists, historians and psychologists - professionals working in cultural studies.

But now we have the problem of establishing a value system that applies globally. Who’s values do you choose? What values are universal, independant of culture? There are some obvious ones: murder (except in self defence), rape. But its not that easy…

There are, of course, objections to ethical relativism:

There are two different points made by cultural relativists and it important to recognise the difference:

1. The first point is that cultures do differ around the world - “How the world is”
2. The second is evaluative: to “do” as a culture does - “How the world should be”

Remember that noone, anywhere has a right to dictate the later.

The conclusion is merely this:

Ethical relativism is a moral theory (to an extent) - and there is no universal truth in ethics.

If you’re here you’ve discovered your internet has slowed down to a crawl after the latest round of updates (or maybe out of the box). You’ve checked with your ISP and tried other computers on your network and the internet is still working, Google definately isn’t taking 10 minutes to load as a new standard practice.

Between each of the steps its worth restarting your computer and checking if the problem has been resolved.

1. Restart your computer:
Self explanitory.

2. Rollback your network drivers:
Click on the Start Icon > Right Click Computer > Properties > In the Hardware Tab select Device Manager > Click the + next to Network Adapters > Select the network interface you are using internet through. If youre using wireless it’ll probably say WLAN > Right Click > Properties > In the Drivers Tab select Roll Back Driver > Restart your computer.

If Roll Back Driver is disabled then continue onto attempt 3.

3. Update drivers:
Search the network card (one that you selected in attempt 2) and “driver”. Look for a site that has the same name as the manufacturer, or do the search on the manufacturers website. This way you can be assured its the latest and authentic thing. You should not have to pay for drivers. Restart your computer.

4. Clear your temporary files and internet settings
Press Start > In the Run text box type %temp% (just the bolded stuff) > Select All the files (Ctrl+A) and Delete (Del). In Firefox select Tools > Clear Private Data > Tick all the boxes > Clear Private Data Now. In IE select Tools > Delete Browsing History.

5. Continue trawling the internet for alternatives. My applogies. Post in a forum somewhere but include all your hardware details and a list of updates that you installed.

It’s easier to see where Google is coming from these days - they’ve said there going to do something and so far they’ve been doing it. This does NOT mean they’re predictable. Google’s product base is founded on innovation and research, bleeding edge stuff. And I can smell the excitement.

So what’s Google got planned for 2009?

1. Continuing to change the world
Some long term goals are so vague they’re bound to come true. The big G isn’t set to monetize everything. Google.org, the company’s philanthropic arm will continue to be devoted to renewable energy and environmental issues. We’ll see Google trying to become greener, fight disease, improve public services and fuel the growth of small-medium enterprise. They will, in essence, “not be evil” next year.

2. Monetizing existing products
Begining with Youtube Google will monetize their existing product offering. Already got ads? They’ll handle it more intelligently, efficiently. Start thinking about ad’s on Google Maps - it’ll be location and task specific… got a dog walking trail pegged out? It’ll undoubtedly show you nearby pet stores. Looking for a retail chain that sells x? Find its google funded competitors highlighted nearby.

3. Gear everything
Google gears is fantastic. It’s Google technology presently underutilised. Instead of serving pages faster and faster, I’m sure they’ll promote the technology. Gmail is one thing that is sure to be geared in the near future and I can see applications for it in Google’s entire product offering.

4. Andorid Push
It’s do or die for this platform. In 2009 we will see Google trying to keep the momentum going on this one. Why? Android is Google’s window into Africa. In a place where computers are expensive and internet access is sporadic at best, the cell phone is king. It’s predictable now what will happen if Google dont. Android phones will be delayed due to Google’s expansive feature set or some other nigling implementation detail. Other manufacturers who will be looking at HTC will be discouraged by the prospect of implementing Android on their phones and slowly release variants of something Andoird-like but based on their own operating systems thus defeating the entire point.

5. Getting out of Beta
Getting products out of Beta. Specifically Gmail. Gmail has a way to go before its “finished” (if Google products ever have such a state) but I dont think it will be long at all before we get something thats not a Beta.

Even if its a Beta 2.

• I can be healthy at low cost
• I can get any meds without the need for a prescription
• There are shocking videos concerning Spongebob in lewd acts
• acachamuhammed147 is expecting to hear from me soon
• I can increase my diameter by 30% in just a few weeks
• Angelina Jolie’s pregnancy was all a hoax
• I should show “her” attention every night
• 16 Police died in a Pre-Olympic attack
• Corrupt chinese officials have been betrayed by leaky toilets
• Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are lovers (video proof)
• Scientists have managed to create a prosthetic brain
• Batman is gay (video proof)
• Lindsey Lohan died in a car crash
• Switzerland is to be devoured by a black hole
• Gilles Candace’s scrotum is getting really huge these days
• Richard Nixon speaks from the grave
• Jebediah Beverley has 10 things to tell a naked woman
• Certain schools have adopted a Gay-Ass uniform policy
• Secret elephant patrols are occuring in Sumatra
• FBI can watch our conversations over facebook
• Mariah Carey is many men’s sex goddess

Good thing I keep up-to-date with these things.

The concept is flawed. What is the point of using the roof of your car to generate electricity, when you can easily place 10 times as many panels on the roof of your house and access the power through infrastructure known as “the power grid”. For all that extra cost and technology you add a mere 5 km to distance travelled. This is given the fact you dont park your car in the shade.

Hydrogen cars are a distraction -

Even through using hydrogen to generate electricity has been perfected these days, the real “greeness” of this has to be questioned. How much energy does it take to produce hydrogen?

The general public have to be aware that this hydrogen technology still ties consumers to the bowser. It is simply getting you to switch from one addictive substance, to another (more dangerous) one.

The complexity and cost of hydrogen cars is enourmous. Even if prices were to decrease in the next 20 or so years, consumers would be paying through the nose to maintain these cars. Not many mechanics would know how to deal with a hydrogen engine I’m betting.

You essentially have the same problem with Biodesiel - Burning anything is bad, regardless of the emissions we’re just not awesome enough as a species to capture the energy release of an explosion efficiently yet.

No, the real solution is electric engines, electric drive. I’ll accept that we need hybrids, at least temporarily to get people to adapt to this change. In the long run I see battery technology improving at an alarming rate - so much so that we wont need to rely on petrol based engines for range.

Even with todays technology we can design cars that reach 180km/h and have a working range of 250 miles. Which is more than enough for 99% of people - those who primarily use their cars to commute from home to work to the pub and back home (yes you).

Electric cars have none of the losses experienced in modern combustion engine (little heat, virtually no noise) - resulting in high efficiencies 88 - 95% vs the 30% of the most efficient combustion engines.

Check out my thesis project: www.therevproject.com.