The Need for Heroes

In a play about Galileo, Bertold Brecht has one of his characters comment bitterly after Galileo's recantation that "unhappy is a land that breeds no heroes." The reply by Galileo is "unhappy is a land that needs heroes." This exchange was brought to mind by David Hartmann's comments [1] on Ralph Nader's call for whistle blowinc engineers. Hartmann points out the risks incurred by any engineer who heeds Nader's call to anonymously "turn in" his employer to a public interest group when he finds that company decisions are damaging the public. In addition to the possibility of finding himself suddenly unemployed, and perhaps unemployable, Hartmann also argues that the whistle blower may also help to bring his own profession into disrepute. (Altho this latter point certainly merits serious consideration, I think one might also defend the opposite contention but I shall not do so here.) A better way to accomplish the same end, Hartmann argues, would be for the engineering profession to do its own policing rather than have this function carried out by an outside organization. This I believe is a very important concept, and I would like to continue the discussion that Hartmann has opened. First of all, a basis for such action by a professional society must be a code of ethics that includes some definition of professional responsibility. Such provisions must be sufficiently general to encompass a variety of viewpoints within the profession and to cover to the greatest extent possible, unforeseen situations that may arise in the future. Yet they must be more than empty admonitions to promote the general welfare. My impression is that codes of ethics of the medical and legal professions offer little guidance in this respect, since t'hey seem to be concerned more with protecting the economic interests of their members than with defining their responsibility to society (except perhaps for the Hippocratic oath). As a basis for discussion, I would suggest the.code of ethics adopted by the National Society of Professional Engineers and the following oath proposed by M.W. Thring [21: