1. Chapter 3
Trust and Reliability

2. Main Ideas in this Chapter
This chapter focuses on issues regarding the importance of trustworthiness in engineers: honesty, confidentiality, intellectual property, expert witnessing, public communication, and conflicts of interest. Forms of dishonesty include lying, deliberate deception, withholding information, and failure to seek out the truth. Dishonesty in engineering research and testing includes plagiarism and the falsification and fabrication of data. Engineers are expected to respect professional confidentiality in their work. Integrity in expert testimony requires not only truthfulness but also adequate background and preparation in the areas requiring expertise. Conflicts of interest are especially problematic because they threaten to compromise professional judgment.

3. Case:
JOHN IS A CO-OP STUDENT who has a summer job with Oil Exploration, Inc., a company that does exploratory contract work for large oil firms.1 The company drills, tests, and writes advisory reports to clients based on the test results. As an upper-level undergraduate student in petroleum engineering, John is placed in charge of a field team of roustabouts and technicians who test drill at various sites specified by the customer. John has the responsibility of transforming rough field data into succinct reports for the customer. Paul, an old high school friend of John’s, is the foreperson of John’s team. In fact, Paul was instrumental in getting this high-paying summer job for John.

4. Case:
While reviewing the field data for the last drilling report, John notices that a crucial step was omitted, one that would be impossible to correct without returning to the site and repeating the entire test at great expense to the company. The omitted step involves the foreperson’s adding a certain test chemical to the lubricant being pumped into the test drill site. The test is important because it provides the data for deciding whether the drill site is worth developing for natural gas protection. Unfortunately, Paul forgot to add the test chemical at the last drill site.

5. Case:
John believes that Paul is likely to lose his job if his mistake comes to light. Paul cannot afford to lose his job at a time when the oil business is slow and his wife is expecting a child. John learns from past company data files that the chemical additive indicates the presence of natural gas in approximately 1 percent of the tests. Should John withhold the information that the test for natural gas was not performed from his superiors? Should the information be withheld from the customer?

6. HONESTY
The concern with truth telling extends far beyond the boundaries of the engineering profession. Religious and secular literature contain many injunctions to tell the truth. The third canon of the code of ethics of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) encourages all members ‘‘to be honest and realistic in stating claims or estimates based on available data.’’

7. FORMS OF DISHONESTY
Lying When we think of dishonesty, we usually think of lying. Ethicists have long struggled over the definition of lying. One reason for the difficulty is that not every falsehood is a lie. If an engineer mistakenly conveys incorrect test results on soil samples, she is not lying even though she may not be telling the truth.
To lie, a person must intentionally or at least knowingly convey false or misleading information.

8. FORMS OF DISHONESTY
Deliberate Deception If Andrew discusses technical matters in a manner that implies knowledge that he does not have to impress an employer or potential customer, then he is certainly engaging in deliberate deception, even if he is not lying. In addition to misrepresenting one’s own expertise, one can misrepresent the value of certain products or designs by praising their advantages inordinately. Such deception can sometimes have more disastrous consequences than outright lying.

9. Deliberate Deception
Withholding Information Omitting or withholding information is another type of deceptive behavior. Perhaps we can say in more general terms that one is practicing a form of dishonesty by omission (1) if one fails to convey information that the audience would reasonably expect would not be omitted and (2) if the intent of the omission is to deceive. If Jane deliberately fails to discuss some of the negative aspects of a project she is promoting to her superior, she engages in serious deception even though she is not lying.

10. Deliberate Deception
Failure to Seek Out the Truth The honest engineer is one who is committed to finding the truth, not simply avoiding dishonesty. Suppose engineer Mary suspects that some of the data she has received from the test lab are inaccurate. In using the results as they are, she is neither lying nor concealing the truth. But she may be irresponsible in using the results without inquiring further into their accuracy. Honesty in this positive sense is part of what is involved in being a responsible engineer.

11. DISHONESTY ON CAMPUS
Three students were working on a senior capstone engineering design project. Case???? the pressures that students experience in the academic setting are not that different from (and perhaps less than) those they will experience in their jobs. If it is morally permissible to cheat on exams and misrepresent data on laboratory reports and design projects, then why isn’t it permissible to misrepresent data to please the boss, get a promotion, or keep a job?

12. CONFIDENTIALITY
Suppose Engineer A inspects a residence for a homeowner for a fee. He finds the residence in generally good condition, although it is in need of several minor repairs. Engineer A sends a copy of his one-page report to the homeowner, showing that a carbon copy was sent to the real estate firm handling the sale of the residence. This case was considered by the NSPE Board of Ethical Review, which ruled that ‘‘Engineer A acted unethically in submitting a copy of the home inspection to the real estate firm representing the owners.’’ It cites section II.1.c of the NSPE code, which states, ‘‘Engineers shall not reveal facts, data, or information obtained in a professional capacity without the prior consent of the client or employer except as authorized by law or this Code.’’

13. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Intellectual property is property that results from mental labor. It can be protected in several ways, including as trade secrets, patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Trade secrets are formulas, patterns, devices, or compilations of information that are used in business to gain an advantage over competitors who do not possess the trade secrets. The formula for Coca-Cola is an example of a trade secret. Trade secrets must not be in the public domain and the secrecy m

14. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Patents are documents issued by the government that allow the owner of the patent to exclude others from making use of the patented information for 20 years from the date of filing. To obtain a patent, the invention must be new, useful, and nonobvious. As an example, the puncture-proof tire is patented.

15. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Trademarks are words, phrases, designs, sounds, or symbols associated with goods or services. ‘‘Coca-Cola’’ is a registered trademark. Copyrights are rights to creative products such as books, pictures, graphics, sculptures, music, movies, and computer programs. The author’s estate or heirs retain the copyright for 50 years after his or her death. Copyrights protect the expression of the ideas but not the ideas themselves. The script of Star Wars, for example, is copyrighted.

16. EXPERT WITNESSING
Engineers are sometimes hired as expert witnesses in cases that involve accidents, defective products, structural defects, and patent infringements, as well as in other areas where competent technical knowledge is required. Calling upon an expert witness is one of the most important moves a lawyer can make in such cases, and engineers are usually well compensated for their testimony. However, being an expert witness is time-consuming and often stressful.

17. EXPERT WITNESSING
To make a credible presentation to the jury, it is simply not enough to merely point out that there is a design defect. At a minimum, the expert must show three things. First, that the defect was recognizable by the designer; second, that there were means available to correct the defect when the product was designed; and third, that the costs of corrective features would not price the product out of the market or interfere with the product’s effectiveness.

18. INFORMING THE PUBLIC
Some types of professional irresponsibility in handling technical information may be best described as a failure to inform those whose decisions are impaired by the absence of the information. From the standpoint of the ethics of respect for persons, this is a serious impairment of moral agency. The failure of engineers to ensure that technical information is available to those who need it is especially wrong where disasters can be avoided.

19. CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
John is employed as a design engineer at a small company that uses valves. In recommending product designs for his company’s clients, he usually specifies valves made by a relative, even when valves made by other companies might be more appropriate. Should his company’s clients discover this, they might well complain that John is involved in a conflict of interest. What does this mean?

20. CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
a conflict of interest exists for a professional when, acting in a professional role, he or she has interests that tend to make a professional’s judgment less likely to benefit the customer or client than the customer or client is justified in expecting.

21. CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
In the preceding example, John has allowed his interest in maintaining a good relationship with his relative to unduly influence his professional judgment. He has betrayed the trust that his clients have placed in his professional judgment by serving his personal interest in his relative rather than the interests of his clients as he is paid to do.