an industry representative says...
Jan. 29th, 2013 06:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
boogieshoesso, i don't usually talk about my work here because this lj is my happy place. but yesterday, i was asked by a friend about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner's problems with their APU battery.
why is it an ethical issue when i'm asked those sort of questions?
because i'm an aerospace engineer by training and trade, and work in the aeronautical engineering industry. in short, i'm the sort of 'expert professional' who has to be careful what he or she says in certain situations, lest it be taken in the wrong way. i don't usually act like one online, i know - certainly unless i'm at work i don't usually *think* of myself as an 'expert professional'. but asking me, or other engineers, to comment on the APU battery is like asking a doctor to comment on flu vaccines, or a lawyer to comment on Arizona's last immigration ruling. yes, there's room for a personal opinion, but the nature of their professions makes it tough to draw a clear line between 'personal opinion' and 'professional speculation'.
and the nature of humans means that inevitably, the asker is seeking a semi-professional opinion on the matter.
unlike doctors and lawyers, however, engineers have a further issue: technical specifics. knowing the technical specifics of an topic is imperative to having an informed opinion about something that happens in the engineering world. but those same specifics are likely to be company-proprietary information, which means they're also unlikely to be distributed information.
added to this are the factors of complexity: any question like this involves the evaluation of an extremely complex system, and perhaps even an extremely complex part, and requires the person to be well-versed in the physics of the situation, and part-to-system-to-part interactions. you can't simply guess at these sorts of things and expect to come up with anything like a valid answer. you really can't even make a decent evaluation of all the factors involved from the distance you're usually at.
and yet, any answer you come up with is going to be given a lot of weight *because* of your 'expert profession'. this means you can expect people to take even off-the-cuff, casual remarks more seriously than those remarks deserve. and because so many of these questions deal with emotionally challenging issues like 'the health, safety, and welfare of the public', the absolute *best* thing you can say, the best thing you can say to re-assure the public that there are no conspiracies afoot and greed is not getting the better of good judgement - the *best thing you can say is to say nothing at all*.
let me repeat that: as an engineering professional, when asked these types of questions, your best answer is *absolute silence*.
there are other reasons to maintain silence. the primary one is that, especially in this day and age, we have a sound-byte media that will do it's absolute best to twist whatever you say, no matter how thoughtful, into the most sensational, news-worthy tagline they can. and they don't understand engineering, and how engineering, in general works, so they're going to demolish any kind of coherence you might have had and present something sensational for the ratings, with the result being that maybe someone loses their credibility and their career when things snowball out of control. and they will, at some point - such is the power of sensationalistic media. so it's pretty understandable that talking to the media can be a career-ender for *you*, too.
even in the best of cases, if the media has a 100% straight to tv, no editing whatsoever story, you also have to deal with the fact that 90% of the general public doesn't know how engineering works, either. and this is not to say they're idiots, but like law and medicine, engineering is a specialized area of knowledge, one that requires at the very least the understanding and application of abstract physical concepts with complex mathematical expressions. this isn't something everyone can do, just like not everyone can write, and not everyone is particularly artistic. and while more people understand bits and pieces of engineering principles than have been formally trained there-in, there's still the fact that engineers have a very specific language they use when describing things. it's not hard to misinterpret a professional dialect from the context of joe public, or even dr joe surgeon. i've seen it happen *numerous* times, and it always causes confusion until you realize that no, you really *aren't* speaking from the same dictionary.
and because of these two points, together with the fact of professional weight, anything you-as-the-engineer says is likely to be interpreted wrong, taken out of context, folded, spindled, and mutilated before your very eyes.
so the best comment we engineers as professionals can make is silence. even then, silence is often misunderstood: many people interpret silence as agreement with whomever *does* speak about whatever-it-is. it's not.
SILENCE DOES NOT MEAN ASSENT.
what it means is 'i don't have the data and/or the training/expertise in that area to make a meaningful assessment.'
so yesterday, when i was asked by a friend about the Boeing Dreamliner's battery problems, i didn't say anything, and i won't say anything until the official answer from Boeing or the NTSB is released. i remain silent, because that is professionally and personally ethical, and that's what you do in this situation.
but there is one thing i *can* say, and it's my final word on the subject:
Micheal Beihn has a nice ass.
The other derriers in Mag7 line-up are pretty good-looking, too.
and that's a statement i can firmly stand behind.
-boogieshoes, in the rarely-seen business suit
why is it an ethical issue when i'm asked those sort of questions?
because i'm an aerospace engineer by training and trade, and work in the aeronautical engineering industry. in short, i'm the sort of 'expert professional' who has to be careful what he or she says in certain situations, lest it be taken in the wrong way. i don't usually act like one online, i know - certainly unless i'm at work i don't usually *think* of myself as an 'expert professional'. but asking me, or other engineers, to comment on the APU battery is like asking a doctor to comment on flu vaccines, or a lawyer to comment on Arizona's last immigration ruling. yes, there's room for a personal opinion, but the nature of their professions makes it tough to draw a clear line between 'personal opinion' and 'professional speculation'.
and the nature of humans means that inevitably, the asker is seeking a semi-professional opinion on the matter.
unlike doctors and lawyers, however, engineers have a further issue: technical specifics. knowing the technical specifics of an topic is imperative to having an informed opinion about something that happens in the engineering world. but those same specifics are likely to be company-proprietary information, which means they're also unlikely to be distributed information.
added to this are the factors of complexity: any question like this involves the evaluation of an extremely complex system, and perhaps even an extremely complex part, and requires the person to be well-versed in the physics of the situation, and part-to-system-to-part interactions. you can't simply guess at these sorts of things and expect to come up with anything like a valid answer. you really can't even make a decent evaluation of all the factors involved from the distance you're usually at.
and yet, any answer you come up with is going to be given a lot of weight *because* of your 'expert profession'. this means you can expect people to take even off-the-cuff, casual remarks more seriously than those remarks deserve. and because so many of these questions deal with emotionally challenging issues like 'the health, safety, and welfare of the public', the absolute *best* thing you can say, the best thing you can say to re-assure the public that there are no conspiracies afoot and greed is not getting the better of good judgement - the *best thing you can say is to say nothing at all*.
let me repeat that: as an engineering professional, when asked these types of questions, your best answer is *absolute silence*.
there are other reasons to maintain silence. the primary one is that, especially in this day and age, we have a sound-byte media that will do it's absolute best to twist whatever you say, no matter how thoughtful, into the most sensational, news-worthy tagline they can. and they don't understand engineering, and how engineering, in general works, so they're going to demolish any kind of coherence you might have had and present something sensational for the ratings, with the result being that maybe someone loses their credibility and their career when things snowball out of control. and they will, at some point - such is the power of sensationalistic media. so it's pretty understandable that talking to the media can be a career-ender for *you*, too.
even in the best of cases, if the media has a 100% straight to tv, no editing whatsoever story, you also have to deal with the fact that 90% of the general public doesn't know how engineering works, either. and this is not to say they're idiots, but like law and medicine, engineering is a specialized area of knowledge, one that requires at the very least the understanding and application of abstract physical concepts with complex mathematical expressions. this isn't something everyone can do, just like not everyone can write, and not everyone is particularly artistic. and while more people understand bits and pieces of engineering principles than have been formally trained there-in, there's still the fact that engineers have a very specific language they use when describing things. it's not hard to misinterpret a professional dialect from the context of joe public, or even dr joe surgeon. i've seen it happen *numerous* times, and it always causes confusion until you realize that no, you really *aren't* speaking from the same dictionary.
and because of these two points, together with the fact of professional weight, anything you-as-the-engineer says is likely to be interpreted wrong, taken out of context, folded, spindled, and mutilated before your very eyes.
so the best comment we engineers as professionals can make is silence. even then, silence is often misunderstood: many people interpret silence as agreement with whomever *does* speak about whatever-it-is. it's not.
SILENCE DOES NOT MEAN ASSENT.
what it means is 'i don't have the data and/or the training/expertise in that area to make a meaningful assessment.'
so yesterday, when i was asked by a friend about the Boeing Dreamliner's battery problems, i didn't say anything, and i won't say anything until the official answer from Boeing or the NTSB is released. i remain silent, because that is professionally and personally ethical, and that's what you do in this situation.
but there is one thing i *can* say, and it's my final word on the subject:
Micheal Beihn has a nice ass.
The other derriers in Mag7 line-up are pretty good-looking, too.
and that's a statement i can firmly stand behind.
-boogieshoes, in the rarely-seen business suit
