On 14-Jul-05 at 00:00:12, in MsgID: 1088-58566, John Woodgate made answer to some of my assertions in this thread.
I posted >engineering professionals. Vincent M. Brannigan, J.D., points out >that while we may be paid for performing our duty to an employer, we >have an overriding ethical duty to the public. John Woodgate replied |Yes, in terms of product safety certainly. For EMC, the duty is still |there, but it is inevitable 'weaker'. Poor EMC MIGHT result in injury, |through indirect effects, whereas poor product safety is directly |hazardous. I was on a contract last year working on an automated external defibrillator design. And yes, for this class of device there have been fatalities associated with EMC problems. One of the horror stories in Conformity magazine used to tell of the overhead bucket in a steel mill dumped as a result of RF from a worker's handy-talky. And the same equipment that makes hash of a ball game when a driver gets too close, can prevent police nearby from communicating with others when facing a sniper. Weaker does not mean lesser. My posting >Professor Brannigan teaches ethics and has written extensively on this >subject. Also see >http://www.nspe.org/etweb/10105viewpoint.asp John Woodgate's answer |Effectively, he insists on designers' personal responsibility, which is |only meaningful if the *management* supports 'design-in' instead of a |system which per se splits the ethical responsibility between safety |experts and EMC experts, on whom is imposed the responsibility that |properly belongs to the designers. Ethical responsibility is assumed, not assigned. Legal blame accrues as a result of a system for assigning guilt -- but knowing one could and should do or have done differently, that is ethics. A good part of our responsibility may be met by convincing people who don't already design-in EMC that this is smarter, cheaper and faster. Another way to live up to our responsibility here is to disregard organizational barriers to cooperation and work directly with hardware, mechanical and other engineers whose designs we evaluate, test or assist with. This is just my opinion, of course, but it sometimes happens that a conscientious EMC engineer is one of only a few involved in a project (perhaps the only one) who *sees* everything at once. Cortland Richmond This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to [email protected] Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/listserv/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas [email protected] Mike Cantwell [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: [email protected] Jim Bacher: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc
