If you’ve ever read Catch-22, and you certainly should if you haven’t, you’ll remember Colonel Cathcart and his world view. To Col. Cathcart, every activity led to either a “Black Eye” or a “Feather in his Cap”. I find this concept helpful as I’m considering a course of action. It’s good to think, “Will what I’m planning to do be a black eye or a feather in my cap?”

Unfortunately, engineers have been suffering through some black eyes in recent years. The inability to stop the oil gushing from that hell hole in the Gulf certainly qualifies as one big shiner. When the first cap was being lowered, I blogged about Those Magnificent Engineers in anticipation of how well and quickly they’d solve the difficult problem. Of course the solution was a bust, as has been almost all the other attempts.

Engineers have a unique place in our society. They are trained to solve problems with technical and computational skills. They also have a responsibility not just to their employer but also to society to protect the public interest. It appears the engineers at BP didn’t really analyze the risks of their design. I certainly understand and expect that accidents happen, but it appears in this case that the engineers simply didn’t stand firm in the face of unacceptable risks.

To take a stance in opposition to your boss (who generally wants to hear that things will go smoothly at a low cost), takes tremendous gumption. Many engineers through history have shown that courage. We need to get past this stain on the profession of engineering and redouble our efforts to teach engineering ethics.

By the way, the responsibility to protect the public good doesn’t stop with engineers. Each on of us needs to live that way. We need to refuse to work unsafely, demand quality in our trades and generally act with courage to do the right thing.