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Title: Engineering Codes of Ethics : Analysis and Applications
Creator: Luegenbiehl, Heinz C., Davis, Michael
Date: 2008, 1992-07-10
Publisher: Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
Description: This paper uses the events leading up to the explosion of the Challenger to begin a discussion about the important role professional codes of...
Show moreThis paper uses the events leading up to the explosion of the Challenger to begin a discussion about the important role professional codes of ethics play in shaping how professionals should respond to ethical questions and issues that come up in daily practice. The paper explores the history of codes of ethics, why different engineering professions, such as computer engineering, and mechanical engineering, have developed their own codes of ethics, and tries to answer the question, why obey your profession's code? The paper also analyzes a case study using the codes of ethics and offers a series of case studies for further discussion.
Manuscript of an unpublished paper originally written to be part of the Exxon Modules for Applied Ethics Series. http://ethics.iit.edu/index1.php/Publications/Modules%20in%20Applied%20Ethics
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Title: Critical Attributes of Good Process Decisions: a Guide for Reflective Special Education Hearing Officers
Creator: Ladenson, Robert, Ladenson, Robert
Date: 2011, 2011
Description: This monograph offers guidance for special education due process hearing officers in their efforts to write good due process decisions. It has...
Show moreThis monograph offers guidance for special education due process hearing officers in their efforts to write good due process decisions. It has four sections dealing respectively with: - Summary and explanation of factual findings; - Justification of legal conclusions; - Framing and determination of rulings and orders; - Writing choices in a special education due process opinion as to word selection, organizational structure, style, rhetoric, and tone. The monograph is not intended to replace, but instead to supplement, the use of comprehensive summaries of substantive and procedural special education law. It aims to address an essential, yet presently unmet need – for an educational approach that helps special education due process hearing officers to focus critical reflection upon processes involved both in thinking through issues in a case and finding words to express the conclusions arrived at in writing a decision.
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Title: Limitations Upon Legitimate Authority to Suspend and Expel K-12 Public School Students: A Moral Analysis
Creator: Ladenson, Robert
Date: 2011, 2011
Publisher: Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
Description: This paper presents a moral analysis of the limitations upon legitimate authority to suspend and expel students in K-12 public schools. The...
Show moreThis paper presents a moral analysis of the limitations upon legitimate authority to suspend and expel students in K-12 public schools. The paper has four sections. The first presents two case vignettes that pose difficult moral issues concerning suspensions and expulsions in K-12 public schools. The second section develops an analysis of the moral bases of a child’s right to receive a K-12 public education. Section three extends the analysis in section two, relating it specifically to limitations upon morally legitimate authority to suspend and expel students in K-12 public schools. The fourth section returns to the two case vignettes and discusses the moral issues they pose from the standpoint of the analysis developed in sections two and three. . The analysis, I hope, will benefit educators, parents, and the general public in helping to identify, clarify their understanding of, and gain insight into principles, which, I believe underlie any morally justifiable policy concerning K-12 public school suspensions and expulsions.
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Title: Moral Responsibility and Whistleblowing in the Nuclear Industry : Browns Ferry and Three Mile Island
Creator: Weil, Vivian
Date: 2005, 1983
Publisher: Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
Description: This paper analyzes the actions of a number of Nuclear Engineers at Browns Ferry and Three Mile Island who resigned from their positions in...
Show moreThis paper analyzes the actions of a number of Nuclear Engineers at Browns Ferry and Three Mile Island who resigned from their positions in order to highlight the safety concerns they saw in the U.S. nuclear power program and nuclear power plant safety. The paper includes a description and chronology of events, and an in-depth case study analysis of the moral responsibility of engineers and whistleblowing.
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Title: Conflicts of Interest in Engineering
Creator: Davis, Michael, Wells, Paula, Jones, Hardy
Date: 2009, 1986
Publisher: Kendalll/Hunt Publishing Company
Description: This module begins by examining the Hydrolevel case, and uses this as a way to highlight relevant principles regarding conflict of interest in...
Show moreThis module begins by examining the Hydrolevel case, and uses this as a way to highlight relevant principles regarding conflict of interest in engineering, and to discuss the importance of these principles for engineers as professionals and moral agents. The module then considers four applications of these principles drawn from the “Opinions” of the Board of Ethical Review of the National Society of Professional Engineers. The module also includes ten short cases to be used in classroom discussion. It also includes professional codes from the National Society of Professional Engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Sponsorship: Exxon Education Foundation
The Module Series in Applied Ethics was produced by the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions in under a grant from the Exxon Education Foundation. This series is intended for use in a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education programs in such areas as science and/or technology public policy, and professional ethics courses in engineering, business, and computer science.
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Title: Assessing Graduate Student Progress in Engineering Ethics
Creator: Davis, Michael, Feinerman, Alan
Date: 2010-11-10, 2011
Publisher: Springer
Description: Under a grant from the National Science Foundation, the authors (and others) undertook to integrate ethics into graduate engineering classes...
Show moreUnder a grant from the National Science Foundation, the authors (and others) undertook to integrate ethics into graduate engineering classes at three universities—and to assess success in a way allowing comparison across classes (and institutions). This paper describes the attempt to carry out that assessment. Standard methods of assessment turned out to demand too much class time. Under pressure from instructors, the authors developed an alternative method that is both specific in content to individual classes and allows comparison across classes. Results are statistically significant for ethical sensitivity and knowledge. They show measurable improvement in a single semester.
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Title: 'Ain't No One Here But Us Social Forces' : Constructing the Social Responsibility of Engineers.
Creator: Davis, Michael
Date: 2011-04, 2011-06
Publisher: Springer
Description: There are many ways to avoid responsibility, for example, explaining what happens as the work of the gods, fate, society, or the system. For...
Show moreThere are many ways to avoid responsibility, for example, explaining what happens as the work of the gods, fate, society, or the system. For engineers, “technology” or “the organization” will serve this purpose quite well. We may distinguish at least nine (related) senses of “responsibility”, the most important of which are: (a) responsibility-as-causation (the storm is responsible for flooding), (b) responsibility-as-liability (he is the person responsible and will have to pay), (c) responsibility-as-competency (he’s a responsible person, that is, he’s rational), (d) responsibility-as-office (he’s the responsible person, that is, the person in charge), and (e) a responsibility-as-domain-of-tasks (these are her responsibilities, that is, the things she is supposed to do). For all but the causal sense of responsibility, responsibility may be taken (in a relatively straightforward sense)—and generally is. Why then would anyone want to claim that certain technologies make it impossible to attribute responsibility to engineers (or anyone else)? In this paper, I identify seven arguments for that claim and explain why each is fallacious. The most important are: (1) the argument from “many hands”, (2) the argument from individual ignorance, and (3) the argument from blind forces. Each of these arguments makes the same fundamental mistake, the assumption that a certain factual situation, being fixed, settles responsibility, that is, that individuals, either individually or by some group decision, cannot take responsibility. I conclude by pointing out the sort of decisions (and consequences) engineers have explicitly taken responsibility for and why taking responsibility for them is rational, all things considered. There is no technological bar to such responsibility.
Science and Engineering Ethics.
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Title: Ethics and Biotechnology - Identifying Issues in the Face of Uncertainities
Creator: Weil, Vivian
Date: 2009, 1995
Publisher: Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
Description: The aim of this paper is to delineate ethical issues raised by applications of recombinant DNA technology in agriculture.

Title: A Case of "Gray Plagiarism" from the History of the History of Computing
Creator: Davis, Michael
Date: 2006, 2006
Publisher: Plagiary : Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsfication
Description: Claiming as one's own what one knows to be the discovery of another is certainly plagiarism. But what about merely failing to acknowledge the...
Show moreClaiming as one's own what one knows to be the discovery of another is certainly plagiarism. But what about merely failing to acknowledge the work of another where one does not give the impression that the discovery is one's own? Does it matter how easy it was to make the discovery? This paper analyzes a case in this gray area in academic ethics. The focus is not on the failure to attribute itself but on the attempt of an independent scholar who, believing himself to be the victim of "gray plagiarism”, sought a forum in which to make his complaint. The story could be told from several perspectives. I shall tell it primarily from the perspective of the complainant, an outsider, because I believe that way of telling it best reveals the need to think more deeply about how we (acting for the universities to which we belong) assign credit, especially to scholars outside, and about how we respond when someone complains of a failure to assign credit. My purpose is not to indict individuals but to change a system. This paper updates a case I first described in 1993.
Davis, M. (2006). “Gray Plagiarism”: A Case from the History of the History of Computing. Plagiary: Cross‐Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification, 1 (7): 1‐18.
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Title: Do the Professional Ethics of Chemists and Engineers Differ ?
Creator: Davis, Michael
Date: 2011, 2002
Publisher: HYLE - International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry
Description: This paper provides a sketch of my general way of understanding professions and then applies that sketch to a specific question, how to...
Show moreThis paper provides a sketch of my general way of understanding professions and then applies that sketch to a specific question, how to distinguish between two very similar professions, chemistry and engineering. I argue that the professional ethics of chemists do differ from the professional ethics of engineers and that the differences are important. The argument requires definition of both ‘ethics’ and ‘profession’ – as well delving into the details of chemistry and engineering.
HYLE – International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry Vol. 8, No . 1 (2002) http://www.hyle.org/journal/issues/8-1/davis.htm
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Title: Ethics in the Details : Communicating Engineering Ethics via Micro-Insertion
Creator: Davis, Michael, Riley, Kathryn, Cox, Apryl, Maciukenas, James
Date: 2009, 2009
Publisher: IEEE
Description: Work is described on a National Science Foundation grant that supports the development, assessment, and dissemination of “micro-insertion”...
Show moreWork is described on a National Science Foundation grant that supports the development, assessment, and dissemination of “micro-insertion” problems designed to integrate ethics into the graduate engineering curriculum. In contrast to traditional modular approaches to ethics pedagogy, micro-insertions introduce ethical issues by means of a “low-dose” approach. Following a description of the micro-insertion approach, we outline the workshop structure being used to teach engineering faculty and graduate students how to write micro-insertions for graduate engineering courses, with particular attention to how the grant develops engineering students’ (and faculty members’) ability to communicate across disciplinary boundaries. We also describe previous and planned methods for assessing the effectiveness of micro-insertions. Finally, we explain the role that technical communication faculty and graduate students are playing as part of the grant team, speciﬁcally in developing an Ethics In-Basket that will disseminate micro-insertions developed during the grant.
IEEE Transactions on Professional Communications Vol. 52, Issue 1, pp. 95-108.
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Title: IIT's Workshops for Integrating Ethics into Technical Courses : Some Lessons Learned
Creator: Davis, Michael
Date: 2006, 2006
Publisher: Philosophy Documentation Center
Description: In 1990, IIT's Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions received a grant of more than $210,000 from the National Science Foundation...
Show moreIn 1990, IIT's Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions received a grant of more than $210,000 from the National Science Foundation to try a campus-wide approach to integrating professional ethics into its technical curriculum; in 1996, the Center received another $100,000 to continue the project, with the emphasis on passing along to other institutions what was learned at IIT; and, in 2000, the Center received a third grant for three years, with the same emphasis, for $244,000. Between 1990 and 2004, more than 160 faculty “graduated” from the workshop and another dozen or so attended as unofficial volunteers. I was the principal investigator under all three grants, but shared the work with three co-PIs, the “we” in what follows. Though I generally prefer to emphasize what we did right, emphasizing what I now think we should have done differently should be more helpful here. There are at least three reasons why that should be so. First, I have already made many presentations, including several in Japan, arguing the (very real) merits of what we did. While repetition can help to make a point, sooner or later, though usually sooner, the effect of repetition ceases to repay the effort. I fear I may have reached that point. Second, I have nowhere before said much about what now seem mistakes —or, at least, lost opportunities. Discussing them here should add to what is known about ethics workshops. Adding to that knowledge seems worthy in itself. Third, you are already committed to ethics across the curriculum. The question before you now is how to carry out that commitment. I believe there is much to learn from our mistakes. We certainly learned much from the mistakes of those whose workshops we studied before undertaking our own. Running that workshop included the following activities: recruiting, scheduling, content, and research. For each activity, I will first briefly explain what we did and then what I now think we should have done.
Teaching Ethics, Vol. 7, Issue 2, 1-14
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Title: The Moral Status of Loyality
Creator: Baron, Marcia
Date: 2009, 1984
Publisher: Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
Description: This module looks at the moral issue of putting one’s loyalty to his or her company before other moral demands, such as one’s professional...
Show moreThis module looks at the moral issue of putting one’s loyalty to his or her company before other moral demands, such as one’s professional judgment and questions of public welfare. Focusing on the issues specific to engineers, the module analyzes the concept and nature of loyalty, isolates its positive and negative features, and determines, within broad parameters, when it is right to act loyally and when other moral considerations take precedence. Includes a bibliography of related materials.
Sponsorship: Exxon Education Foundation
The Module Series in Applied Ethics was produced by the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions in under a grant from the Exxon Education Foundation. This series is intended for use in a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education programs in such areas as science and/or technology public policy, and professional ethics courses in engineering, business, and computer science.
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Title: Replacement as a Problem for Justification of Preventative Detention
Creator: Davis, Michael
Date: 2011, 2011-04
Publisher: John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New Yor
Description: What makes Don E. Scheid’s article on indefinite detention interesting is that he thinks through many of the moral issues inherent in...
Show moreWhat makes Don E. Scheid’s article on indefinite detention interesting is that he thinks through many of the moral issues inherent in attempting to prevent (or, rather, keep to a minimum) certain kinds of violent crime, an attempt we have come to call (however unwisely) ‘‘the war on terror.’’ Scheid takes ‘‘war’’ as literally as possible, while making the reasonable assumption that this war, unlike wars generally, is not a temporary expedient responding to a moral emergency but an institution that must operate at full power for a long time, decades at least. Scheid’s argument yields a long list of preconditions for justified indefinite preventive detention: a high standard of dangerousness (‘‘mega-terrorism’’), a reasonable standard of proof of dangerousness, as good an investigation as conditions will allow, adequate resources for the defense, a hearing before a fair and independent tribunal, detention under the most comfortable conditions practical, and periodic review of the detainee’s supposed dangerousness. To these preconditions one more should be added: that detaining the persons in question will reduce the danger posed. I take this additional precondition to follow from Scheid’s own defense of indefinite detention, not from an independent argument. Scheid limits his argument to megaterrorists because the scale of destruction they have already achieved (for example, destruction of the World Trade Center) shows them to be dangerous on a scale ordinary crime is not and so to invite measures of prevention beyond what seems necessary (or proper) for ordinary criminals. Scheid explicitly declines to consider the non-consequentialist argument that preventive detention is what a mega-terrorist deserves for his character or for what he has already done. Scheid’s argument for preventive detention is consequentialist throughout: we may, and should, detain to prevent (or at least substantially reduce the probability of) the large-scale destruction of life that mega-terrorists aim at. We may justifiably deny a few, including some innocent persons, their freedom because, and only because, it makes the rest of us, the great majority, considerably safer. My additional precondition can be defended in the same way: where there is no danger posed, any detention is (all else equal) a net loss in happiness, well being, or whatever reasonable measure of consequences we adopt. A precondition of preventative detention must be a net reduction in danger posed. Where what is proposed is an institution of preventative detention, the institution must have that effect overall. What I shall argue here is that preventive detention generally fails to satisfy this condition and Scheid’s indefinite preventive detention of mega-terrorists always does. An institution to prevent terrorism by detaining terrorists cannot, in practice, significantly reduce the danger terrorism poses.
Criminal Justice Ethics. Vol. 30, No. 1, April 2011, 90-97.
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Title: University Research and the Wages of Commerce.
Creator: Davis, Michael
Date: 2006, 1991
Publisher: Notre Dame Law School
Description: This is a response to a talk given by Ralph Nader on "The Relationship Between the University and Business and Industry." The author...
Show moreThis is a response to a talk given by Ralph Nader on "The Relationship Between the University and Business and Industry." The author acknowledges that a problems do come up when universities have close ties with industry. However, the author explores the reality of these partnerships through some examples of his own experience at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Journal of College and University Law, Vol. 19, No. 2, 1991. pp. 29-38.
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Title: The Usefulness of Moral Theory in Practical Ethics: A Question of Comparative Cost (A Response to Harris)
Creator: Davis, Michael
Date: 2009, 2009
Publisher: Philosophy Documentation Center
Description: I find myself agreeing with almost everything in Harris’s defense of moral theory except the end: moral theories can often be useful in...
Show moreI find myself agreeing with almost everything in Harris’s defense of moral theory except the end: moral theories can often be useful in resolving moral dilemmas. Both students and practitioners of practical ethics should be constantly reminded of this, because in practical ethics we need all of the help we can get. If (as it seems) these two sentences state the conclusion, Harris has committed a non sequitur. While making a good argument for the general usefulness of moral theory in practical ethics, he has not made any argument for its usefulness to students or practitioners as such. He has simply assumed that what is true of some who engage in practical ethics is true of students and practitioners in particular. In theory, of course, moral theory should be useful even to students and practitioners, helping them to identify issues they might have overlooked, to seek information they might otherwise not have thought relevant, and to formulate courses of action that might not otherwise have occurred to them. In practice, however, moral theory will seldom, if ever, be useful (or, at least, useful enough). We do not (as Harris claims) need all the help we can get in practical ethics. What we need is all the help we can get at reasonable cost. We should only invest the time and effort needed to learn and use moral theory when the investment is no greater than for an otherwise equally useful alternative. Since there is at least one equally useful alternative requiring much less investment, the time and effort students and practitioners would have to invest in moral theory will (in general) be much greater than necessary for their purposes. So, neither students nor practitioners need moral theory.
Teaching Ethics Vol. 10, Issue 1, pp. 69-78
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Title: Doing the Minimum as an Alternative to Exercising Reasonable Care in a Professional Role
Creator: Davis, Michael
Date: 2008, 2000
Description: In the second edition of ENGINEERING ETHICS:CASES AND CONCEPTS (Wadsworth, 2000), Harris, Pritchard, and Rabins distinguish three conceptions...
Show moreIn the second edition of ENGINEERING ETHICS:CASES AND CONCEPTS (Wadsworth, 2000), Harris, Pritchard, and Rabins distinguish three conceptions of professional responsibility: the "minimalist," the "reasonable care" and the "good works". Of the minimalist conception, they say (among other things) that it "holds that engineers have a duty to conform to the standard operating procedures of their profession and to fulfill the basic duties of their job defied by the terms of their employment." (p.101). In contrast, the reasonable care conception "moves beyond the minimalist view's concern to 'stay out of trouble'. (p.103) I will argue that this distinction is incoherent, that the "minimalist conception" (so defined) necessarily includes not only reasonable care but at least some of what Harris, Pritchard, and Rabins classify as "good works". I conclude with a suggestion for what they might say instead about a certain "minimalist attitude" one finds in business (though it truth, it should be called "sub-minimalist".
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Professional and Practical Ethics (A.P.P.E.), Washington, DC, February 26, 2000.
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Title: Professional Responsibility for Harmful Actions
Creator: Curd, Martin, May, Larry
Date: 2009, 1984
Publisher: Kendalll/Hunt Publishing Company
Description: This module discusses the professional responsibility for harmful action, and the legal and moral duty of due care to avoid harming others or...
Show moreThis module discusses the professional responsibility for harmful action, and the legal and moral duty of due care to avoid harming others or risking their harm. The module discusses the relations and differences between legal and moral duty to avoid causing harm, and the differences between intentional and unintentional harm. The author uses examples and cases to illustrate different types of negligence that can occur in the engineering profession, and includes commentary and discussion questions. Includes a bibliography of related materials and legal cases.
Sponsorship: Exxon Education Foundation
The Module Series in Applied Ethics was produced by the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions in under a grant from the Exxon Education Foundation. This series is intended for use in a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education programs in such areas as science and/or technology public policy, and professional ethics courses in engineering, business, and computer science.
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Title: Professionalism Means Putting Your Profession First
Creator: Davis, Michael
Date: 2007, 1988
Publisher: Georgetown School of Law
Description: Ask a lawyer what "professionalism" means and you are likely to hear that professionalism means putting your client first or acting as an...
Show moreAsk a lawyer what "professionalism" means and you are likely to hear that professionalism means putting your client first or acting as an officer of the court. Only rarely will a lawyer say that professionalism means putting justice first. Never, I think, will a lawyer even suggest that professionalism means putting your profession first. Yet this is the thesis of this paper. The paper has three parts. Section I makes certain distinctions necessary to prevent misunderstanding my thesis. Section II and III develop the thesis into a conception of professionalism. Sections IV and V use that conception to help with the most difficult of undertakings, justifying professional discipline to someone convicted of professional misconduct which harmed neither her client nor an identifiable third party.
Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics. Vol. 2, Issue 1. Summer 1988. pp.341-357.
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Title: Risk-Benefit Analysis Concerning Public Safety and Health
Creator: Sagoff, Mark
Date: 2009, 1985
Publisher: Kendalll/Hunt Publishing Company
Description: This module looks at the use of risk-benefit analysis to answer questions engineers often face when making decisions about public safety and...
Show moreThis module looks at the use of risk-benefit analysis to answer questions engineers often face when making decisions about public safety and health. It explains how risk-benefit analysis can be used in answering questions such as “how safe is safe enough?” and then defends the thesis that this form of analysis cannot provide answers to questions about public safety and health. While risk-benefit analysis offers guidance for policy decisions, it does not provide an adequate basis for reaching or for justifying these decisions. The module looks at the ethical basis and free market justification of this form analysis, and then looks at the practical methods that risk-benefit analysis employs and the difficulties faced in using these methods, such as the predictability of harmful events occurring, and the human factor. Includes bibliography of related materials.
Sponsorship: Exxon Education Foundation
The Module Series in Applied Ethics was produced by the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions in under a grant from the Exxon Education Foundation. This series is intended for use in a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education programs in such areas as science and/or technology public policy, and professional ethics courses in engineering, business, and computer science.
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