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In this 1 hour course, the engineering-ethics aspects of fraudulent safety
claims are examined in light of standards of conduct expected of professional
engineers.
Fraud has been defined as "the intentional use of deceit, a trick or some
dishonest means to deprive another of his/her/its money, property or a legal
right (Dictionary at Law.com). When, for example, the seller of a product
deceives a buyer into believing that the product meets safety standards- and the
seller knows that it does not- then the seller of the product has committed
fraud.
The purpose of this course is to widen the professional engineer's
understanding of engineering ethics through consideration of three case studies
of fraudulent safety claims made by engineers working in large corporations. The
studies describe actual cases that have been successfully prosecuted by agencies
of the U.S. federal government, and that involved terrible consequences in
injury and loss of life. The ethical - rather than legal - aspects of the cases are
developed by identifying specific passages in published Standards of Conduct for
professional engineers that were violated by the engineers who were found guilty
of fraud.
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