IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013 - 53

n this essay I draw on the
history of engineering and
research ethics, and on the
way priorities in those disciplines were established in
the united States, to discuss how
we should teach social responsibility in research ethics. Following Deborah Johnson, I use the
term "social responsibility" in the
sense of having a moral obligation
"to protect the safety and welfare
of society" [1]-[3].1 I focus on one
obstacle in teaching this aspect of
research ethics: the long-standing
belief that social responsibility is
not the primary concern of scientists because they produce basic
knowledge rather than technology.
In this view, scientific knowledge
is seen as neutral, neither good
nor bad, and those who apply this
knowledge, mainly engineers,
should bear the primary social
responsibility for its use.2
This long-standing belief in
the neutrality of scientific knowledge and the ideal of pure science - which amounts to a social
agnosticism of science - has been
roundly criticized by historians,
sociologists, and philosophers of
science and technology. But my
experience teaching research ethics
at Cornell has shown me how persistent this belief still is. It comes
up regularly in the classroom and

In [1, p. 21] Johnson argues that engineers have
an individual role responsibility, rather than a
responsibility emerging from a social contract
between the engineering profession and the
public. The social responsibility of researchers would seem to come under the category of
"responsibility-as-accountability," identified by
Michael Davis [2]. On [2, p. 15], Davis also argues against using the controversial term "social
responsibility" in engineering because the acceptance of "professional responsibility" by engineers better covers this duty, see [3].
2
See, e.g., the 1999 newspaper statement by
physics Nobel laureate Leon Lederman cited in
[4, p. 8]. D. Schuurbiers [5, p. 770] comments
on the "'neutrality view' of social responsibility" and cites previous authors who argue that
the "social responsibility of researchers should
include critical reflection of the socio-ethical
context of their work."

in discussions with science faculty.
unfortunately, this impediment to
teaching social responsibility is
reinforced by the literature on how
to teach research and engineering
ethics. Engineering ethics prioritizes the public's health, safety, and
welfare; research ethics prioritizes
the ethical conduct of research
practices. The literature in these
fields sends the message that social
responsibility - the duty to protect
the public - is not the main concern
of scientists.

Conflicting Priorities
This inversion of priorities has
been evident in research and engineering ethics since the professionalization of these fields in the
1970s and 1980s. Codes of ethics,
textbooks, the National Academies two-volume report, Responsible Science (1992-1993), and its
educational booklet On Being a
Scientist (3rd edition, 2009) - all
show this striking distinction.3 The
fields list similar ethical issues, but
invert their priorities (see Table I).
The order of priority varies somewhat in the various codes of ethics
issued by the professional engineering societies, e.g., between
the lean code of the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the expansive code of the
National Society of Professional
Engineers, which is regularly
enforced. There are also some differences in priorities between the
latest editions of On Being a Scientist and Shamoo's and resnik's
3

Although the journal Science and Engineering
Ethics, established in 1995, publishes articles that
focus on the traditional priorities in the field of
engineering ethics and the traditional priorities
in the field of research ethics, thereby reinforcing these disciplinary boundaries, it also publishes a large number of articles that cover the
social responsibility of research as I have defined
it here, as evidenced, for example, by the article
by Schuurbiers which I discuss at the end of this
essay.
One textbook [6] treats research issues in engineering, but sharply divides it from engineering
practice, i.e., the development, design, testing,
and selling of structures and products.

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

SuMMEr 2013

book, The Responsible Conduct
of Research, both published in
2009. But the basic distinction on
how social responsibility is valued
in these fields holds, and has held
since I published an article on this
subject in 2005 [7].5 The public's
health, safety, and welfare is the
first priority in engineering ethics, while it is the lowest priority in
research ethics.
How do we account for this
inverted priority and why does it
matter for teaching the responsible
conduct of research? I maintain that
the inverted priority is a cultural
obstacle to teaching social responsibility in research ethics and that
understanding its history - how
it came about - shows why this
cultural belief has such a strong
hold on ethicists, students, and
researchers alike. understanding
this history helps us to identify
ways to improve our methods of
teaching social responsibility in
research ethics.

Creating Priorities
in Engineering and
Research Ethics
I have argued elsewhere that the
reason for the inverted priorities
in engineering and research ethics is best understood by considering the responses by professional
societies to accidents in engineering and scandals in science. These
responses were supported by the
centuries-old belief that science
values fundamental knowledge in
order to understand nature, while
engineering values the design of
artifacts in order to improve the
lives of people. This belief ignores
the long history of the hybridity of
science and technology, the difficulty of drawing sharp boundaries
between science and engineering
in the past and in the present.4
4

This section is based on [7, p. xxxvi-xxxviii]
which gives a more detailed history of engineering ethics.
5
Kline [10, pp. 15-16]. Davis [11] argues that the
original codes, dating back to the late 19th century, stressed social responsibility.

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