What respect is due to a design that puts people's lives in danger?
Yes, respect the engineers, and make sure to criticize the design and not the engineer, but please criticize the ever loving fuck out of the design.
This isn't about corporate pride here. This is about lives.
My life. Your life. Your family's lives. Everyone who flies in a plane is potentially endangered by faulty aircraft designs.
So please, Mr. Musk, and any other engineer who can level meaningful criticisms at any design that has significant human safety implications, make your voices heard.
When Ralph Nader does this sort of thing he is lauded, I don't think Musk's criticisms should be viewed in any different light.
If you count an automotive journalist whose face was significantly damaged in a rollover accident[1] "the auto industry," sure. And maybe you do, his magazine ran ads from auto companies, but it's a pretty cold dismissal on your part. Possibly an incorrect one as well-- considering that he refused to back down from statements that angered various automotive corporations at the cost of ad revenue.
The only reference to this that I can find is an article from just a few years ago in which Davis argues that Nader's focus on the Corvair had the effect of delaying the auto industry shift to more aerodynamic cars with front-wheel drives.
For some reason your comments are coming across with a lot of hostility. I'm not sure why, but my knowledge of Nader's book comes from having read about it when I was younger and took an interest in the topic. I'm happy to be proven wrong about the attempt by the auto industry to smear Nader - and his success at proving this attempt and defending his thesis - but I'm confused about why this discussion is starting to feel personal.
I'm not trying to prove you wrong about the auto-industry trying to smear Nader. I'm not arguing that Nader was wrong or deserved criticism. I was reacting to your dismissive flourish "Translation:" bit.
What respect is due to a design that puts people's lives in danger?
No lives are in danger, because the planes are grounded. They will not fly again until the cause of the present issue is found and resolved. It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me that that puts Musk's comments in a slightly different light for some people.
Note that if Musk were a (Chartered) Professional Engineer (which afaik he is not) he might well be called upon to explain these comments to an Ethics committee. Here is a snippet (from the IPENZ Code of Ethics) that I imagine is probably fairly representative of Professional Engineers' obligations:
11. Not review other engineers’ work without taking reasonable steps to inform them and investigate
(1) A Member who reviews another engineer’s work for the purpose of commenting on that work must take reasonable steps to—
(a) inform that engineer of the proposed review before starting it; and
(b) investigate the matters concerned before commenting.
(2) Subclause (1) does not apply if taking those steps would result in there being a significant and immediate risk of harm to the health or safety of people, damage to property, or damage to the environment.
No lives are in danger (because the planes are grounded) but lives were in danger.
How about: If he would not speak up he would be remiss. Imagine the situation where an engineer at Boeing could be ignored but where someone of Musks standing would could not be ignored. If Musk has this knowledge and does not speak up that would be far worse than if he does.
After all, either he is wrong (which Boeing can prove, in which case Musk gets to eat some crow) or he is right (in which case his words force Boeing into more accountability, which in the case of air travel with multi-hundred-ton planes is a good thing all around).
This does not qualify as a formal review of one engineers work by another. This is simply commentary by one of the companies that has an extreme amount of knowledge about use of batteries in vehicular applications commenting on the implementation details of the structural arrangement chosen by another company for a similar (but of course still different in many way, but more critical rather than less) application. As such it is something that Boeing should - and probably does - take serious.
I highly doubt that they would take input like this and discard it either because the 'source' does not have his chartered engineers paper (the guy puts rockets into space, which I think might offset some paperwork) and makes his comments in a forum where he can't be easily ignored (which may very well be the whole point).
It doesn't appear to be in this linked article, but Musk has indicated that he is already in contact with Boeing's lead engineer in this area. I think even by the strictest interpretation of official engineering ethics Musk is doing everything right so far.
We don't know how much access he's had to relevant design documents: it's clear he has had some contact with Boeing (but not how much) and it's clear he has pretty substantial domain knowledge, but I don't think anyone here is in a position to assess whether he genuinely does have enough information at his disposal to have correctly diagnosed the problem.
Launching the whole debate with a Twitter comment announcing he could fix it wasn't smart, irrespective of ethics, because he's inevitably going to be accused of a publicity stunt there. Giving a more detailed explanation of where he thinks the problem might lie to the industry press after discussions with Boeing is rather different, and I don't see any ethical obligation for him not to do that.
Engineering ethics, PE licensure, both are an embarrassing shame to the engineering profession.
Besides, Musk might well get a pass via Subclause (2), because lives are arguably in danger, if Musk has a belief that the aircraft might be returned to service without the issue having been addressed.
These guidelines are clearly ab out not getting each other in trouble, not the interests of those using whatever a chartered engineer might be involved in.
Pedant mode: we know the design is unsafe and faulty, so much so that the planes have been grounded. The question now is how much and in what way are they unsafe.
Regardless, I think my post was clear that criticisms which are well founded in solid engineering deserve to see the light of day, regardless of politeness. And even regardless of whether they turn out to be ultimately true. If they are solid criticisms they need to be rebutted with equally solid counterpoint arguments and/or evidence.
Failing to go about the process of safety openly and humbly is the sort of thing that costs lives. Especially now near the anniversaries of the 3 worst accidents in US manned spaceflight history I think encouraging a spirit of honest and open technological criticism is the right thing to do.
What respect is due to a design that puts people's lives in danger?
Yes, respect the engineers, and make sure to criticize the design and not the engineer, but please criticize the ever loving fuck out of the design.
This isn't about corporate pride here. This is about lives.
My life. Your life. Your family's lives. Everyone who flies in a plane is potentially endangered by faulty aircraft designs.
So please, Mr. Musk, and any other engineer who can level meaningful criticisms at any design that has significant human safety implications, make your voices heard.
When Ralph Nader does this sort of thing he is lauded, I don't think Musk's criticisms should be viewed in any different light.