CEE 5804

This week I finished reading the book I chose for our book review assignment, Bad Blood by John Carreyrou. The topic of the book was the rise and fall of the start-up company Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes. Reading this book was very interesting given the course topics we have been discussing. Although, many of the major case studies have been related to water crises there are similar ethical dilemmas in the public health sector that Theranos operated in. One of the most surprising things that I found while reading was how many powerful celebrities and political figures were involved with Theranos. Through her networking Holmes was able to recruit the financial backing and support of individuals such as Oracle founder Larry Ellison, former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Rupert Murdoch, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, General James Mattis, and former director of the CDC William Foege amongst many others. The support and financial backi...

One of the chapter's that we read this week from the Young Professional's Survival Guide focused on the topic of "Why Things Go Wrong". Related to ethics in the workplace, there are common pitfalls one can avoid in order to try to keep things from going wrong. Oftentimes ethics can be a slippery slope and avoiding these pitfalls can help keep a professional on the "right" track. In the chapter, the authors introduced several dangers that lead professionals to cross the boundary into unethical actions. Some of these dangers included incrementalism, rationalization, and pressure from outside sources. I found several of the psychological experiments used as examples of dangers to be quite interesting and it lead me to consider the overlap of ethics in academic science and the workplace. The two experiments that were used as examples and that stood out to me in this study were Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment and Milligram's electric shock study. Th...

In this blog post, I will discuss background information related to the context I have selected for my final project. I will be exploring the Boeing 737 Max crashes and subsequent groundings which occurred between 2018 and 2020. This case is a current, real-world controversy that involves engineering, public policy, the environment, and members of the public.  In 2018 and 2019 the Boeing 737 Max passenger aircraft was involved in two major plane crashes which resulted in the death of 346 people. Following these crashes the aircraft was grounded from all travel across the world from March 2019 and December 2020. This 20-month grounding by the Federal Aviation Association (FAA) was the longest recorded for a U.S. airliner and cost Boeing $20 billion in direct costs and an estimated $60 in indirect losses (Isidore, 2020). While the plane was grounded, a series of investigations were conducted by the FAA, Congress, and multiple other government agencies. Reviews by engineering panels ...

The reading this week about Diederik Stapel and the rise and fall of his academic career was quite interesting. The New York Times article allowed me to reflect deeper about the culture of academia and research integrity. Most higher education research institutions have a culture of productivity with high pressure on faculty to win money, produce findings, and graduate students. While Stapel acted dishonestly, it is easy to see how this culture could have contributed to his actions and motivations for creating fraudulent data. In the article, Stapel himself was a major focus. The author provided great detail on his journey, motivations, and current state. However, in situations like this, I often find myself thinking about all of the other people in his life that were impacted by his actions, especially those who were unaware. While Stapel left his job and had consequences to face, his graduate students, colleagues, and family were also left to face the broader impacts of his actions. ...