B.F. GOODRICH, FORD PINTO, SPACE SHUTTLE CHALLENGER

Three Ethical Case Studies

Circumstances – B.F. Goodrich

B.F. Goodrich won USAF contract to make brakes for a new truck

B.F. Goodrich couldn’t live up to promised performance claims in testing

Instead, Goodrich submitted falsified data to Air Force

Nobody knew except that an employee blew the whistle

Ethical Principles

Do the wrongs or perceived wrongs of a company justify whistleblowing?

Was Kurtis justified in going public with the falsified tests?

Loyalty to company vs personal moral compass

Avoiding Disaster

Supervise testers’ methodology on contracts

Do not write falsified reports, even at risk of losing employment Kurtis wrote a report he

knew to be false

Exploding Ford Pinto’s

Pinto’s were known to explode when involved in rear-end collisions due to defective fuel system design Caused 4 deaths in 2 separate accidents and 1 burn

victim

Ethical Issues

Corporate vs Social Responsibility

Responsibility for failed innovation

Problems with design implementation

Liability and Negligence

Risk-Benefit Analysis

Upgrading the system would cost Ford $11 per Pinto Ford assessed that the upgrade would result in 180

less burn deaths, 180 less serious burn injuries, and 2100 less burned vehicles

Ford then assigned a ‘cost’ to each death, burn victim, and burned vehicle to come up with a ‘societal cost’ $200,000 per death, $67,000 per injury, and $700 per

vehicle

Risk-Benefit Analysis

Ford then decided the $11/car cost of upgrading the fuel system was larger than the ‘societal cost’ of continued injuries and deaths

Essentially decided it was acceptable for 180 people to die and 180 people to burn if the cost to them was $11/car

Should risk-benefit analysis be done in instances where lives are at stake?

Avoiding Exploding Pinto’s

Ford could have curtailed the number of Pinto’s susceptible to catching on fire by issuing a recall on all existing Pinto’s and changing the design of future vehicles at a cost of $11/car

Small price to pay to insure the safety of the public

Challenger Disaster

January 28, 1986 seven astronauts were killed when the space shuttle they were piloting, the Challenger, exploded

Rocket booster O-rings failed to seal properly, allowing hot combustion gases to leak from the booster and burn through the external fuel tank

Solid Rocket Booster and O-rings

SRB’s are key elements in the operation of the shuttle. Without them the shuttle cannot produce enough thrust to overcome earth’s gravitational pull.

Each SRB joint is sealed by two O-rings. The purpose of the O-rings is to preven hot

combustion gas from escaping from the inside of the motor.

Why O-ring failed

Faulty design of the solid rocket boostersInsufficient low-temperature testing of the O-

ring material and the joints the O-ring sealedLack proper communication between

different levels of NASA management

Initial Complaint

NASA wanted to check with all contractors to determine if there would be an issue with launching in cold weather.

Alan McDonald, director of Solid Rocket Motor Project at Morton-Thiokol, knew there were cold weather problems with the solid rocket motors.

He then contacted two engineers working on the project.

But they said that management was not supporting the redesign task force.

The night before the launch

Thiokol’s engineers gave an hour-long presentation, presenting an argument that the cold weather would exaggerate the problems of the joint rotation and delaying O-ring seating.

But NASA management still approved the boosters for launch, stating the cold weather was a concern, but found no original data was inconclusive.

Ethical Principles

What professional responsibility were possibly neglected?

Should NASA have done anything differently in their launch decision procedure?

How this could have been avoided

Delaying the flight, and wait until a more suitable weather

Delay the flight, and redesign the O-rings

Our Ethical Issues

Primary ethical concern: Data security and privacy

Public transparency: collecting and storing data in an ethical, responsible, and non-misleading way

Consent is key

Avoiding Disasters

Unplug high-voltage devices when not working on them

Disallow use of prototype by untrained persons before finished product can be engineered for safety

Not many disasters at this point