Marathon Engineering
I was watching the live web feed from NASA on the Messenger satellite achieving orbit of Mercury when I was struck by how engineers (and scientists) actually are versus how we are perceived by the public. The host of the webcast was in front of a live audience and the camera would periodically flip to a feed of the Command center which was a room with some large flat screens but mostly filled with some office chairs, desks, and a bunch of casually dressed engineers. A room most of us engineers can relate to – sort of our natural habitat.
The engineers in that room were calmly doing their job even though they were about to fond out if their twelve years of hard work was for nought or not. When the Messenger was in the middle of it’s burn and it appeared that orbit would be acheived, the host remarked – sarcastically – how excited everybody in the Command center was. That got a good laugh from the audience as they could see that little had changed in that room. The professionals were still going about their duties as before.
You see, the audience was there for that historic moment and were excited with that thought. They were seeing the last steps of a race and had little knowledge that it had been – like most big engineering efforts – a marathon, not a 100 meter dash. And engineers are built for mental marathons. In my area, shipbuilding, you can spend an entire career on just one project. And that takes a great deal of effort and patience.
And, to the amusement of the audience, this doesn’t equate to great emotional displays from the runners. Yes, there were handshakes and a few pats on the back, but that was about it. And that’s fine for us engineers and scientists, but it doesn’t fo a whole lot for our public appearance as somewhat cold or boring nerds. Those people in the Command center were very pleased and proud of their successful work, but they were also just plain tired. I just don’t think the general public gets that.
Admitting you’re wrong
A good engineer, like a good scientist, must at some point admit that he is wrong. This is very difficult to do — especially for mid- and late-career engineers who are a bit set in their ways. It is, I guess, a pride thing. And may older engineers have spent their whole careers building up that reputation and pride. But what they, and their management, don’t understand is that it is important, and right, to admit when you’re wrong and that act should bolster an engineer’s reputation, not mar it.
It is those who won’t, or can’t, admit errors who are the bad engineers. These people ignore or spin data and calculations so as to fit their view rather than accepting that the data don’t support their belief. This is not engineering but rather wishful thinking. Or pride gone amok. One problem with this is that it can take years before the truth comes out. And sometimes it never does. This only contributes to the cognitive dissonance in the mind of such an engineer.
Granted, this path is difficult to avoid and each step down it makes it more difficult to make that jump to the right path. But it needs to be done and I think it is a sign of character and good engineering when people correct their path that way. Of course in our current climate this step is just an invitation for blame; probably the main reason for people staying on that wrong path.
Bad enough for the lone engineer, but real trouble comes when you have a whole organization that fosters this stance. We have such an organization where I work and the very idea that they are not ever wrong, and cannot ever be wrong, is ingrained in the history and management of this group. The members are smart, no doubt of that, and are highly educated engineers, but they can’t escape the corporate climate (even if they wanted to). This, in my opinion, makes them poor engineers in a poor organization.
And if you give such an organization power, what you get are arrogant and defensive engineers who use intimidation rather than rationality when dealing with people outside their organization. Because, you see, they now have to convince both you and themselves that they are always right. And that is a lot harder to do without the bluster. No matter what, this only leads to Bad Engineering.
Don’t fall into that same trap.
Suggested reading: Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)
Shuttle launch
Go over to the Bad Astronomer’s site and take a look at this video that somebody took of the shuttle launch. It was taken from airliner through the window and shows a spectacular and different viewpoint of the launch. Great stuff.
Engineering Skepticism
Skeptic, as a word, has had a lot of different definitions and connotations in the past years and most of them become perjorative in the eyes of non-skeptics who seem to equate skeptic with cynic. The debate over the definition of the word, and who is more deserving to use the word for self-identification, is still going on today. From my perspective, there are two major camps: the scientific skeptics and the deniers who call themselves skeptics.
The former relies on scientifically received data upon which to base their conclusions. The latter make conclusions and go in search of data or anomalies to fit their beliefs. As you can imagine, I hold with the scientific skeptics and the proven scientific method.
But I think there is another category, or at least I want to create one: engineering skepticism. And no, this doesn’t lie halfway between the other two. It is close to SciSkep, but I don’t think it is quite an offshoot of it. At least not in the approach. I think of it as the engineering approach to acceptance and rejection.
For example. As I wrote about earlier on the ADE-651 bomb detector, SciSkep might develop double blind tests, collect data, test the hypotheses behind the machine, etc. EngSkep would point out the lack of a power source, the cited interference of the operator’s mood on the results, and the implausible operating ranges and would reject the machine immediately. Not because of testing data, but because of its clear unreliable nature.
Science and Engineering bring home the goods, as Carl Sagan said. Woo doesn’t. I’ll go a little farther and say that science and engineering have to be right, they HAVE to bring home the goods. Science needs to be right eventually, through a slow process that self-corrects. Engineering has to be right, right now. It evolves, but it has to bring home the goods now, not later, and do so without mistake. Engineering products have to be reliable or they don’t sell or they aren’t safe. And by reliable I mean that it does what it is supposed to do 99.99 percent of the time (or better). So no decent engineer on a source selection committee would approve the ADE-651. He wouldn’t have to wait for Science to catch up to know it isn’t reliable enough to consider.
So am I saying that if it works well that is enough for the EngSkeptic? Well, not really. Unfortunately, much of the Woo is in the realm of the body and mind and is very prone to subjective thinking. A person may think that a homeopathic pill cured him, Science can show that it could not, and did not. EngSkep can’t say anything about it. On the other hand, I guess we could reject things such as prayer for an amputee – a leg has never grown back so prayers asking for it to do so are demonstratedly unreliable and are not worth doing (mental comfort aside).
So is EngSkep a shortcut to normal SciSkep? Maybe. If the first question we ask a suspected Woo topic is, is it reliable? we might be able to save a whole lot of effort of scientific investigation.
Does Astrology produce reliable data? No. Toss it out. Do psychics produce reliable predictions? No. Don’t listen to them. Do Ufologists produce reliable evidence of UFOs? No. Ignore them. Do ghost hunters and their gadgets reliably produce evidence of ghosts? No. Reject their methods.
So okay, maybe a shortcut. And certainly not as rigorous as SciSkep, but do we really have the time to waste doing real Science on real Woo? Let’s use EngSkep as the first hurdle. Then, if the Woo passes, let Science take a crack at it.
I think I’ll have more to say about this soon. What do you think?
