HS471 (4)

Engineers, Nuclear Testing and Weapons

• Introduction
• Nuclear ethics
• Importance of nuclear ethics
• Role of engineers
• Special code of ethics for organizations as well as people working in nuclear
Agencies
• General and specific duties of nuclear engineers
• Formation of ethical policies
• Is it ethical for engineers to develop nuclear weapons
• View to utilitarianism on nuclear weapons
• From the point of view of nuclear deterrence
 Introduction
• Almost all countries in the world today are aspiring to be nuclear
states
• This is primarily for their own security as well as freedom from
dependence from other countries like the USA
• The need for countries as well as the aspiration to emerge as nuclear
states has led to the emergence of new branch called nuclear ethics
Nuclear ethics
An emerging branch of ethics which examines the issues pertaining to:
• Nuclear warfare
• Nuclear deterrence
• Nuclear arms control
• Nuclear disarmament or Nuclear energy
From the lens of ethical theories or moral conduct
Nuclear Deterrence
• It is a strategy to prevent war
• It follows the rationale of the first user principle, which states the
right of the country to use nuclear weapons for self-defence in
situations of an armed attack to protect its security
• Nuclear deterrence is merely the possibility of thwarting an enemy’s
plans with nuclear weapons
Nuclear disarmament
• Nuclear disarmament is the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear
weapons
• The objective is to create a world free of nuclear weapons, in which
nuclear weapons are used by any of the states
Importance of nuclear ethics
 Ethics in Research
RESEARCH MISCONDUCT REFERS TO THREE
PRACTICES
• Fabrication – creating research data illegitimately
• Falsification- altering data inappropriately
• Plagiarism- presenting the words and ideas of other without
attribution
• What about errors and negligence?
Questions about authorship and citation
• Who can be a co-author of a report or article?
• Does authorship order matter?
• If a published article has a mistake, which authors are responsible?
Why?
• Is a citation required for a well-known fact, theory, or principle?
Questions about peer review
• What are the obligation of a reviewer of a manuscript or proposal?
• What information in a manuscript should be considered confidential?
Why?
• Why are the identities of reviewers hidden?
• When can a professor who asked to review a manuscript delegate the
task to a graduate student?
Question about data management
• Who owns experimental data?
• How should data be collected, recorded and protected to ensure
integrity?
• To what extent should data be shared with other researchers?
• Do these answers change when the research is sponsored by an
industrial firm?
References
• The National Academies, On Being a Scientist: Responsible Conduct in
Research
• Online Ethics Center at the National Academy of Engineering
www.onlineethics.org