Book Review: Fundamentals of Ethics for Scientists and Engineers 1st Edition

 

This was a book that was required for my Engineering Ethics class. It has some good material, but honestly, I think it focuses too much on made-up scenarios that are kind of scripted and sometimes silly and focuses too little on real-world situations. For example, in one of the early chapters, there is a discussion of the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the lead-up in which the engineers at the company that made the rocket boosters were warning NASA not to launch. There was about a page to a page and a half on the most basic details, but it left out a lot of important information. Thankfully, my professor expanded on it a lot and devoted a good portion of a class period to the topic, but that is really only one instance in which the book could have provided much more than it did.

Realistically, this is probably a book that someone is only going to read because they have to do so for a class. If you can get a used version, I would do that because it is definitely not worth more than about $20, but the price to purchase it new gets jacked up because it is technically a textbook.