My work to save lives and the environment has been censored and stonewalled by government agencies, publishers, and professional societies. As an act of civil disobedience, I continue this one-man-fight to make our world a better place to live. Now, Facebook has joined this censorship of my work.
The Latest Censorship: Facebook
Specifically, I wrote in Facebook:
What do you do when your manager asks you to perform unsafe or incompetent work? I answered this lifetime question for myself in a recent publication - "The Price of Engineering Ethics, a Personal Story" (click here).
This quote and the referenced paper were falsely claimed to be spam by Facebook, and removed from Facebook. I requested an appeal of this Facebook decision.
This latest act of censorship sparked this Op Ed to discuss some of the underlying reasons for my dedication to philanthropic research to prevent loss of life. Civil disobedience in science and engineering is necessary for the maintenance of a safe society.
Actions of Civil Disobedience
To discuss this issue of civil disobedience, a few quotes from that Facebook-censored, peer-reviewed journal article follow.
Philosophy Study, "The Price of Engineering Ethics, a Personal Story"
'There are costs for doing the right thing, but regret is not one of those costs. I learned this lesson the hard way throughout a 42-year engineering career. As a young engineer, raising a family, I was more adaptable to management mandates, i.e., I was more willing to be unethical to keep my job to make money and have health insurance for my family. As I grew in age, experience, and stamina, I was less adaptable, i.e., I was more ethical. This article tells this story through events at various times in my engineering career. Ethics define how we do the right thing.
'To act ethically during business transactions, a person may need to risk losing their job. Such a cost can be difficult to accept. I have accepted that risk on occasion, and I have no regrets. However, I changed job positions due to these decisions, quit my job on one occasion, and received severe, nearly hateful, criticism from managers. There were costs to act ethically in past business transactions.
'Moreover, I am in the midst of a one-man war against our government. The stakes of this struggle are our lives, our money, and our environment, which is our world around us. Again, there are costs for doing the right thing, but regret is not one of those costs.'
Civil disobedience is defined by Britannica as 'the refusal to obey the demands or commands of a government ' 'as a peaceful form of political protest'. I refuse to accept dangerous government policies and related cover-ups.
A History of Civil Disobedience
Civil disobedience, though costly, is a pillar of our freedom of speech. In his 1849 "Essay on Civil Disobedience", Henry David Thoreau spoke of his night in jail for refusing to pay a specific tax, and he wrote:
'Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform?
'What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.
'The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to, for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well, is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it' (.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Thoreau/Civil%20Disobedience.pdf.)
A Lack of Civil Disobedience
The Press occasionally cites disasters that could have been prevented, since the dangers were known in advance. One such high-profile case concerned the Challenger space-shuttle explosion.
The deadly Challenger explosion burst into a streak of smoke and debris (Figure 1).
The immediate cause of the accident was suspected within days and was fully established within a few weeks. The severe cold reduced the resiliency of two rubber O-rings that sealed the joint between the two lower segments of the right-hand solid rocket booster'. 'As the vehicle ascended, the leak expanded, and after 59 seconds a 2.4-metre (8-foot) stream of flame emerged from the hole'. 'Challenger broke up in the explosion.'
Did the Challenger engineers not have the right and the responsibility to act with integrity to serve others, save lives, and strongly confront management? Was not such civil disobedience justified and warranted?With respect to this discussion, 'The Rogers Commission heard disturbing testimony from a number of engineers who had been expressing concern about the reliability of the seals for at least two years and who had warned superiors about a possible failure the night before [launch]' (Challenger Disaster, .britannica.com/event/Challenger-disaster).
Figure 1. Challenger disaster. Could civil disobedience by engineers have stopped this disaster?
(Image by NASA) Details DMCA
Defiant Civil Disobedience
I continue civil disobedience through my writing as political protest, even though censorship of my research has been extensive and extreme. For example, Structures Magazine published my article on bridge safety dangers and withdrew that article from the internet after publication ("Bridge Safety Dangers-Fatigue Cracks, Brittle Failures and Grit Blasting", click here). The ASME Journal of Nuclear Engineering turned down a paper, stating that ethics should not be published when considering the safety of nuclear power plants, where that peer-reviewed engineering journal paper was published elsewhere ("Nuclear Power Plants Are Not So Safe: Fluid Transients / Water Hammers, Autoignition, Explosions, Accident Predictions and Ethics", click here).
I have also discussed censorship and ethics in other publications, as listed below.
"Press Censorship and the Nuclear Power Plant Explosions That Still Bang at Our Doors",
"From Water Hammer to Ignition, The Spark That Ignited Three Mile Island Burst From a Safety Valve", click here,
"X-rays, Cancer, and a U.S. Medical and Dental Industry Cover-up Equal No Patients' Rights","The CDC Blames Workers for Food Poisonings to Cover-up Their Incompetence The Monticello Nuclear Plant Leak Cover-up Keeps on Going",
"One More Government Cover-up: The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Reactor System Explosions and Resultant Leak",
"Offshore Oil Rig Explosions and Deaths Can Be Stopped - The Piper Alpha Explosion Flawed Investigation and Cover-up","AWWA Censorship: Staunch Resistance to New Ideas Destroys our Water System and Risks Our Lives",
"More Exposure Of The Fukushima Explosion Cover-up - Stop The Next Nuclear Power Plant Explosion",
Ethics and resistance to censorship are integral to the execution of civil disobedience.
Costs for Civil Disobedience
Since multiple U.S. government agencies refused any grant funding, I invested my own money - nearly $200,000 as listed in tax records - to support these acts of fierce civil disobedience. For example, the DOE refused legitimately requested funding as follows.
The DOE, Idaho Operations Office improperly, unethically, and dishonestly dismissed a research grant proposal to prevent explosions in nuclear power plants, and this decision will directly result in loss of life and disastrous environmental damages, i.e., this DOE decision can kill people and spew radioactive contamination across U.S. property. To dismiss this research proposal, the DOE falsely claimed that the prevention of nuclear power plant explosions does not "propose innovative technology development to improve the capability of the existing fleet" of nuclear power plants. That is, in blocking this grant, the DOE made this false claim and other false claims (dishonest, untruthful actions) to support their errant decision that violated their own procedures, i.e., Funding Opportunity Announcement (an improper action). These actions constitute a cover up (an unethical action and lack of integrity) of an important safety issue that can result in loss of life, property damage, and major environmental damages, and this unethical DOE blockage of needed research is a threat to public safety ("DOE Cover Up of Explosion Dangers in US Nuclear Power Plants and DOE Responses", .leishearengineeringllc.com/publications.html).
Effectively, this grant refusal thwarted 'national safety and cost effective operations of pipelines and the U.S. nuclear reactor fleet, as well as future reactor designs'. In lock-step, and in disagreement with my filed complaint, the DOE Inspector General agreed with DOE representatives that nuclear reactor safety is unrelated to the operations of U.S. nuclear power plants. After all, why would the enemy of new technology support this research.
Since I received no grants, my nearly full-time research over the past eight years, and part-time research since the 1990s, has been unpaid. There are prices to be paid for civil disobedience, but I do not regret those prices. Even so, I resent the prices that I have paid to force our government and regulators to act to save our lives and surroundings.
A Right To Civil Disobedience
Do we not have the right and the responsibility to act with integrity to serve others and save lives? In response to Thoreau's questions above, we shall 'transgress [unjust threats against us] at once'. That is, we must 'anticipate and provide for [change]', where some of these ongoing threats are currently protected by laws and regulations. Such civil disobedience is certainly justified and warranted.
To this end, I am writing a new book ("Book Publisher Wanted for a New Book, 'Industrial Murder for Profit'"). Even the title of this book was judiciously selected to be an inflammatory and pejorative charge of civil disobedience against our government and regulators who needlessly risk our lives, our homes, our money, and our environment.
Addendum
Along with a link to this Op Ed, I posted the following message on Facebook.
'Facebook deleted a post that I made, and I respectfully asked that this post be restored to Facebook. My response to that Facebook decision compelled me to ask a bigger question in the attached Op Ed, "What is our responsibility to each other".'
(Article changed on Jun 18, 2024 at 2:53 PM EDT)
