Hypothetical

[Jeremy]

>Wow, even the Tacoma Narrows Bridge?

The article didn't mention that the engineer took responsibility, only that
other people blamed him.  Most of the stories I found had the public calling
for the resignation of the mayor or manager or any official who was too close
to it.

I can't find the link again, but there was a story on the Israeli wedding reception
collapse (where the dance floor dropped through two floors.

The engineer was arrested, but there were still calls for the mayor to resign.
 The technique the engineer used was outlawed after he used it, which makes
me guess that some engineers are motived by fears of being charged rather professional
pride.  Not that any other discipline would be uniformly better.

>which confirmed my gut feeling. Disasters occur because of budgetary
>constraints, politics and stupidity. Engineers would have never designed
>a multi-section shuttle booster, but Congress awarding the 

Hmmm.  I dunno.  A lot of techos have their own pet ideas, and are eager to
try them out.  Fortunately the testing process tends to sort out the good from
the bad.  Remember Da Vinci's helicopter?



>Engineering is applied science. Usually this means when a disaster
>occurs engineers are more concerned with failure analysis (and process
>improvement) than finger-pointing. Another reason "Engineers 

True, all the way up to the point where the engineer's pet theory is threatened.
 Then the catfight starts.  This is true across all science, BTW.  It's not
just engineers.