During the arduous deliberations in Congress on deregulation of the power industry, witnesses before one of the subcommittees kept talking endlessly about this thing call "Kirchhoff's Laws." The "Laws" kept interfering with many good intentions of the free-market advocates on the podium, and several splendid initiatives were rejected resolutely by witnesses, since these "contradict Kirchhoff's Laws." At one point, one of the congressman had enough. He was heard to inquire whether it is not time to formally repeal those obstructive "Kirchhoff's Laws" and go on with the business of the Nation. He would be glad, he announced, to have his staff look into revoking this evidently-destructive piece of legislation.

I heard the tale repeatedly, colored with new details every time it was retold. While this particular story is probably apocryphal, it still reflects a not-so-implausible chain of events. We engineers encounter growing difficulties when we explain technical matters to the public, to policy-makers, and to the courts. Very few politicians, lawmakers or judges can boast of serious education in science and engineering, yet their decisions often require exactly this kind of background. The last two American Presidents with engineering schooling were Herbert Hoover, a mining engineer (who worked on large civil-engineering projects in China) and Jimmy Carter (who received a BS degree from the US Naval Academy and did graduate work in nuclear physics.) Both are not remembered as particularly great Presidents, and there is little to suggest that  their engineering background seriously benefited their administrations.

The deep ignorance of analytical methods and laws of physics that typifies most public officials often results in bizarre deliberations and grotesque outcomes. Sometimes the issues are not even that complex. A few years ago I was called to testify in municipal court in Philadelphia (I caught someone breaking into my car.) As I was waiting to be questioned, I  listened to testimony in the previous case before the judge. It was about loan payments, and the learned adjudicator was fundamentally unable to understand the difference between simple interest and compound interest. "Interest is interest" His Honor kept saying, and "seven percent is seven percent." The poor plaintiff had no hope of recovering what was due her. When my turn came, I was wondering if receipts for replacing a windshield would be more persuasive in this particular courtroom...

The problem transcends small-time cases in municipal courts, of course. One issue in the news these days is the large lawsuits that several states have brought against tobacco companies. The states seek monetary compensation for expenditures they made for the health-care of smokers. It is a rather simple matter to show that even when one does not consider the tax revenue that the states have reaped from cigarette taxes, the states economical arguments before the courts are still fundamentally flawed. When you consult actuarial tables and elementary books on statistics, it becomes clear that from a purely economical viewpoint it is in the interest of the states to encourage smoking. Smokers save society money because they die after their economically-productive years are mostly over, and before they collect their expensive public pensions and nursing-home public benefits.

This does not mean that the states are wrong to sue the tobacco companies, or that the states' interests in the matter are purely economically. We have other excellent reasons to seek longevity and good health for all segments of the population as our public policy. It does mean, however, that the specific arguments brought to the court - ignoring population studies, probabilities and statistics - are totally vacuous.

Closer to home, perhaps, is the growing gap between public perception and the views of scientists and engineers on risks from nuclear reactors and electromagnetic radiation. Over the years a clear contrast developed between technical analysis and public expectations in these areas, and this contrast has become sharper and harder to breach. It is easy to dismiss public fears of nuclear energy as unfounded and steeped in ignorance, or to claim that irresponsible journalists are spreading unfounded fears. I hear this kind of language quite often in all-engineer forums. The speakers are always highly annoyed; the ungrateful public, whose welfare is always their highest priority, of course, does not understand them. However, indignant denunciations of the unenlightened masses are not particularly helpful. They certainly cannot erase the far-reaching effect of public fears on official policies. A prime example is the decision not to build any new nuclear-power facilities in the US. A  lesser-known example is provided by the aftermath of the nuclear accident in Chernobyl (April 26, 1986.) The number of people known to have died as a result of this "worst accident in nuclear energy history" is less than 100. The number of  voluntary abortions performed by the public in fear of radiation effects from the accident is estimated to have been more than 10,000.

Sociologists who studied communication between technologists and the general public, point to fundamental differences in respective views on the impacts of technology (For a good collection of references, visit http://physics.wm.edu/~sher/ajan94.) In spite of our presupposed analytical sophistication, we technologists still largely use naive and simplistic social models to understand the public we serve. We tend to emphasize utilitarian cost-to-benefit values, and use probabilities-of-failures and  expected numbers of injuries and fatalities. The public is more inclined to emphasize respect for individuals, and apply the Golden Rule, not bottom-line cost-to-benefit ratios, in its risk assessment. (A prime example of costly non-utilitarian application of the Golden Rule, is the huge recent public expenditure undertaken to "save" a minuscule number of passengers from airbag injuries in cars.) Finally, we technologist tend to proceed in compartmentalized deductive steps from evidence to claims, while the public tends to blend values and evidence. Those of us who serve as expert witnesses in courts can probably supply ample evidence to support this last observation.

On top of the differences in perception, public skepticism about us is not always unjustified. As Robert Goble and others have asserted, the engineering community has demonstrated over the years excessive optimism about technological capabilities, and nearly blind faith in technical solutions. Often we provide narrow technical answers to questions that clearly involve larger technical and non-technical factors. We sometimes confuse the public by a seemingly-intentional tendency to use counterintuitive and confusing terminology of risk (remember "days of lost life expectancy?") And, perhaps, most seriously, many of us venture to provide advice and opinion in areas outside our expertise, leading to doubts about our pronouncements in all matters. Many of us forgot that our professional role is first to explain, not advocate.

We will not win the "battle to explain" by complaining about the simple-mindedness of our audiences, or by suggesting monumental efforts to reinvent education in America. Rather, we should make communication with the public part of our educational programs, and support the existing trend to make technological policy part of what Colleges of Engineering do. We ought to clean up our act in those areas where we have drifted from objective, honest and clear technical advice-giving. We should make sure that our professional societies insert themselves actively into the public debate, and offer forums for
discourse and argument on our interaction and communication with the public.