What a fascinating case. There are so many details in such a short articles that is each worth its own discussion!
Let’s start with my personally theory that hopefully won’t color all of the conversation about the individual points. This guy pissed off some people and those people are using their petty power to make his life hell. It’s like the 10’s of thousands of people jaywalking without issue and then the homeless guy that gets arrested for jaw walking. We all know that’s not why he was arrested but the law is clear, he was breaking the law, and they enforced it. So the individual incident dots it’s I’s and crosses it’s t’s as long as you don’t bring up the dreaded ‘uneven enforcement’ issue which is at the heart of everything wrong with the law in America. I have no evidence for the theory but it makes sense with the multiple issues involving this guy mentioned in such a short article.
Next interesting point. Is giving a speech about how to treat a broken bone considered ‘practicing medicine’? Who gets to decide the answer. Is a PHD candidate writing an exploration of the efficacy of the various methods for treating a migraine practicing medicine? What if he’s selling copies of his paper on the checkout counter at the drug store? I use medicine instead of engineering because I think it’s easier to discuss but the point should hold the same regardless of which licensed profession we are discussing.
Shit I have to run but hope to return to this conversation to discuss the other fun questions raised.
This is why the letter of the law is so important, paradoxically. It is never good to have unreasonable/archaic laws in the book and have law enforcement look the other way. Since almost everyone ends up breaking them, it allows law enforcement to basically charge any selected person. Such laws should be struck off the book. I believe in Latin, this is called Lex malla, lex nulla - roughly translates to "No law is better than bad law".
I don't think that's necessarily true. This is a trick for working around the rule of law, but totalitarian governments don't need that subtlety. They have dummy courts and full control over what's legal. To take the most extreme example, Nazis didn't pass harsh jaywalking laws and then use them on Jews; they actively made laws against Jews.
Even the most tyranical regimes can not blatantly declare the ruler god-emperor like Egyptian Pharoes, that just wouldn't fly - they keep up the appearences one way or the other.
Soviet Union still felt the need to hold elections and have laws, China officials were removed using charges of corruption, etc.
I agree. GDPR doesn't explicitly state that companies above certain size are exempt for many nuances of compliance or the 'little guy' gets a pass. Yet, almost all small companies ignore full GDPR compliance. Just because no one cares/sues small companies, doesn't mean that they're immune - the letter of the law and its enforcement should be absolute so that shitty laws don't pass the mustard.
> Next interesting point. Is giving a speech about how to treat a broken bone considered ‘practicing medicine’?
Regardless of whether it is, you can really tell the hypocrisy. Medicine is a vastly more protected profession than engineer. The article states about 80% of engineers nationwide work legally without a license. That would be unthinkable for any form of medical work.
And yet, there are vastly more people giving out medical advice without a license, and even performing all kinds of quack procedures like faith healing as replacement for medical science.
Some retired engineer talking about his profession while technically not having a license is an absolutely minuscule problem, if it even is one, compared to the reprehensible alternative medicine industry.
>Is giving a speech about how to treat a broken bone considered ‘practicing medicine’?
For many (most?) states, this is a determination spelled out broadly by law, and left up to the licensing board itself to implement, interpret, administer, and enforce.
So the answer, in those states, is:
"Practicing engineering is whatever the state licensing board says it is."
> It’s like the 10’s of thousands of people jaywalking without
> issue and then the homeless guy that gets arrested for jaw walking.
I'll take the opportunity to branch OT. This selective enforcement has always been such a problem, has there ever been any attempt - anywhere - to address it? Such that if a citizen can demonstrate selective enforcement he can also be absolved of the same crimes that the rest of the population is absolved of?
> Such that if a citizen can demonstrate selective enforcement he can also be absolved of the same crimes that the rest of the population is absolved of?
A judge in London gave a convicted drug user a conditional discharge following the former Lord Chancellor admitting to using the same drug. Not a precedent-setting case, however.
The term "jaywalking" is intentional slander of pedestrians popularized by car manufacturing companies who were hell-bent on subjugating American cities to the automobile.
> Just the concept of “jaywalking” as a punishable offense is revolting to me.
It's a required compromise to allow pedestrians and high-speed automobile traffic to coexist. This unfairly-dead comment has a good discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27561530
Get rid of it, and you'll either have more pedestrians getting run over (e.g. some distracted guy on his cell phone accidentially rushing out in front of some car, getting killed in the process and traumatizing some driver) or you'll have to lower speed limits, which would make longer-distance travel more inefficient and inconvenient.
> e.g. some distracted guy on his cell phone accidentially rushing out in front of some car, getting killed in the process and traumatizing some driver
I think this comment demonstrates the perverse value system I’m commenting against. I don’t mean this as an insult to you, merely to point out how people have been programmed to think people shouldn’t be able to live in a city without being terrified of their lives so we don’t mildly annoy drivers.
The scenario that would actually be likely to happen is the exact opposite. A distracted driver running over and killing a pedestrian that’s crossing on a green light or a zebra crossing. That happens very regularly.
Cars have no business driving faster than 15-20mph on a city steet.
> I think this comment demonstrates the perverse value system I’m commenting against. I don’t mean this as an insult to you, merely to point out how people have been programmed to think people shouldn’t be able to live in a city without being terrified of their lives so we don’t mildly annoy drivers.
It's not a perverse value system, it's acknowledging reality. Cars aren't going away anytime soon, because they provide real benefits. In a world with cars, pedestrians can't act like they did when cars didn't exist, laws or no.
No diver (with some homicidal exceptions) wants to hit a pedestrian, just like no pedestrian (with some suicidal exceptions) wants to get hit by a car. To minimize those kinds of events, both groups need to act in certain ways (with added motivation provided by penalties); it's objectively inferior to try to concentrate responsibly only on one group or the other.
> The scenario that would actually be likely to happen is the exact opposite. A distracted driver running over and killing a pedestrian that’s crossing on a green light or a zebra crossing. That happens very regularly.
Pedestrians shouldn't be crossing on a green light (in my city, there'd be a "don't walk" light in that case).
> Cars have no business driving faster than 15-20mph on a city streets.
Maybe in a dense city or a residential neighborhood (where I live streets with unposted limits are 25mph, which covers almost all residential streets), but it's a fact that other areas were built with arterial roads that need traffic to flow much faster.
Not GP but I live in Philly, a very dense walkable city. It is absolutely reasonable to set a speed limit below 35 mph on most of our streets. Especially in residential neighborhoods, but honestly ideally pretty much everywhere in Center City and a good distance away from there too.
EDIT: And in fact most of the residential streets here are 25 mph, and I think only that high because it's the minimum posted speed limit in the state of Pennsylvania. (I'd like to see that lowered personally, and more importantly some traffic calming that's actually effective.)
In New Orleans unless otherwise marked, streets with a neutral ground (median) are 35mph and without are 25mph. I'm usually pretty happy with that arrangement as both a motorist and pedestrian.
How is it required? In Sweden jaywalking as a crime does not exist and vehicles are required to give way to pedestrians crossing the street.
The problems you describe seem absent from my experience living all my life in Sweden's second largest city with plenty of pedestrians and motor vehicles crossing the same streets.
I always thought it was my desire to live that keeps me from walking into traffic despite any "distractions", but now I learn from you it was the threat of a $250 fine all along.
> I always thought it was my desire to live that keeps me from walking into traffic despite any "distractions", but now I learn from you it was the threat of a $250 fine all along.
Actually, I don't think it's so much the fine itself but the sense that not crossing at a crosswalk is "wrong." The the laws against the behavior (and the penalties necessary for such a law) are there mainly to create that understanding.
Of course self-preservation is also a factor, but I'd wager the behavior is more effectively inhibited when it's not the only factor.
In New York city in recent years it was found that most jay walking tickets were handed out to minorities. Either white people are more intrinsically motivated or jay walking laws aren't the primary or even a substantial factor in pedestrian accidents.
Do you have a reason beyond your gut to believe jaywalking penalties work?
It also determines who is in the wrong. Cars normally have to yield to pedestrians and are usually presumed at fault if they hit one. The fine is just an extension of formalizing who has the right of way.
"Distracted walking" is pretty well discredited as a deadly scourge to society. Also, walking is travel, and restricting walking already makes travel more inefficient and inconvenient. So I'm gonna go with lowering speed limits.
A country without a general speed limit, and home to a couple of companies manufacturing fast cars, begs to differ. But then getting a driver's license here takes real education and practice.
Just a note for those unfamiliar with the concept of dead posts: To read that post you need to enable "showdead" or something with a similar name in your profile page.
It makes some sense that you want to have pedestrians crossing as fast as possible.
It's not an offense in my country. It is also not a term you learn in school. So when I was in the US for the first time, and had a policeman shouting "No Jaywalking", I had no idea what he meant.
I find the handing over of personal responsibility for my safety to be alarming.
If I'm about to cross the road, I am perfectly capable of deciding when it's safe or not. If the light is red but there's no traffic, it's safe to cross.
If I'm standing at a crossing and the light is green, meaning that I can walk, but there's a car out of control heading down the road (or an ambulance with its sirens on, etc) then it's not safe to cross, regardless of the green light.
I'm living in Germany at the moment, and you definitely get angry looks and comments for crossing when the light is red (especially if there are children around - because teaching kids to think for themselves and take personal responsibility for their safety is bad?). I find it all very weird.
Regarding the angry looks with kids around, they aren’t able to judge the speed, distance or even direction (of sound) of an approaching car nearly as well as us before the age of 8 or 10.
So it’s prudent to instil in them a respect for the rules. Then when they’re teenagers they’ll automatically rebel and learn about personal responsibility :)
The other points are fine, but a 3 or 4-year old does not understand nuance or personal responsibility. I think that in general German society encourages a strong sense of personality responsibility as part of developing healthy children and adults, so kind of a weird thing to pick on.
Personally I jaywalk when it's safe and no kids are around.
Is it jaywalking when you're not stepping in front of a car?
When I hear the word, I tend to think of people who take for granted that a car will stop for them and probably even conspicuously turn away from it.
I don't think of it as meaning "crossing the street where there is no marked crosswalk" absent traffic, or "crossing the street at an intersection" even if there is no marking and someone who wants to make a turn.
Ignoring the ford conspiracies how exactly should jaywalking be treated then? It's both a danger to the drivers and the people.
We can't get rid of cars and streets. That cat is over a hundred years outside of the bag. It's moved on, had it's own family, and died.
Jaywalking as a punishable offense makes sense to me at least. The level of punishment is often excessive certainly. $250 fine for stepping onto the street is far too much for a first offense (but perhaps for a habitual jaywalker it makes sense). Hell, I'm guilty of doing it a lot in my exurb area. However, when I do it it's because there's 2 miles between posted crosswalks and I make sure I can cross safely before trying. There aren't enough crosswalks - certainly.
Jaywalking laws create important predictability. I can assume that the average civilian is deterred by jaywalking law enough to not randomly step out onto the street at will. This means I can anticipate them only at crosswalks and intersections. You're already busy dodging drivers distracted with doing anything but driving (makeup, listening to podcasts, eating, reading a book, etc). If we didn't have these laws the risk to driving would be much higher. Many people think humans stand no chance against cars, but one errant jaywalker going through a car window can kill everyone in the vehicle given sufficient enough velocity. It's important to remember a 45 mph impact on a ~125-200 pound human carries with it tremendous momentum. Assuming they don't go through the car window, that same flying body can do lethal damage to law abiding people walking on the sidewalks.
The UK doesn't have jaywalking laws. I understand that. But the UK is far more "walkable". The US is by-and-large not. Especially as you get into "normal" towns and not major metros like LA and NYC. I would be willing to agree jaywalking laws need to be done away with if the US was more walkable.
Alternatively we could amend jaywalking to only be an offense if the act directly impedes drivers. That is, always legal to cross when safe. It more reflects the spirit of the law, eliminates bad (cop) behavior, and still allows fining bad pedestrian behavior. It’s how cars are regulated after all — you can turn through a cross walk with it’s walk sign on as long as there’s no pedestrians. So maybe right if way yielding lawns would work equally well for pedestrians and cars.
Why not have drivers stop for pedestrians? In many US states pedestrians have right of way at the end of each block, why not in the middle too? Remember all drivers are also pedestrians
CA has the right approach here. Jaywalking is defined as crossing a street with two light controlled intersections outside of the crosswalk, or when it is not your turn. You can legally enter the crosswalk when the light is flashing if you make it across in time. And for streets without intersections controlled by lights jaywalking just doesn't apply. People manage to not walk across highways or other dangerous areas for reasons other than a jaywalking ticket.
I wonder if someone could get arrested for jaywalking across a street that bordered two states. Then get out of it because the state was interfering with interstate commerce.
Particularly in advertising providing medical advice and what can be said is highly regulated.
For good reason too. Intravenous bleach suggested by someone we trusted may have caused some real harm. It would seem reasonable to remove a doctor's license to practice medicine for giving such advice.
Of course broad scale communication is different than specific testimony in court, especially from a seasoned practitioner.
I'm probably in the minority with this, but I think all licensing laws should be abolished. Even with cases like the one you describe, other mechanisms could be used to handle the problem and those individuals likely at are risk for doing things on their own anyway.
I'd say if someone took IV bleach and it caused harm, the appropriate response isn't license revocation, it's a civil or criminal lawsuit.
The past year is full of examples of the dangers of regulating speech by government in the name of medical safety. The FDA decision on the antibody treatment for Alzheimer's provides a converse example, of how expertise can be foolish.
> I'm probably in the minority with this, but I think all licensing laws should be abolished. Even with cases like the one you describe, other mechanisms could be used to handle the problem and those individuals likely at are risk for doing things on their own anyway.
> I'd say if someone took IV bleach and it caused harm, the appropriate response isn't license revocation, it's a civil or criminal lawsuit.
The obvious problem with that is that it won't work: people harmed by some rando who decided to play doctor may not have the resources to sue, or may turn to some other incompetent rando lawyer who will lose their case. It would also likely to be hard to get a (now even more overworked) DA to take up such a case as a criminal prosecution unless there was a death or grievous bodily harm involved.
A lot of libertarian solutions seem to want to replace a workable but imperfect systems with unworkable awkward alternatives.
"I'd say if someone took IV bleach and it caused harm, the appropriate response isn't license revocation, it's a civil or criminal lawsuit."
Defense: The patient was already ill. Can the opposition prove that the prescription of bleach, specifically, caused the harm, in the face of the patient's underlying disease? The risks of the treatment were adequately explained to the patient, as indicated by the patient's signature on this form. The patient voluntarily accepted those risks.
Bottom line: the patient is dead, and civil or criminal liability ain't going to bring 'em back.
> I'd say if someone took IV bleach and it caused harm, the appropriate response isn't license revocation, it's a civil or criminal lawsuit.
So if someone posts an article on Faceboot about the benefits of injecting bleach, and their friend does it, then they get criminally charged? How about our comments right here for mentioning it and thereby validating it as something to consider doing?
One of the aspects of licensing is making it so that certain people's opinions can be considered trusted, with corresponding liability. Your suggestions would seem to create more restrictions on speech, rather than less.
I'm sympathetic to the goal of making licensing more fine grained, but there would have to be a lot more competition and dynamicness on the part of those requiring most licenses (eg planning boards) for this to possibly make sense.
I honestly hope for a framework of credibility, where people vouch for others' competence on a subject. Not just for licensed/protected topics but for just about anything. You know, like those LinkedIn appraisals (yes, they suck but they're just reflection of the society). That ages old "web of trust" idea.
Something without any "mandatory" trusted anchors and no censorship. One must be freely able to put any trust links they believe they want to do, as well as decide for themselves if they trust some established institutions or believe everything is a hoax and decide to trust someone else, say a person or organization we may call a charlatan. Basically, anyone should be able to make any calculations on that graph as they see fit, and use those results for themselves. Just like it already happens.
It obviously would be incredibly broken and plagued with all sort of issues, but it would reflect the society. And I'm not sure how it can be made viable - no web of trust except for the original one (the society itself) had ever worked. It probably need some modern fads - be it dancing pigs like Facebook did for their graph, or potential profits of cryptocurrencies, I honestly don't know. And I readily recognize it could lead to privacy problems, especially given the current trend of radical ostracization upon any slightest disagreement.
But if it somehow works (it probably won't, sadly) it could be the ultimate solution to licensing boards, fake news, propaganda and many other kinds of memetic storms.
But surely, society can't remove licensing requirements before there's a viable alternative.
How difficult would it be, do you think, to establish a web-of-trust for those advocating the dangers of vaccines? How large would that web of trust be, and how many people would fall prey to it?
Bad money drives out good. Bad speech drives out good, too.
Ah, right. I think I got it now. That's where the issue is.
It could be that this web of trust just cannot work unless it covers most of the world. If it would, I believe it would be just a technical aid, a machine-coded representation of an already established "organic" web of trust.
But it must start from zero, and it cannot grow as it would be lethally poisoned, becoming a place composed mostly of controversial vouches. Could be very true. I need to think about this.
One immediate thought is that even a graph of only the "bad voices" (for arbitrary definition of bad) can be perfectly useful, as a sort of noise ("fake news", "lunacy", "bullshit" - however we want to call it) filter. It's not that a web of trust spreads opinions, it spreads relations to their opinions. And a signal that someone vouches directly or indirectly (although "vouching" is not a good term for this case) can be perceived arbitrarily. So maybe it's not that bad. It may be bad by reinforcing echo chambers, but it could also be good in pointing out the connections, those bridges between the factions where arguing is not moot.
How exactly? I could be wrong, but I believe it won't make things any worse. I see three scenarios:
First, let's say someone is an antivaxer, already subscribed to that belief. If they're reading some posting, the fact that some other antivaxer vouched for that post's author doesn't change much.
If someone had not made any opinion yet - they won't have any trust connections on that matter, so if they're reading an anti-vaccine posting, they won't have any impact. Their query to the web of trust would say "no idea, you don't have any trust anchors set on this matter, go figure out whom you trust first".
It is only if they have a friend they trust on the subject vaccines, and that friend happens to be an antivaxer, they may have a "your friend vouches for this" result. This is the only scenario I see, where someone could be swayed towards a certain opinion, and I'd be damned if this doesn't already happens without any technologies, completely organically. It's their peer group that sways them, so the technology in question here doesn't make it worse or better, it just accelerates the process.
Again, I could be wrong about either or all of those. I readily recognize all of this stems from my beliefs in humanity (in general) as something that can work out its way through any amount of dissenting opinions, finding out the truths. I mean, historically, society had worked this way. And a controversial belief that accelerating this is a good idea - I admit, I don't have a rational arguments for or against this part - it's just a belief. Guess it comes from hatred of seeing all those slow simmering almost-pertpetual memetic wars and being unhappy about their fallout, yet not believing any forcible silencing of opposing forces is a viable approach.
Oh, and just to clarify: it's extremely important that trust must not be ultimate (exceptions apply for closest peers, e.g. partners or parents), but limited to a subject. E.g. I may trust someone on subject X but at the same time know they're avid subscribers to what I think is a false belief on subject Y, so I explicitly distrust them on that matter.
"If someone had not made any opinion yet - they won't have any trust connections on that matter, so if they're reading an anti-vaccine posting,..."
They see that it is vouched for by 1000 other people. They see that a countering article that is also vouched for by 1000 people, but those people are all so-called "experts" and they've read HN and know that "experts" are biased and have perverse incentives and such. Or they just flip a coin. Either way, they believe the anti-vax article.
Because the feedback loop is very open, they see no consequences for their choice. So they also vouch for the anti-vax article.
> They see that it is vouched for by 1000 other people.
Oh, no, no, if I understood your idea - that's something I really want to avoid. This sort of query must explicitly be against the recommended/designed use. It cannot be a popular vote, it must be peer-to-peer. A web rather than a cesspool. A query must result in "no paths to any trusted sources found".
Just like in the real world - my opinions on, say, some processes in metallurgy (something I have no clue about) cannot depend on opinion of someone I don't have any connections with, even if they're renown expert in that field. I may trust them through some institutions, certification programs or something like that - say, they graduated from some university that I consider trustworthy. But if there are no connections at all I can't say anything about that person's credibility. Best I can do upon reading their opinion is that it's self-appraised.
This web must be designed in a way that people they don't know, people that aren't connected to one's node in the web through peers they know and trust, mustn't have any significant weight, no matter how many there are. One should be free to make their own arbitrary queries, but this online popular vote thing is already known to be a very flawed metric.
Not to mention it would require to solve that very hard one-true-identity problem. If all your connections are people you know, and their connections are people they know, identity becomes a non-issue. As long as the small world hypothesis is close enough to the reality, this should work. And it would be a non-issue even if someone invents a fake identity - it'll either a recognized legit alter ego (pseudonymous account, who still may express opinions people listen to), or a meaningless fake person that no one knows (that may vouch for whatever, the only connections is through its creator).
> I'd say if someone took IV bleach and it caused harm, the appropriate response isn't license revocation, it's a civil or criminal lawsuit.
If you eliminate the license requirement, what law would the criminal lawsuit be based on? And how would that law be written so it did not apply to a surgeon working on my heart? At what point would it apply to the surgeon?
What about in trials? If a defendant grabs some rando off the street to be their attorney and they lose he’ll likely try for an appeal, thus clogging up the court system.
In that case it is an efficient use of resources to require anyone that practices law in a court room to meet some minimum bar (hey I think I found out why it is called the bar exam).
And support forums.
Having a chronic illness eventually you discover your best source of medical knowledge is other people going through the same ordeals.
Doctors become a borderline obstacle to treatment.
> Intravenous bleach suggested by someone we trusted
What are you even talking about?
Edit: To clarify, I don't think 100% fatal medical advice is a good analogy for good-faith testimony relating to a "piping system that allegedly flooded a few local homes."
Maybe something more like "Hey I'm not a licensed doctor, but in my experience double-fisting twinkies leads to weight gain."
I edited my previous to be more on-topic, but oh geez, this is a whole different thing and I'll take the bait.
Are you referring to Donald Trump? (There, invoked.) He's a moron and there's plenty to criticize him on. Which is why it's bizarre to see this particular false[0][1] narrative thrown around so much even to this day. If you watch (TDS trigger warning; transcripts in [0][1]) what he actually said[2] and the immediate followup and clarification[3], we can definitely agree that he's not a great communicator, but I think that whole thing got taken out of context in a very dishonest way.
Yet we allowed someone without a medical license to say that with no consequence to the speaker. The AMA did not sue them, no one fined the. Because it is not illegal to give an opinion on something, even if it is a bad uninformed opinion.
The guy provided expert testimony in a court. The opposition reported him to the Board of Examiners. The Board of Examiners requires a PE license for those who provide expert testimony. He is going to get to pay the fine.
"Is giving a speech about how to treat a broken bone considered ‘practicing medicine’?"
Giving the speech in a court, on the witness stand, under oath, claiming to be an expert in treating broken bones?
How about an example from engineering? A bridge collapses and fifty or sixty people die. In the resulting lawsuit, Bob, a nationally recognized bridge engineer, testifies, with many pages of reports, that the design of the bridge was substantially bad. Ted, who has a degree in engineering and worked for 20 years as an engineer (designing coffee makers, say) testifies that according to his calculations, of which he presents a plethora, the bridge design was entirely adequate and the failure was an "act of god".
Your last example is backwards. In this case the guy without an engineering license is demonstrating what is wrong. So the example should be:
A bridge collapses and people die. In the resulting lawsuit a licensed engineer says, with many pages of reports, that everything was done correctly and the collapse was "an act of god". But an amateur who only knows a little about civil engineering points out one single thing they did incorrectly; he doesn't know everything about engineering, but he does know this one thing they did was wrong. The government then charges the amateur with a crime for knowing a little and speaking about what he knew.
The prosecution should take the amateur's opinion to a certified expert to (1) meet the legal requirements for an expert witness, and (2) verify the amateur is correct. Trial lawyers do this kind of thing all the time with experts. Even if the lawyer understands and can explain the problem, in the US at least, he cannot himself give testimony. He needs to present it through a witness.
What if the licensing board is corrupt? It is perfectly reasonable to suspect that they might protect their own in some cases, similar to police testimonies.
It is definitely possible, and even has a clear financial and reputational incentive. But a lawyer only needs one expert witness and can pay that expert. And then that expert can use his testimony as validation of his skill or a new concept. So the expert witness would also have financial and reputational incentives to defect from the licensing board's dogma. Many people have heard of doctors and psychologists using roles as expert witness to push their theories.
That leaves the risk of a board ousting (or implicitly promising to oust) people based their expert testimony in court. Which would fall back onto the board's rules about revoking licenses. Lawmakers would likely get involved if any funny business happened; revoking isn't an obscure bylaw, but one of the two major purposes of the board (giving licenses being the other). I'll admit this hypothetical gets too complicated and delves too deeply into politics for me to guess likely.
Do you know of any historic examples besides police unions? I'll admit they match your worry, but the police benefit from massive public support that borders on mythology. So it's hard for politicians to do much about those problems.
The corruption of the licensing board - which is not argued at all in this case, it's just whole-cloth speculation on your part - is not relevant to whether or not Nutt has the first amendment right to testify or the board the right to sanction him if he does.
Yes? If you literally state “I, like 80% of the other engineers in this state, am not a licenced engineer, but here is my testimony”, what else would you expect the poor man to do? It’s up to the judge/jury to take the testimony with a grain of salt.
That said, I’m not sure if being licensed means anything more than ‘I paid my dues to the state board’.
To be a PE, you have to do a handful of things. From memory:
Take a test
Study under an actual PE for a period of time
Take another test
Pay some money
Do some work
I studied Engineering in school, but I didn't get a PE because taking the test was too much effort and I wasn't going to work with any PEs, so I assume that actual PEs know stuff that I don't know.
>"Giving the speech in a court, on the witness stand, under oath"
The right and duty of every citizen, what's your point? The oath obligates you to tell the truth, people testify about fraud and murder without being experts.
> Shit I have to run but hope to return to this conversation to discuss the other fun questions raised.
Off-topic, but I really love that you contributed a healthy starting point for conversation with a few great observations, then left us waiting for more. People have lots to talk about with what you started, you've piqued interest in the rest of your analysis, and I'm curious about why you had to leave.
Glad you didn't abandon your comment or edit out that you've taken away so much more than you let on.
Every time something like this comes up, I think the same thing:
"Register as a professional engineer, jerk."
If you've done actual engineering work for 20+ years, getting a PE is neither that hard nor that expensive and confers quite a bit of legal protection as well.
If your cause-du-jour isn't worth taking the time to go get a PE, perhaps you don't believe in it very much.
As for the vast hordes of HN who think they're a software "engineer" because they can open Visual Studio Code, go pass the the FE (Fundamentals of Engineering) exam and get back to me. Every professional engineer has passed that exam. If you can't muster up that much effort, why should we call you "engineer"?
> Is giving a speech about how to treat a broken bone considered ‘practicing medicine’?
Quite possibly. And what happens when that speech gives the WRONG treatment for a broken bone?
> Who gets to decide the answer.
Generally the licensing board for precisely the reason I gave above.
Yes, Licensing boards should get to decide who carries a license, but the customer should decide if they want a licensed engineer.
Customers/employers usually seek professional licensure for as a lazy stopgap against outright fraud for work with poor oversight and high liability. This is why PE's are predominately required for government and civil infrastructure.
For example, It takes a PE to certify a handrail on a municipal bus, while a company could design and sell a neurosurgical robot without a single PE.
In this specific case, if a court and jury don't find a PE license to confer meaningful credibility over someone without, then that seems to be a problem for the licensing board, not the person providing testimony, or the client who hired them.
What is engineering other than expressing an opinion?
Engineers are trained to have expert opinions.
They are expected to consider all relevant factors.
In AEC the relevant factors include compliance with relevant laws and rules such as the building codes and all the documents incorporated by reference.
It is a matter of life safety and the regulation of construction is at least as old as the Code of Hammurabi…it predates the first amendment by three millennia.
In that context an unlicensed person holding themselves out as an expert in engineering has disregarded a basic responsibility, they have ignored a relevant legal requirement: their license.
This raises a legitimate concern. What other corners might they have cut for their own benefit?
Because ignoring licensure is to no one’s benefit but the person doing so. It is a violation of the trust people expect when engaging with engineers. The trust that the engineer will be objective in relevant matters.
Licensing engineers is why you don’t worry when you drive across a bridge…or under one. Or go up a tall building or stand next to it. It’s why collapsed bridges are news.
No, an engineer without a Professional Engineer license is not "cutting corners". They most likely just don't do the type of work that requires getting a PE.
The article says 80% of engineers are working without a license. From experience, this is especially true for electrical engineering. Someone designing a building's electrical system would have a PE to sign off on plans (or be working under someone with a PE). But someone doing embedded design would not, because there is a completely different approval process for consumer/industrial products - we test rather than simply asserting products are safe because they were designed by a PE.
Without a PE, I am still an engineer. I can say I am an engineer, because "engineer" is not a protected title anywhere in the US. I can speak authoritatively on engineering topics, because I have vast technical knowledge. My opinions on topics I know little about (eg civil engineering) will be tempered with "I think", because knowing one area really well, I am aware of how much I do not know in other areas. Whether anyone chooses to listen to anything I say is their own choice.
What I cannot do is sign off on plans for permits, solicit business that would generally require signing off on plans for permits, or anything else that specifically requires a PE license. Those requirements are in legal force due to the product delivered (eg a bridge requisitioned by the state, a house which needs a building permit) and are not generally applicable for all engineering activity.
There also is the related issue that everybody has the right to technically criticize a situation if they have done the work to make their case. Only a licensed Professional Engineer has the ability to say a bridge is safe, but we all have the right to claim that it is unsafe.
Engineering generally refers to design and building, of which analysis is a single part. So it's not immediately apparent that Nutt was practicing engineering at all.
It's more accurate to say that the kind of projects civil engineers work on generally end up requiring a PE, as a condition of actually being built. Small time civil engineering in your own backyard does not require a PE - eg improving drainage, setting up a windmill, building a chicken coop, etc.
Prohibiting people from applying mathematical formulas in court arguments because doing so is "engineering" is a dangerous idea. If you're fighting a speeding ticket, is it "engineering" to independently calculate your speed by measuring the time between two points?
Ultimately if the stormwater calculations are complex enough that the court is unable to follow them itself, then it is up to the court to disregard his testimony because he is not a professional engineer with a trustable opinion. That would be a perfectly reasonable outcome here.
But what the state board is attempting to do is to prohibit anybody from examining technicalities without the right license. That's the path to closed society madness.
That link is just the North Carolina license board's position statement. They're the defendants in this case, for attempting to claim such overbroad authority.
Nutt's position is that their claim conflicts with his first amendment right to free speech, specifically his right to state his opinion on technical matters.
I agree with Nutt. NC is effectively attempting to criminalize my ability to represent myself in court and many other areas of society (enumerated in a sibling comment) - due to having the "regulated knowledge" of engineering without the corresponding license, I would be unable to state my opinion. Instead I would have to hire a PE that concurs with me simply to express my own opinion.
I very much doubt the federal courts are going to agree that free speech applies to expert testimony.
And if you attempt to provide expert testimony in your own defense, the court will likely laugh at you. You will have to hire an outside expert to provide expert testimony.
The question of whether something counts as expert testimony - judgement calls that can be relied on as impartial facts - is up to the court itself. That is not in dispute here.
"The yellow light timing is below table X of the traffic code, and therefore my ticket for running the red light is invalid because I was not given the chance to stop in time."
That's an argument that an individual can straightforwardly make and a judge can choose to accept or not by following the same reasoning. It involves engineering analysis, yet it is low stakes enough to make hiring a Professional Engineer prohibitive.
Under the North Carolina board's position, a person who makes this argument is committing a crime. That effectively creates a privileged class of people whose decisions (or oversights) cannot be questioned even when they're blatantly wrong - in this example, the traffic engineers responsible for the intersection.
It's hard to imagine a place where free speech is more important than in Court testimony.
Suppressing testimony by punishing people for speaking honestly (nor merely disregarding their testimony) undermines the very foundation of thr legal system.
> It's hard to imagine a place where free speech is more important than in Court testimony.
This is obviously wrong. Lying is broadly protected by free speech but firmly illegal, not just inadmissible, in court testimony. Courts also have the ability to compel testimony under criminal penalty, while free speech includes the right to say nothing or dissemble. Evidentiary standards place further requirements even on the source of what you are saying, regardless of its truth.
Or as the 6th Circuit put it, "The courtroom is a nonpublic forum, where the First Amendment rights of everyone (attorneys included) are at their constitutional nadir."
And that's why he's been accused of practicing engineering without a license and not perjury, and why this is a reply to a specific statement about the first amendment in courtrooms and not a top-level comment about This One Oppressed Guy.
Even if he's 100% correct, that doesn't mean he has a first amendment right to testify!
Here the practice of engineering is specifically set out in statute, regulation, and legal precedent. As are the duties of the board, its process, penalties for violations, and appeals processes.
The board is investigating a case based on its authority. The authority exists via democratic process originating with the legislative process and state constitution.
The regulation of engineering is within the scope of the states per the US Constitution and established legal precedent.
You didn't address the substantive part of my comment. Straightforwardly under the regime you've described, individuals are not only prevented from, but can be actively punished for:
1. Using mathematical formulas to demonstrate facts, such as pointing out that speed can be calculated by distance over time.
2. Pointing out how a red light camera fails to meet required implementation details.
3. Pointing out how a bridge is unsafe.
4. Pointing out that an expert witness is glaringly wrong.
5. Comment on the details of a public proposal.
Nutt's case is analogous to 3. Nutt did not design the stormwater system. He is critiquing it for a poor design. In an open society, that is everyone's right. The court can choose to find his reasoning lacking or simply non-understandable, but he shouldn't then be getting attacked for having spoken his opinion.
Errors and disagreements are common in engineering, as in any art, and so any honest engineer should be worried about criminalizing debate. Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.
Licensure boards can be notoriously aggressive, which is why this case is getting attention. Furthermore, state-chartered entities are commonly over scoped because they're really just extensions of the state executive, with only court cases to push back on them. Your argument from status quo is uncompelling.
Nothing is being built from this. It is testimony on the quality of something else. People other than engineers get to have opinions on the validity of something. It is up to the opposition to discredit him.
He has not practiced engineering in any way whatsoever.
1. This particular engineer worked legally as an engineer for DuPontt due to an industrial exception and was not required to license. There was no corner cut.
My understanding is the events that sparked the investigation were outside of the subject’s workplace/employment. Hence “retired.”
The preponderance of precedent favors the board’s concerns and right to investigate.
Being slightly familiar with North Carolina professional regulations, I suspect this holds true at the state level in particular.
The legal argument is inconsistent. It claims that the regulations don’t apply because the regulations apply via the industrial exemption in the regulations…never mind the retired.
"The first point addressed the suggest that any engineer who didn’t get their license and testified as an engineering expert witness must be suspect and is cheating the rules."
Nutt became required to get a license when he began practicing engineering outside the "industrial exception".
I guess we disagree that making an argument backed up with engineering while clearly not misrepresenting himself is ‘practicing engineering.’ That argument, however, is somewhat covered by the proceedings of the Oregon case.
Why is a license more important than skill and experience? So you’ll trust a person that’s failed the license multiple times, is barely able to do the job, and has a history of failing at their job because they have a license? Because those issues still happen with licensed professionals. A license doesn’t prove aptitude, it just proves you passed a test. I’ve met multiple structural engineers that relied heavily on computer software for validation because they couldn’t understand calculus
The person without a license who is doing something that requires a license is not taking full responsibility for what they are doing.
They are doing something that is only to their own benefit in a context where other people’s lives are at stake.
Quite simply it is unprofessional. A person without a license can hire a licensed professional for oversight. That’s the responsible thing to do.
In the US, engineering licensure requires supervised experience, testing, and typically (but not always) formal education at the bachelor level.
One requirement of professional practice is not working beyond one’s competence irrespective of having a license and engineering boards take that seriously.
I guess that’s the thing, an unlicensed person doing unsupervised work requiring a license is some combination of incompetent, unqualified, or negligent.
To put it another way, licensure ensures that a person has a minimum amount of skill, training, and experience. And that they take responsibility.
But who decides it needs a license? Other licensed individuals? I would do a better job sticking to requirements than a lot of licensed engineers. It’s cheaper and easier for me to do all the work, and then hire a firm to say it passes requirements than getting said license. It gives me the freedom to engineer in any field I’m interested. I have previously done mechanical, electrical, structural, and medical engineering. How would a license help me? It’s waste years of my life, tons of money, jobs in don’t want, and at the end of it I can work in a field I may no longer want to be in.
Let’s start with my personally theory that hopefully won’t color all of the conversation about the individual points. This guy pissed off some people and those people are using their petty power to make his life hell. It’s like the 10’s of thousands of people jaywalking without issue and then the homeless guy that gets arrested for jaw walking. We all know that’s not why he was arrested but the law is clear, he was breaking the law, and they enforced it. So the individual incident dots it’s I’s and crosses it’s t’s as long as you don’t bring up the dreaded ‘uneven enforcement’ issue which is at the heart of everything wrong with the law in America. I have no evidence for the theory but it makes sense with the multiple issues involving this guy mentioned in such a short article.
Next interesting point. Is giving a speech about how to treat a broken bone considered ‘practicing medicine’? Who gets to decide the answer. Is a PHD candidate writing an exploration of the efficacy of the various methods for treating a migraine practicing medicine? What if he’s selling copies of his paper on the checkout counter at the drug store? I use medicine instead of engineering because I think it’s easier to discuss but the point should hold the same regardless of which licensed profession we are discussing.
Shit I have to run but hope to return to this conversation to discuss the other fun questions raised.