ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Teaching Engineering Ethics by Conceptual Design: The Somatic Marker Hypothesis

ABSTRACT: In 1998, a lead researcher at a Midwestern university submitted as his own a document that had 64 instances of strings of 10 or more words that were identical to a consultant's masters thesis and replicated a data chart, all of whose 16 entries were identical to three and four significant figures. He was fired because his actions were wrong. Curiously, he was completely unable to see that his actions were wrong. This phenomenon is discussed in light of recent advances in neuroscience and used to argue for a change in the standard way engineering ethics is taught. I argue that engineering ethics is better taught in the form of a design course in order to maximize "somatic " learning. See no evil In 1998 a university in the Midwest fired a lead research engineer for plagiarism. The researcher (hereafter Dr. M) had solid credentials: according to the Scitation database, he had co-authored at least two dozen articles in the five years he had worked for the university's researc