原创 Excuse me, but where can engineers go to get their reputation back?

Oh, well, never mind. . . . if you haven't seen the news last February, the in-depth investigation of the alleged "sudden acceleration" of some Toyota vehicles has concluded that neither electronics hardware nor software was at fault. To quote from The Wall Street Journal story (February 8), "The report, released by the Transportation Department to settle persistent questions over the Toyota recalls, concluded that the auto maker had identified the only two causes of the incidents: defective gas pedals and interfering floor mats." It also appears that user confusion was also in the mix, all fueled by lots of misreporting (some intentional, some not).

This news, of course, will likely get hardly any attention, unlike the "sudden acceleration" stories did.

But wait a minute? Didn't most of the pundits and instant experts conclude that it was an electronics problems or software bug? How is this turn-about possible?

What happened is the customary script: the media and lawyers piled in and piled on Toyota, in hopes of boosting their ratings in the first case, and gaining settlements in the second. In such situations, there is no time to wait for a thorough, competent, conscientious investigation. First and loudest to market with the hype is the priority; we can worry about the facts later.

The reality is this: Every engineer with any experience knows that debugging and troubleshooting are the toughest challenges in most designs. The evidence is sketchy or intermittent, the context is often muddled, and lack of consistency or repeatability of the problem often magnifies the challenge. It's even more difficult when you are dealing with just a few hundred reported problems among millions of cars.

Very often, your first debug hunch is either wrong, or what you think is the cause is really just the consequence of the real, deeper cause. Or maybe there is more the one problem happening at the same time? In a complex system, you would expect that single-point problems would be the exception, not the rule.

Look at a simple example: a light bulb goes dark in your house. The problem itself is obvious (the bulb is dark), but the source may not be. It's probably that the bulb has burned out, but it could be a faulty line switch, a problem with the wiring in the walls, a fuse/breaker has opened for unknown reasons, or maybe AC mains have failed completely. Sure, it's easy enough to check these possibilities out, but since it is probably the bulb, that's what you change or check first.

But complex electronics systems are not so easily segmented and testable. Subtle problems and interactions are normal, and often what you think you see happening is not what is really there.

Problem is, it's so easy to dump on, and beat up, a target company and its engineers, and much more fun that actual doing real work. Being a sideline expert and critic beats the hard work of system design and debug, for sure.

But when the hard evaluation work is done, and a credible report issued which contradicts the breathless initial coverage, where do the engineers go to get their reputation and stature restored? Can we at least get a basic "we're sorry?"

That will happen "in my dreams", as they say: these folks have other news and crises to hype, and engineers to blame for not producing perfection along with all those amazing technologies and products.