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North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

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Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#311

Post by antiterra »

mcguire wrote: post #273
antiterra wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first point addressed the suggest that any engineer who didn’t get their license must be suspect and is cheating the rules. You seem to have missed the legal argument in the Oregon case which had nothing to do with an industrial exemption.

" 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.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#312

Post by GavinMcG »

mobilefriendly wrote: post #300
blunte wrote: post #263

Of course it's corporate corruption of government that is driving this case. "he is an engineer at heart and speaks up when he sees people make what he believes to be engineering mistakes. He has written letters to state and county governments and testified before a county commission. But Wayne’s troubles began when he when he agreed to help his son, Kyle, a North Carolina attorney, with a case about a piping system…

The ACLU has abandoned its defense of free speech in the US; I'm glad to see IJ taking up the mantle.

Earlier this week, the ACLU published this[0] article, "The Problem With Censoring Political Speech Online – Including Trump’s". More substantively, they recently filed a brief[1] supporting Americans for Prosperity (the Koch brothers' primary political advocacy group) fighting against a government demand for donor lists. That's just the stuff I found on the national website with a minute or two of looking around—I didn't even dig into what state ACLU groups are doing, and they do the bulk of litigation. Abandoned free speech they have not.

[0] https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/the-problem-with-censo...

[1] https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/prosperity-foundation-v-...

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#313

Post by morelisp »

DangitBobby wrote: post #266
morelisp wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your honest view is that if a nurse is committing medical malpractice the furthest extent of punishment should be "find work elsewhere"?

You are using quite an uncharitable interpretation of what I actually said. Elsewhere being not necessarily a hospital, in this case, but at best a hospital that agrees with her medical advice. Or are you proposing that she be thrown on the streets, jailed, exhiled, or executed? What do you propose? I too can be uncharitable but that probably doesn't lead to productive conversation.

You are leaving zero space between “cannot work as a nurse” (or “cannot submit testimony as an expert witness in engineering”) to to “life is ruined.”

Furthermore you do seem to be consistently saying a nurse, at a hospital, giving medical advice that doesn’t meet standards of care should not face normal malpractice charges not even face a suspension of license. (Just go to a quack hospital!)

I mean yeah that is position, but like I said elsewhere in this thread, I can’t distinguish it from libertarian “license to toast” bullshit.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#314

Post by irrational »

labster wrote: post #299
hellbannedguy wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went down the Rogue River a few summers. While driving home, I remember thinking that Gas Station Attendant was looking at me funny. It wasen't until a few years later I heard about the law. (There's a stretch of highway 101 around Shasta that is a Speed Trap. The cops pull over four vechicles at a time and give everyone tickets. They supposedly use a plane, but I never saw one. They got busted a few years ago, but…

You know, in all my years of driving in California speeding past “enforced by aircraft” signs, I have never once been pulled over by an airplane.

I have, though it was in Western Washington out in the middle of a long straight boring stretch of highway.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#315

Post by mcguire »

geoduck14 wrote: post #305
Aeolun wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Continuing education is another.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#316

Post by dangrossman »

GavinMcG wrote: post #312
mobilefriendly wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ACLU has abandoned its defense of free speech in the US; I'm glad to see IJ taking up the mantle.

Earlier this week, the ACLU published this[0] article, "The Problem With Censoring Political Speech Online – Including Trump’s". More substantively, they recently filed a brief[1] supporting Americans for Prosperity (the Koch brothers' primary political advocacy group) fighting against a government demand for donor lists. That's just the stuff I found on the national website with a minute or two of looking around—I d…

A counterpoint: https://archive.is/tL7Rj (NY Times)

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#317

Post by _ea1k »

erikerikson wrote: post #49
the_lonely_road wrote: post #20

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 homeles…

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…

> Intravenous bleach suggested by someone we trusted may have caused some real harm.

Who that was even remotely trustworthy suggested that?

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#318

Post by _ea1k »

erikerikson wrote: post #158
CrazyPyroLinux wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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."

There was a certain political figure I didn't want to invoke who offhandedly suggested this might be a COVID solution.

I'm not aware of any politician who did that.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#319

Post by toss1 »

morelisp wrote: post #202
toss1 wrote: post #99

Obvious overreach. These engineers are no more practicing engineering without a license than anti-vaxxers are practicing medicine without a license. (OTOH, maybe we're on to something there...)

If I go into a hospital waiting room and start telling people there they shouldn't get vaccinated because it will give them autism, you can bet I've opened myself up to much greater consequences than just getting kicked out of the hospital.

The anti-vaxxers seem to do it all the time without much in the way of consequences

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#320

Post by mcguire »

drdaeman wrote: post #281
mcguire wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> and how many people would fall prey to it? 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 connection…

"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.

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