Mr. Schrader,

This is a very large topic with multiple "answers" so I'll try to be as comprehensive as I can in my answer. The answer is, "it depends". What I mean to say is some engineers are trusted by society, some are not, and some are so unknown that they are neither trusted or distrusted.

In an ideal world, engineers would be known only for their ability to solve problems (the primary duty of an engineer). Unfortunately, everything from political association (republican/democrat) to which problems they are solving (climate change/detecting cancer) to how famous they are (Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, Scott Adams (Dilbert cartoons)) even to the types of things they choose to study/apply for grants about all impact how the public views and trusts them.

I currently work at the University of Missouri-Columbia on a variety of projects from using lasers and sound to look at nanomaterials to diagnosing cancer with similar technology. The laboratory routinely has people from around the country and beyond that visit to see what types of things we are doing (such as senators/congress/business groups/ambassadors/school children, etc.). The commonality that I've seen in terms of whether or not these representatives of the public trust me or engineers in general is how few secrets there are between us.

What I mean by "how few secrets there are between us" is that the general public doesn't know very much about the specifics of any of the projects that I or my colleagues do on a daily basis beyond a very hand wavy understanding that we are diagnosing cancer or looking at nanofilms. Therefore, the public lacks the knowledge to understand what I'm saying and therefore it seems like there are many secrets between us. This of course is a bad thing since the public both controls scientific funding and the public may make decisions regarding technologies (such as labeling GMOs or not vaccinating children because they believe the vaccinations cause Autism) because the public believes there are things we as engineers/scientists are simply not telling them. In reality, engineers and scientists do a decent job of putting forth all our results to mostly free access journals and websites in addition to the scientific talks and outreach we do as required by most governmental grant agencies such as the NIH or NSF.

Unfortunately, this is simply not enough to be trusted by the general public. It is our duty as engineers to really engage the public at the very earliest (such as elementary/middle/high school) so that the understanding of things like basic optics, chemistry, mathematics, and evolution all continue to exist in the minds of the public with a good memory associated with it.

I think in general, the public does not trust engineers/scientists overall. This is despite the fact that technological development by engineers is the primary cause of the United States's previous years of high growth and prosperity and cutting funding to these engineers and programs will only exacerbate our unemployment problem in the coming years.

The problem is, our public has issues with understanding very basic concepts like the fact that the earth is round or the fact that the earth is greater than 5000 years old or the fact that a triangle's interior angles add up to 180 degrees or the fact that 10% of 10 million can be calculated easily in one's head without a calculator or knowing the names of all 50 states or knowing who our first president was or knowing where geographically we are currently sending troops or knowing that correlation and causation are different things or the fact that people think there's a difference between the Affordable Care Act and Obamacare (Jimmy Kimmel) or the fact that just because something has a p value of less than 0.05 that it doesn't mean you can reject the null hypothesis if they even know what a null hypothesis is. Taken individually, all of these things could be brushed aside as not being important to a particular person or group of people because of what they study/care about. But collectively, this lack of knowledge represents a tremendous hurdle for engineers/scientists to overcome when trying to gain the trust of the public when the very core principles needed to understand the technology rely upon misconceptions held by the public about basic principles/ideas.

At the same time, engineers and scientists are not without some amount of responsibility. You should look up the current debacle regarding p values and hypothesis testing.

Here is the link to the article: (there are several more in publication)

http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-statistical-errors-1.14700

As engineers we are given the responsibility to not only reliably engage the public about scientific principles but we are compelled to be accurate and unbiased as well. This trend of non-understanding statistical principles is troubling. Engineers need to pair with statisticians and communications specialists so that we can publish meaningful research that is correct and that can be conveyed to the public in a meaningful way. (most statistical tests say we can reject the null hypothesis with some amount of certainty, but the public doesn't understand things like 5% of being incorrect, etc.)

In the future going forward, we need to do two things:

1. Collaborate with communications experts and statisticians as part of our research grants.

2. Start early with educating the public and not kowtow to incorrect principles or a lack of principles being taught to children (such as teaching biology without evolution)

If we can do this, we may get our public to trust us, which for our sake, and for the public's sake, we must try.

Benjamin- Back in the late 80s, I studied two case studies- one was I-755 in St. Louis (never built) and the other I don't remember because that part of the manuscript has been lost. As with the issues of widening Broadway in your town, Columbia, the root of the problem was the lack of knowledge of the citizens regarding the need for the project which led to activism that ultimately killed the projects. I concur with your opinion that the public doesn't trust engineers and that this trust is a result of a lack of understanding what we do and are trying to accomplish.

The reason why I asked this question initially is that I am doing a project for a public relations class about the lack of trust of engineers by the general public, and how good education of the public by engineers leads to successful projects with little opposition, and poor communication and education of the public leads to unsuccessful projects.

Mr. Schrader,

Indeed. What we truly need is exposure. How many times do you see or hear from an actual engineer on television or on the radio as part of regular programming? Sure, we hear from them when something terrible has happened (think Fukushima disaster, etc.), but where are the "good" examples? We have "Mythbusters" and "Bill Nye the Science Guy" as examples of good science or at least examples of teaching basic principles, but in reality, those who lead policy making do not typically have the basic understanding needed to successfully argue decisions around important topics regarding public health, tragedy of the commons thinking, or basic science funding.

We need to make science interesting and popular. There have been scientists who have done this (Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson) Incidentally, I think as engineers we have a unique opportunity to show the next generation of students and leaders that by applying correct principles to big problems we can overcome impending disasters by simply opening a book or learning something new. We need to realize that not everyone is on the same level of understanding but that improving that baseline understanding without criticizing or demeaning those who may not understand is crucial to the continued prosperity and success of critical thinking and those who value it. Additionally, we cannot accept the idea that some ideas are too radical or too strange to teach to our children. This idea is scientific censorship and it is wrong on a multitude of levels. If we continue down the path of accepting something without asking "why" we will eventually fall.

Mr. Goldschmidt-

I like your statement about the "scientific censorship", as I think that is a big contributor to the lack of trust. There have been many ideas that I have seen fellow practitioners dismiss with "It can't be done." My response to that is, "We are engineers. It can be done."

It saddens me that research and papers I wrote as an undergraduate at the University of Missouri are more advanced than some of the research and papers I am seeing from graduate students. Our designs have become boring, bland, and stale, as we are afraid to try anything different because someone may not understand it and criticize it. I once met an engineer who justified widening a low volume two lane highway to a freeway with animal deaths, using the logic that when you build a freeway, you install a fence, and the fence will prevent the animals from crossing the road and being struck by motorists- and then this engineer wondered why the public was skeptical.

The result of these "predetermined solutions" has been the co-opting of design decisions by non-engineers (e.g. installing signals by ordinance, inappropriate use of roundabouts), which has safety implications.