A fully-qualified engineer discussing the politics of engineering – not acting in any way as an engineer – fined, censured, and defamed in the public record by the state board of engineers. Because of a pretty obtuse technicality that absolutely no reasonable person would have interpreted as an issue and which only exists in the record thanks to actual perjury. All because he expressed sincerely-held beliefs as part of his political advocacy that could be interpreted as very embarrassing to the (incredibly incompetent) board. Things that even the board acknowledged were not related to the practice of engineering but that didn’t matter to them.
These conservative organizations do not care about your civil rights. They only care about not being embarrassed. They will wield the powers of the state to silence anyone seen as a dissenter without shame or remorse. The guy in this article was very lucky indeed a federal court was willing to take the appeal. If they get any power over you, they will use it to get you to get you to bend to knee.
He lost in state court because he signed an affidavit that said he hadn’t referred to himself as a professional engineer when he didn’t have a license, and the court found that he had done that and his federal lawsuit was dismissed about as soon as it was filed as not being significant enough to intervene in ongoing civil enforcement actions.
I mean the fact that he had a license accidentally let it lapse then was able to get it back doesn’t change the fact that he was and is a professional engineer.
Yes but during that period he didn’t have a license.
Without a doubt it’s someone on a vendetta against him, but those regulations aren’t weird, hidden ones.
If you call yourself a professional engineer, that’s a protected title and you must actually be a professional engineer. Part of being a professional engineer is paying dues to the organization in your area.
This is not true. I can call myself a doctor a lawyer or a cop or anything like that and it is protected speech so long as I am not attempting to perform the professional duties of that job.
It’s free speech.
It’s not up to the board of engineers to arbitrarily decide what isn’t isn’t the professional duties of a job and then punish people who say things they don’t like. It’s statutorily defined and this activity was not.
The courts made the entirely wrong decision which is very normal for the US.
This is not true. I can call myself a doctor a lawyer or a cop or anything like that and it is protected speech so long as I am not attempting to perform the professional duties of that job
It actually is true, unless MN has weird rules compared to other states. I’m not a lawyer, but the code here, sec. 326.02 seems pretty clear.
or to use in connection with the person’s name, or to otherwise assume, use or advertise any title or description tending to convey the impression that the person is an architect, professional engineer (hereinafter called engineer), land surveyor, landscape architect, professional geoscientist (hereinafter called geoscientist), or certified interior designer, unless such person is qualified by licensure or certification under sections 326.02 to 326.15.
You actually can’t call yourself a professional engineer if you’re not - theres several lrgal cases where i am that are ongoing due to people calling themselves engineers while being realtors, for example, and trying to use the title to advertise (IE John Doe, P.Eng), which is not allowed.
United States v. Alvarez is the relevant case law here.
There are tons of on-the-books statutes that are not in line with Alvarez. And we should presume they would fail in a full legal challenge if a full legal challenge to them were mounted. But not everyone has the resources or dedication to try and take something all the way to the totally-political, capricious SCOTUS.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing that. I found a Cornell Law paper breaking down the decision and how/what things could have changed the decision (ie what things the govt is allowed to ban despite the amendment)
That’s not how we use language. If he took a vacation in another state, called himself a professional engineer, never went home and joined the new states engineering org, he wouldn’t be wrong calling himself PEng before he joined the new org.
A retired doctor is still a doctor if somebody needs one on a plane.
When it comes to titles like this that are considered protected, it is actually how they work.
In your example, he isn’t allowed to use that title in the new state until he’s joined their organization (or they have an agreement with his original state)
As an extreme example for why the timing does matter, If he was licensed properly for 1 year, then let it lapse but continued to do design work as an engineer for 25 years, and then relicensed himself for one last year before retiring, the work he did during that period of being unlicensed isn’t covered, and the board of engineers would go after him for that.
For what it’s worth, there are specific provisions in the laws to allow retired people to continue using the title P.Eng with a “Retired” tag added onto it.
You’re looking at the original article. This whole series of comments has been spawned off a discussion about a different case, in which the person did join the organization, then let his license lapse.
In the original, I agree. He never required a license because of their own regs( though it appears that also means he couldn’t call himself a professional engineer, so the title itself is protected, he was just exempt from needing the license to do the industrial work he was doing). He is then totally within his rights to use that knowledge and pass himself off as a subject matter expert in the same field he worked for X years, and the board just got pissy. Glad it was overturned for him.
No he signed an affidavit which said he had not acted as a professional engineer during the time it was lapsed which was true. Because he hadn’t done any engineering work.
The entire “representation” was just a title on a single slide of a PowerPoint presentation.
He lost in state court because the MBoE lied about the order of events and decided to “make an example” out of him. And the reason they decided to do that was 100% because they didn’t like the content of his political speech.
And that’s the point. These organizations will use and abuse their power to punish dissent. Period.
That’s because the appeals process does not allow disputes over matters of fact. The lower court he did dispute the matter of fact. And multiple times offered to pay the fine and accept censure for the error if the factual recorded were amended to comport with what actually happened rather than being recorded in false terms as it was. But the MBoE wanted to defame him in the public record. It was their primary goal. So they refused to do so and kept the record fraudulent.
But the outcome was ALSO wrong as a matter of law.
It was a summary judgement in the lower court because there was no dispute in fact in the lower court. If there was a dispute in fact there would’ve been a trial. I agree that this was malicious, but I’m a registered nurse so I also have a protected title with similar ramifications to professional engineer and with similar restrictions on license renewal. Essentially if I did not have an active license, it would be illegal by my state law/BON regulations to tell you that I was a registered nurse in this comment. If I instead said “engineer” or “nurse”, the courts will generally find that within free speech, like in Jarlstrom. I don’t particularly think the courts were wrong here.
Again, the matters of fact were established by the board and could not be disputed, which is why during appeals they had to shift to matters of law.
It is provable fact that he disputed the matters of fact multiple times in both formal letters and sworn statements made during the hearings prior to the appeal. The Board of Licensure had sole discretion to update the matters of fact. The process was totally broken in a way that made it nearly impossible for him to defend himself.
And, just to really make the point of the injustice of this, had he instead checked the box on his renewal that said he had practiced engineering during the lapse, the result would’ve been a fine and reprimand for the error. The reason he didn’t check the box saying he had practiced engineering during the lapse is because he believed in good faith that he had not. Instead, the board seized the opportunity to punish a political enemy by creating a fraudulent factual record to call him a liar when no such thing happened.
Not really what was said based on my reading of the court documents. They said he checked a box that he didn’t present himself as a professional engineer, when he published articles that said he was. And based on other internet discussions with links to articles, that was exactly what happened and he doesn’t really deny that.
The matter of law is “is it right to prosecute someone based on this form” and the appeals court decided it was as you could see in the decision.
Overall I find the court documents seem pretty comprehensive as to why and how it all went down, and they describe him refusing to sign things based on his belief that he wasn’t lying.
I think the word ‘conservative’ in your post isn’t the best one you could have chosen. ‘Entrenched’ fits better. Bureaucracies will always fight anyone who tries to change anything. That is why bureaucracies are so dangerous and should be defenestrated regularly, so creative minds can inject fresh thinking.
But that’s what conservative means. It means adhering to traditional values and hierarchies for their own sake.
These professional organizations that refuse to accept criticism, refuse to change practice in light of evidence of in this case poor workmanship, and refused to let the state of the art grow are the very definition of conservative. Especially when they yield their power to crush critics pushing for equity, progress, or rights.
I’m not sure if there is a more conservative stance than the one where you refuse to accept any criticism and then lash out at the critics.
That isn’t at all what ‘conservative’ means. And ‘entrenchment’ is not synonymous with tradition. Tradition is a recognition of lessons we learned over a long stretch of time. It is more closely related to ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ than ‘entrenched’. We are certainly floating among fine distinctions here, but they are important. I think you would find it incredibly difficult to defend all “organizations” that"refuse to change practice in light of evidence". Like, say, Union organizations. Talk about lashing out!!
It is literally exactly what conservative means. There is no other coherent definition of conservative. Conservative means valuing tradition and the preservation of tradition more highly than other aspects of governance. And there’s no difference between your “entrenchment” and my "tradition’. Both mean the same thing – ‘we’ve always done it this way and so don’t want to change’.
If someone’s highest values are around and improvement of efficacy and efficiency of their government body, they would identify themselves as a progressive. If the values were protecting individual liberties, they would identify themselves as a liberal. If their values were to promote the fairest and most equitable society, they’d identify as socialist.
People can be many things at once. Most reasonable people are. But the word conservative still has meaning and the meaning is to cleave to tradition and traditional hierarchies. It’s what the word means.
I would find it incredibly difficult to defend any organizations that refuse to change practice in light of evidence. I tend to be very progressive-minded and mostly not at all conservative, so I do not think tradition is a very good reason to refuse to change practice.
There is no other coherent definition of conservative.
Of course there is. You just don’t want to accept it. And that is fine, but you’ll never win hearts or minds using a leftist or Establishment definition of capital-C Conservatives. You are literally making up stuff. “value tradition more highly than other aspects of governance”? Like WHAT?! Like leftists need to abandon long-established and functional definitions, changing the meaning of words to suit whatever the wind blows in today, etc? If you have an issue with a tradition, then lets talk about it instead of just throwing it into the garbage to pursue some globalist or hedonistic perversion of society.
The problem with using words like “individual liberties”, “improvement of efficiency”, or “fairest and most equitable” is that they are either WILDLY subjective, trojan horses for the most evil political ideologies (anything neo-marxist comes to mind) out there, or the definitions change on the whim of whatever group has the most power today.
But you are right; people can be more than one thing. And luckily for us, we have a few hundred years of Western growth and evolution that have codified a small number of useful traditions that have promoted the development of the most powerful and enlightened nation the planet has ever seen. We continue to grow and learn, hopefully abandoning bad ideas like sexual libertinism and anything related to marxism, and learned from the hard lessons of our past.
Being a Conservative does not mean a refusal to even allow change. It means respect for the hard lessons already learned and an insistence that we have a damn good reason to change those valuable existing traditions. I wish labor unions would learn from their many mistakes over the past hundred-plus years they have been around.
When someone identifies as conservative, it means they have a strong preference for no change happening (and even undoing more “recent” change, although what qualifies as “recent” usually is viewed through the lens of personal preferences). That’s what it means. You don’t seem to even dispute it. It’s what the word means.
And when a conservative tells you all the other things they AREN’T – as the modern conservative usually jumps to do – believe that those are the values. If they say they aren’t liberal, it means they don’t care about preserving individual liberties. If they say they aren’t progressive, it means they do not want to see progress. If they say they aren’t a socialist, it means they do not care about an egalitarian and pro-social society. And when they say they aren’t a “neo-marxist”… well, that one really is meaningless gibberish, pay it no mind at all.
I feel like you keep bringing up labor unions because you think it’s going to be some kind of gotcha for me, but it super duper isn’t. One of the major reasons we saw such a profound weakening and collapse of labor unions in this country that only (maybe) reversed recently is because the older unions were seen as swinging way too conservative. That they became more concerned with maintaining power and status quo than doing the job of unions. Whether or not that criticism is fair is, I’m sure, a topic of much argument – I definitely think this view was part of a very serious disinformation campaign run by capitalist and ruling class-types to fight back against the working class – but this is certainly what your typical boomer/anti-labor-type will cite as the reason they don’t care for labor unions.
Let’s not forget who “the right” originally was: the conservatives who wanted to preserve the monarchy and stop the french revolution. They didn’t want to change from the old way to a new one. They thought the transition would be too chaotic. They were certainly correct that it would end up being quite chaotic indeed, but if they’d had their way there may still be a fucking divine right king prancing about in court while the people staved.
Modern society would quickly devolve into chaos without bureaucracy. Just because it’s been misused before, does not mean we can do without it. They aren’t “fighting” anything, they are rigorously reviewing and modifying plans and specifications of (often massive) public infrastructure.
The entire concept of a Professional Engineer exists due to bureaucracy. Without it, there would be no liability whatsoever for faulty designs in public putting millions (billions?) of people in danger regularly.
Entrenchment is an innately conservative attitude, though, and politically conservative people are a lot more likely to punish you for speaking truth to power.
You’re correct that the headline is misleading. He’s not just posting in some forum. He is testifying as an expert. So there is a little more subtly.
I would like to add. He was not paid. He also was not certifying any designs as safe. You should not need to be a licensed expert to show faults in existing designs.
If your argument is that you’re an expert, then you need to have the credentials you claim to have. Anyone can show the faults in a design, but he’s explicitly doing novel calculations and analysis - ie not just reviewing someone else’s work.
Now that being said, it looks like he never needed a professional license as he fell under an exemption, in which case I feel like they shot themselves in the foot. He’s got previous experience doing the same thing he’s examining - hydraulics and fluid flow analysis. Regardless of his status as “professional engineer”, his previous experience sould qualify him to testify.
You’re right. I was just adding more considerations.
The lawyer son should have taken the calculations to a licensed professional engineer to sign off on. In this particular case, I like the ruling in the headline, but I understand the importance of licensing boards for professionals.
But he was just talking about engineering things on the internet, as far as I can tell. Doesn’t feel like he should need a license for that
Seems like someone on the NC Board of Examiners and Surveyors didn’t like being called out so they tried to bully him into stopping and it backfired
You should check out what happened to Chuck Marohn in Minnesota: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/5/23/lawsuit
A fully-qualified engineer discussing the politics of engineering – not acting in any way as an engineer – fined, censured, and defamed in the public record by the state board of engineers. Because of a pretty obtuse technicality that absolutely no reasonable person would have interpreted as an issue and which only exists in the record thanks to actual perjury. All because he expressed sincerely-held beliefs as part of his political advocacy that could be interpreted as very embarrassing to the (incredibly incompetent) board. Things that even the board acknowledged were not related to the practice of engineering but that didn’t matter to them.
These conservative organizations do not care about your civil rights. They only care about not being embarrassed. They will wield the powers of the state to silence anyone seen as a dissenter without shame or remorse. The guy in this article was very lucky indeed a federal court was willing to take the appeal. If they get any power over you, they will use it to get you to get you to bend to knee.
He lost in state court because he signed an affidavit that said he hadn’t referred to himself as a professional engineer when he didn’t have a license, and the court found that he had done that and his federal lawsuit was dismissed about as soon as it was filed as not being significant enough to intervene in ongoing civil enforcement actions.
https://mn.gov/law-library-stat/archive/ctapun/2023/OPa221099-041023.pdf
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/minnesota/mndce/0:2021cv01241/194678/20/
I mean the fact that he had a license accidentally let it lapse then was able to get it back doesn’t change the fact that he was and is a professional engineer.
Yes but during that period he didn’t have a license.
Without a doubt it’s someone on a vendetta against him, but those regulations aren’t weird, hidden ones.
If you call yourself a professional engineer, that’s a protected title and you must actually be a professional engineer. Part of being a professional engineer is paying dues to the organization in your area.
This is not true. I can call myself a doctor a lawyer or a cop or anything like that and it is protected speech so long as I am not attempting to perform the professional duties of that job.
It’s free speech.
It’s not up to the board of engineers to arbitrarily decide what isn’t isn’t the professional duties of a job and then punish people who say things they don’t like. It’s statutorily defined and this activity was not.
The courts made the entirely wrong decision which is very normal for the US.
It actually is true, unless MN has weird rules compared to other states. I’m not a lawyer, but the code here, sec. 326.02 seems pretty clear.
You actually can’t call yourself a professional engineer if you’re not - theres several lrgal cases where i am that are ongoing due to people calling themselves engineers while being realtors, for example, and trying to use the title to advertise (IE John Doe, P.Eng), which is not allowed.
United States v. Alvarez is the relevant case law here.
There are tons of on-the-books statutes that are not in line with Alvarez. And we should presume they would fail in a full legal challenge if a full legal challenge to them were mounted. But not everyone has the resources or dedication to try and take something all the way to the totally-political, capricious SCOTUS.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing that. I found a Cornell Law paper breaking down the decision and how/what things could have changed the decision (ie what things the govt is allowed to ban despite the amendment)
That’s not how we use language. If he took a vacation in another state, called himself a professional engineer, never went home and joined the new states engineering org, he wouldn’t be wrong calling himself PEng before he joined the new org.
A retired doctor is still a doctor if somebody needs one on a plane.
When it comes to titles like this that are considered protected, it is actually how they work.
In your example, he isn’t allowed to use that title in the new state until he’s joined their organization (or they have an agreement with his original state)
As an extreme example for why the timing does matter, If he was licensed properly for 1 year, then let it lapse but continued to do design work as an engineer for 25 years, and then relicensed himself for one last year before retiring, the work he did during that period of being unlicensed isn’t covered, and the board of engineers would go after him for that.
For what it’s worth, there are specific provisions in the laws to allow retired people to continue using the title P.Eng with a “Retired” tag added onto it.
Just read the opinion. He was allowed to practice engineering under an exception and never joined the org.
Then he started critiquing work, and opposing council tried to negate his analysis by saying, hey you can’t practice engineering.
So the title isn’t that protected, but various people tried to make it seem like it would be, and a greater court decided that infringes his rights.
You’re looking at the original article. This whole series of comments has been spawned off a discussion about a different case, in which the person did join the organization, then let his license lapse.
In the original, I agree. He never required a license because of their own regs( though it appears that also means he couldn’t call himself a professional engineer, so the title itself is protected, he was just exempt from needing the license to do the industrial work he was doing). He is then totally within his rights to use that knowledge and pass himself off as a subject matter expert in the same field he worked for X years, and the board just got pissy. Glad it was overturned for him.
No he signed an affidavit which said he had not acted as a professional engineer during the time it was lapsed which was true. Because he hadn’t done any engineering work.
The entire “representation” was just a title on a single slide of a PowerPoint presentation.
He lost in state court because the MBoE lied about the order of events and decided to “make an example” out of him. And the reason they decided to do that was 100% because they didn’t like the content of his political speech.
And that’s the point. These organizations will use and abuse their power to punish dissent. Period.
The argument wasn’t about a matter of fact, but a matter of law. He didn’t argue against their matter of fact per the appeals court decision.
That’s because the appeals process does not allow disputes over matters of fact. The lower court he did dispute the matter of fact. And multiple times offered to pay the fine and accept censure for the error if the factual recorded were amended to comport with what actually happened rather than being recorded in false terms as it was. But the MBoE wanted to defame him in the public record. It was their primary goal. So they refused to do so and kept the record fraudulent.
But the outcome was ALSO wrong as a matter of law.
It was a summary judgement in the lower court because there was no dispute in fact in the lower court. If there was a dispute in fact there would’ve been a trial. I agree that this was malicious, but I’m a registered nurse so I also have a protected title with similar ramifications to professional engineer and with similar restrictions on license renewal. Essentially if I did not have an active license, it would be illegal by my state law/BON regulations to tell you that I was a registered nurse in this comment. If I instead said “engineer” or “nurse”, the courts will generally find that within free speech, like in Jarlstrom. I don’t particularly think the courts were wrong here.
Again, the matters of fact were established by the board and could not be disputed, which is why during appeals they had to shift to matters of law.
It is provable fact that he disputed the matters of fact multiple times in both formal letters and sworn statements made during the hearings prior to the appeal. The Board of Licensure had sole discretion to update the matters of fact. The process was totally broken in a way that made it nearly impossible for him to defend himself.
And, just to really make the point of the injustice of this, had he instead checked the box on his renewal that said he had practiced engineering during the lapse, the result would’ve been a fine and reprimand for the error. The reason he didn’t check the box saying he had practiced engineering during the lapse is because he believed in good faith that he had not. Instead, the board seized the opportunity to punish a political enemy by creating a fraudulent factual record to call him a liar when no such thing happened.
Not really what was said based on my reading of the court documents. They said he checked a box that he didn’t present himself as a professional engineer, when he published articles that said he was. And based on other internet discussions with links to articles, that was exactly what happened and he doesn’t really deny that.
The matter of law is “is it right to prosecute someone based on this form” and the appeals court decided it was as you could see in the decision.
Overall I find the court documents seem pretty comprehensive as to why and how it all went down, and they describe him refusing to sign things based on his belief that he wasn’t lying.
I think the word ‘conservative’ in your post isn’t the best one you could have chosen. ‘Entrenched’ fits better. Bureaucracies will always fight anyone who tries to change anything. That is why bureaucracies are so dangerous and should be defenestrated regularly, so creative minds can inject fresh thinking.
But that’s what conservative means. It means adhering to traditional values and hierarchies for their own sake.
These professional organizations that refuse to accept criticism, refuse to change practice in light of evidence of in this case poor workmanship, and refused to let the state of the art grow are the very definition of conservative. Especially when they yield their power to crush critics pushing for equity, progress, or rights.
I’m not sure if there is a more conservative stance than the one where you refuse to accept any criticism and then lash out at the critics.
That isn’t at all what ‘conservative’ means. And ‘entrenchment’ is not synonymous with tradition. Tradition is a recognition of lessons we learned over a long stretch of time. It is more closely related to ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ than ‘entrenched’. We are certainly floating among fine distinctions here, but they are important. I think you would find it incredibly difficult to defend all “organizations” that"refuse to change practice in light of evidence". Like, say, Union organizations. Talk about lashing out!!
It is literally exactly what conservative means. There is no other coherent definition of conservative. Conservative means valuing tradition and the preservation of tradition more highly than other aspects of governance. And there’s no difference between your “entrenchment” and my "tradition’. Both mean the same thing – ‘we’ve always done it this way and so don’t want to change’.
If someone’s highest values are around and improvement of efficacy and efficiency of their government body, they would identify themselves as a progressive. If the values were protecting individual liberties, they would identify themselves as a liberal. If their values were to promote the fairest and most equitable society, they’d identify as socialist.
People can be many things at once. Most reasonable people are. But the word conservative still has meaning and the meaning is to cleave to tradition and traditional hierarchies. It’s what the word means.
I would find it incredibly difficult to defend any organizations that refuse to change practice in light of evidence. I tend to be very progressive-minded and mostly not at all conservative, so I do not think tradition is a very good reason to refuse to change practice.
The problem with using words like “individual liberties”, “improvement of efficiency”, or “fairest and most equitable” is that they are either WILDLY subjective, trojan horses for the most evil political ideologies (anything neo-marxist comes to mind) out there, or the definitions change on the whim of whatever group has the most power today.
But you are right; people can be more than one thing. And luckily for us, we have a few hundred years of Western growth and evolution that have codified a small number of useful traditions that have promoted the development of the most powerful and enlightened nation the planet has ever seen. We continue to grow and learn, hopefully abandoning bad ideas like sexual libertinism and anything related to marxism, and learned from the hard lessons of our past.
Being a Conservative does not mean a refusal to even allow change. It means respect for the hard lessons already learned and an insistence that we have a damn good reason to change those valuable existing traditions. I wish labor unions would learn from their many mistakes over the past hundred-plus years they have been around.
You have not spelled out a counterargument here.
When someone identifies as conservative, it means they have a strong preference for no change happening (and even undoing more “recent” change, although what qualifies as “recent” usually is viewed through the lens of personal preferences). That’s what it means. You don’t seem to even dispute it. It’s what the word means.
And when a conservative tells you all the other things they AREN’T – as the modern conservative usually jumps to do – believe that those are the values. If they say they aren’t liberal, it means they don’t care about preserving individual liberties. If they say they aren’t progressive, it means they do not want to see progress. If they say they aren’t a socialist, it means they do not care about an egalitarian and pro-social society. And when they say they aren’t a “neo-marxist”… well, that one really is meaningless gibberish, pay it no mind at all.
I feel like you keep bringing up labor unions because you think it’s going to be some kind of gotcha for me, but it super duper isn’t. One of the major reasons we saw such a profound weakening and collapse of labor unions in this country that only (maybe) reversed recently is because the older unions were seen as swinging way too conservative. That they became more concerned with maintaining power and status quo than doing the job of unions. Whether or not that criticism is fair is, I’m sure, a topic of much argument – I definitely think this view was part of a very serious disinformation campaign run by capitalist and ruling class-types to fight back against the working class – but this is certainly what your typical boomer/anti-labor-type will cite as the reason they don’t care for labor unions.
Let’s not forget who “the right” originally was: the conservatives who wanted to preserve the monarchy and stop the french revolution. They didn’t want to change from the old way to a new one. They thought the transition would be too chaotic. They were certainly correct that it would end up being quite chaotic indeed, but if they’d had their way there may still be a fucking divine right king prancing about in court while the people staved.
Fair point.
However at this time in both Wisconsin and North Carolina, those entrenched powers are conservative.
Modern society would quickly devolve into chaos without bureaucracy. Just because it’s been misused before, does not mean we can do without it. They aren’t “fighting” anything, they are rigorously reviewing and modifying plans and specifications of (often massive) public infrastructure.
The entire concept of a Professional Engineer exists due to bureaucracy. Without it, there would be no liability whatsoever for faulty designs in public putting millions (billions?) of people in danger regularly.
Entrenchment is an innately conservative attitude, though, and politically conservative people are a lot more likely to punish you for speaking truth to power.
I added to the comment to address this.
He was testifying in front of a commission, about a bad designed drain, for a HOA, or similar.
You’re correct that the headline is misleading. He’s not just posting in some forum. He is testifying as an expert. So there is a little more subtly.
I would like to add. He was not paid. He also was not certifying any designs as safe. You should not need to be a licensed expert to show faults in existing designs.
If your argument is that you’re an expert, then you need to have the credentials you claim to have. Anyone can show the faults in a design, but he’s explicitly doing novel calculations and analysis - ie not just reviewing someone else’s work.
Now that being said, it looks like he never needed a professional license as he fell under an exemption, in which case I feel like they shot themselves in the foot. He’s got previous experience doing the same thing he’s examining - hydraulics and fluid flow analysis. Regardless of his status as “professional engineer”, his previous experience sould qualify him to testify.
You’re right. I was just adding more considerations.
The lawyer son should have taken the calculations to a licensed professional engineer to sign off on. In this particular case, I like the ruling in the headline, but I understand the importance of licensing boards for professionals.