Engineering and Autism
It has been suggested that the ethics argument about engineers who are also on the Autistic Spectrum has not been addressed significantly. I am not a student looking for a quick answer. It would not surprise me if this too long question takes a long time to find concensus. I do not think an answer is possible, but concensus might be. If you are familiar with Autism, which is both a gift and a curse, often comes along with other features. Many of these features are typically thought of as all curse (ADD, ADHD, epilepsy), but at least one is all gift (Savant). The suggestion was to present my personal data upon which to build a case. With so many variables, this doesn't seem to be efficient. I'm 49 years old. I was almost 41 when I discovered I had Autism (Asperger Syndrome). At that point I already had a B.Sc. and M.Eng. in engineering, had been given a title of Adjunct Professor of Pharmacy, and had become a P.Eng. (Alberta, Canada). I have no doubt that engineers who have lived in the past may be judged after the fact to have had Autism. Some people seem to think that Leonardo Da Vinci was Autistic. Although he is better known as an artist, he certainly had extensive skills in engineering. There may be engineers still alive who are older than I am who have Autism, or discovered they had Autism even later than I did. What is likely to be true in the not too distant future, is that most people that have Autism will know they have Autism before they enter engineering education. At least that is true if nothing changes in the near future. Psychologists seem to want a dividing line at an IQ of 100, which is the average IQ of the "normal" population (by definition). Anyone having Autism with an IQ greater than 100 is regarded as "high-functioning". High-functioning Autistics and people with Aspergers Syndrome (nominally IQ>100 by definition) should both be intelligent enough to become engineers. The biggest difference between these two groups of ASD members, is that the high-functioning Autistics are expected to have significantly worse language skills. I have no doubt that there have been successful engineers who were Autistic. What I am hoping, is that there are no ethical reasons why the practice of engineering should hope to disuade people who are Autistic from entering the profession. For the Autistics who can become engineers, it would seem they are different from neuro-typicals in a few ways: * their attention span can be significantly longer, * In answering questions, there is a tendency to brain dump, to produce all the knowledge/information they have on a topic, * they probably have problems maintaining eye contact, which in many (all?) societies is typically regarded as a signature of lying. * they probably have problems reading facial expressions, * they probably have problems reading body language, * they are often described as being "excessively honest". That is all that comes to mind of symptoms restricted to Autism which might be relevent. One symptom often mentioned is that the Autistic has a narrower focus for topics than a neuro-typical. However, I find myself in Materials Science and Engineering being a generalist. There seems to be few topics in the field which I cannot work with. If I observe my peers, they are all specialised into corners. To talk to members of the public, they all seem to think that Materials Science and Engineering is highly focused to begin with. Is my ability to be a generalist because of Autism, in spite of having Autism, or something else? Immediately upon learning of having Autism (Aspergers), I immediately recognized that the three symptoms related to eye contact, facial expressions and body language would cause problems in job interviews. My personal circumstances are not explained by the above 3 symptoms. One cannot blame any of them, if one (almost) never gets interviews. It seems that some combination of excessive honesty and brain dumping has made me useless at selling. I am willing to consider that other influences may be involved. Is selling ability crucial to engineering? My personal feeling is that while selling does not insist on being untruthful, selling requires that any information presented be biased. If negative aspects are known or suspected: that this information be withheld. I hope that is enough introduction. The questions I have are? 1. Should people with Autism be allowed in engineering? 2. If so, should they be disallowed to certain branches of engineering? 3. Are there certain kinds of engineering they should be recruited into, or warned to avoid? 4. How should the engineering community deal with the fact that there are symptoms of Autism which will have a strong negative influence on un-educated people in an interview situation? 5. Is selling a necessary characteristic of engineering? 6. Is selling a desirable characteristic of engineering? 7. Should hiring processes that discriminate against poor selling ability be associated with engineering? I recognize this is too long, but all of this looks like parts of the same problem to me. I am more than willing to comment on this. My personal feeling is that it is either too late, or almost too late for me to do the job I was made to do. But there are people following in my footsteps, and they deserve a better chance than I have ever been able to find. And that includes the profession suggesting that people with Autism stay away from engineering. While I believe there are actually aspects of engineering where an Autistic is preferred, my experience with trying to find people willing to listen, let alone try to help, suggests that we are unwanted at best.
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