Welp, that's a lawsuit laid out cold right there, setting aside even the fact that
> the probable cause of the ... bridge collapse was the load and capacity calculation errors made by FIGG Bridge Engineers, Inc.
> Errors in design may occur, but systems should be in place to catch those errors when they do occur. In this case, a firm was hired to independently review the bridge design for errors. However, [...] Although the design reviewer recognized that he should have examined the nodes and stages, he indicated that there was not enough budget or time to evaluate those factors. Contributing to this review failure was the reviewing firm’s lack of qualification to do this work.
Like even with software there's a point where I tell folks "Look if we're not going to do this X far, it's not of any value to do it half way and claim we did anything here."
You'd think there would be some engineering standard where "No this isn't a legitimate review because we didn't do enough." and that might set off some alarms...
I've heard many other examples of viciously denying that anything is wrong, all the way until something becomes very very wrong, to wonder whether this is an inherent part of human nature or a futile effort to avoid liability for knowingly screwing it up.
It also makes sense both intuitively and mathematically. If you screwed up and don't admit it, there's a chance (say X) nobody will find out (that it was you, or that anything was screwed up in the first place). Conversely, there's a (1-X) chance it'll be found out and you'll pay the costs - which my be huge and very personal, including tarnished reputation, monetary damage or even jail time. Now, if you admit to the error yourself, you get 100% certainty of slightly lower punishment. As long as the "slightly lower" isn't lower than (1-X), it makes sense to keep quiet mathematically. And of course, once you add fear into this, people tend to overestimate X.
Consequences to others turn this from a small to huge moral issue, but the mechanism is still arguably dominated by fear. That's why punishments are a tricky thing. Threat of losing license is a good deterrent from screwing up, but also a good motivator to hide your failure if you screwed up.
There is no practical alternative to taking away a licence in cases like this, at least temporarily in less egregious cases. What meaning would the licence have if the person responsible here retained it? He has demonstrated an appalling lack of judgement which goes beyond this one disaster. Removing the threat of revoking the licence would not fix the incentives issue, as even with that off the table, the engineer is to blame for the cost and delays of his failure, even if he does not care about the risk to other people.
Here's an example of an engineer doing the right thing - though the prospect of failure was so appalling that it probably focused his mind on what mattered most.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/04/17/the_citicorp_t...
Effectively, playing with apparent risk/reward, in the sense of overstating or understating the potential benefits or costs/hazards of an activity or phenomenon, is a form of rent-seeking. It allows an asset to appreciate (or a risk to be discounted), without doing any real work.
Whether that's done through a deliberate calculation, through inherent psychological bias, through group or peer pressure, or other mechansism, seems to vary. But you'll find this across activities, technical domains, space, and time.
It's a major element of Bernhard J. Stern's "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations", from 1937, which looks at the history of numerous innovations across multiple areas. You'll find this repeatedly in all kinds of technical and technological disasters: Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, numerous aircraft disasters, military campaigns, entire wars, business decisions, and any number of mundane accidents. In the use of lead, asbestos, tobacco, CFCs, and CO2.
One common element is that risks, whilst occasionally somewhat apparent, are not unambiguously manifest. Failures are almost always highly nonlinear. At one moment, things are mostly OK, though there are possible signs of trouble. Moments later, everything is gone to hell.
Up until that point, it's possible to argue otherwise. Occasionally even past it.
[0] https://www.flightsafetyaustralia.com/2017/05/safety-in-mind...
https://fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/how-i-almost-destroy...
This reminds me of all the nuclear power plants that are operating beyond their design life and keep increasing their allowable crack tolerance.