TALKS
Adrian Brown, PhD | Environmental Engineer. Neutrality Challenger
Engineers are trained to believe that if the math is sound and the regulations are met, the work is good. Adrian Brown argues that apparent objectivity can hide an ethical blind spot — what he calls the “out-of-scope fallacy.” His PhD research, centered on a hazardous waste site on Jacksonville’s Eastside, found a troubling pattern: a community’s history, experiences, and trauma treated as someone else’s problem, even when that context was the difference between a project that helped and one that harmed. The problem wasn’t corruption or bad actors. It was well-meaning engineers following the rules exactly as trained..
Brown asks us to reconsider what it means to be objective. Because when we decide what counts as relevant to a place, we also decide whose experience counts. And sometimes, he argues, neutrality isn’t impartiality at all — it is a way of making the people who are already there easier to ignore.
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Adrian E. Brown is President and Principal Engineer of EnviroScope Engineering, LLC. He has practiced environmental engineering for more than 20 years, with expertise in environmental auditing, compliance management, management systems, permitting, remediation, and sustainability. He earned a PhD in Environmental Engineering Sciences from the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering at the University of Florida, a Master of Science in Environmental Engineering and Science from the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the Judy Genshaft Honors College / College of Engineering at the University of South Florida.
