What respect is due to a design that puts people's lives in danger?
No lives are in danger, because the planes are grounded. They will not fly again until the cause of the present issue is found and resolved. It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me that that puts Musk's comments in a slightly different light for some people.
Note that if Musk were a (Chartered) Professional Engineer (which afaik he is not) he might well be called upon to explain these comments to an Ethics committee. Here is a snippet (from the IPENZ Code of Ethics) that I imagine is probably fairly representative of Professional Engineers' obligations:
11. Not review other engineers’ work without taking reasonable steps to inform them and investigate
(1) A Member who reviews another engineer’s work for the purpose of commenting on that work must take reasonable steps to—
(a) inform that engineer of the proposed review before starting it; and
(b) investigate the matters concerned before commenting.
(2) Subclause (1) does not apply if taking those steps would result in there being a significant and immediate risk of harm to the health or safety of people, damage to property, or damage to the environment.
No lives are in danger (because the planes are grounded) but lives were in danger.
How about: If he would not speak up he would be remiss. Imagine the situation where an engineer at Boeing could be ignored but where someone of Musks standing would could not be ignored. If Musk has this knowledge and does not speak up that would be far worse than if he does.
After all, either he is wrong (which Boeing can prove, in which case Musk gets to eat some crow) or he is right (in which case his words force Boeing into more accountability, which in the case of air travel with multi-hundred-ton planes is a good thing all around).
This does not qualify as a formal review of one engineers work by another. This is simply commentary by one of the companies that has an extreme amount of knowledge about use of batteries in vehicular applications commenting on the implementation details of the structural arrangement chosen by another company for a similar (but of course still different in many way, but more critical rather than less) application. As such it is something that Boeing should - and probably does - take serious.
I highly doubt that they would take input like this and discard it either because the 'source' does not have his chartered engineers paper (the guy puts rockets into space, which I think might offset some paperwork) and makes his comments in a forum where he can't be easily ignored (which may very well be the whole point).
It doesn't appear to be in this linked article, but Musk has indicated that he is already in contact with Boeing's lead engineer in this area. I think even by the strictest interpretation of official engineering ethics Musk is doing everything right so far.
We don't know how much access he's had to relevant design documents: it's clear he has had some contact with Boeing (but not how much) and it's clear he has pretty substantial domain knowledge, but I don't think anyone here is in a position to assess whether he genuinely does have enough information at his disposal to have correctly diagnosed the problem.
Launching the whole debate with a Twitter comment announcing he could fix it wasn't smart, irrespective of ethics, because he's inevitably going to be accused of a publicity stunt there. Giving a more detailed explanation of where he thinks the problem might lie to the industry press after discussions with Boeing is rather different, and I don't see any ethical obligation for him not to do that.
Engineering ethics, PE licensure, both are an embarrassing shame to the engineering profession.
Besides, Musk might well get a pass via Subclause (2), because lives are arguably in danger, if Musk has a belief that the aircraft might be returned to service without the issue having been addressed.
These guidelines are clearly ab out not getting each other in trouble, not the interests of those using whatever a chartered engineer might be involved in.
No lives are in danger, because the planes are grounded. They will not fly again until the cause of the present issue is found and resolved. It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me that that puts Musk's comments in a slightly different light for some people.
Note that if Musk were a (Chartered) Professional Engineer (which afaik he is not) he might well be called upon to explain these comments to an Ethics committee. Here is a snippet (from the IPENZ Code of Ethics) that I imagine is probably fairly representative of Professional Engineers' obligations: