Search

CITIZEN SCIENCE

Epistemic negotiation

Stakeholders (indigenous groups, activist, scientist, scholars, etc)

The NYS Ebola Preparedness Plan was developed in reponse to the growing public fear of a widespread outbreak of the ebola virus disease or ebola hemorrhagic fever. It aimed to mitigate the transmission and spread of the disease in the event of isolated cases occurring in the State of New York or neighboring states.

The US Department of Veterans Affairs receives funding from the federal government. The proposed budget for Veterans Affairs was $132 billion in 2012. In 2014, the requested budget was $152.7 billion, including $66.5 billion in discretionary resources and $86.1 billion in mandatory funding.

The author relied on anecdotal evidence in the form of historical accounts, personal interviews, and surveys, as well as statistical and scientific field data she gathered on her visits to Ukraine. 

The author discusses gender-based violence including rape and sexual assault, and explores the implications of treating such violence as humanitarian issues. The author presents the evidence both for and against this in an attempt to solidify an ideal solution. 

"Moreover, in any mumber of disasters over the past two centuries, the 'disaster investigation,' far from proving itself the dispassionate, scientific verdict on causality and blame, actually emerges as a hard-fought contest to define the moment in politics and society, in technology and culture."

"And, no investigation he could provide would change the fact that most Americans viewed the burning of the Capitol in 1814 as a diplomatic and military, not an engineering, disaster."

"Certainly the move to NIST places a great premium on the power of "investigation" as not only a technical, but also a moral tool, a sacred act, assigning a higher meaning to the tests and calculations that must ultimately assign causes and fix blame--but this is nothing new in American history. While the investigator's tools may have sharpened since Latrobe's study of the Capitol, the Hague Street inquest, or the Iroquois Fire, disaster investigation still pits expert against expert, the demand for patient study against the will to rebuild and forget."

This policy was, in part, designed to prevent "patient dumping" whereby hospitals would refuse to treat certain patients due to inability to pay for treatment and either refuse admittance or transfer them to other hospitals. Furthermore, it specifically addresses female patients in active labor, requiring that hospitals ensure that these patients are also treated and stabilized in the emergency department or receiving facility.

The authors rely heavily on anecdotal evidence provided through interviews of survivors of Hurricane Katrina, though they supplement this with statistics, socioeconomic data, and mental health data.