Search

The film addresses the general public, as it does not include significant amounts of scientific information that would require prior knowledge. The nature of the film however does aim toward a mature audience, as the film advises viewer discretion due to graphic images.

I looked into the aid organization Medicins Sans Frontieres and the incident mentioned in the article where the organization was forced to abandon their operations in Somalia.  The multiple mentions of a lack of data available on violence against aid workers led me to research the Aid Worker Security Database in order to better understand the system for which data was organized. Finally, I was surprised by the mention of government supported violence against aid workers and decided to look into that. There was a significant amount of news concerning government plots and political violence but very little appeared to be reliable or could be corroborated.

Research for this article comprised of interviews and recorded statements of dozens of police and fire personnel present at the towers and other officials who were tasked with investigating the response.

The development of Twine was funded primarily through donations from individual investors interested in the data sharing aspects of the software and humanitarian aid organizations who benefit from the accessible data.

The article has been referenced in several other published works that look at hurricane Katrina and the long term effects, including Aging Disaster: Mortality, Vulnerability, and Long-Term Recovery Among Katrina Survivors, on which Vincanne Adams and Taslim van Hattum both worked.

The article supports the claim with statistics of mental illness and experience related data taken from interviews with both patients and doctors. The style of the article also highlights the authors’ claims in a way that is understandable for readers without experience in that subject by including definitions and working from micro to macro scales as the article progresses.

The author, Adriana Petryna, works as a professor of anthropology for the University of Pennsylvania. She has done extensive research on the cultural and political aspects of nuclear science and medicine.