This project lays the foundations for a causal analysis of lay/expert collaborative research or citizen science. While the potential of such collaborations to advance knowledge and societal well-being are well known, little is known about what makes them succeed or fail. The PIs propose to bridge this gap by adopting a new approach that goes beyond traditional observational studies. The PIs propose to use mixed methods and an innovative parallel-study design. They will demonstrate the effectiveness of their approach by examining the social conditions and processes that produce or forestall transformative, community-driven science in response to the current Gulf oil disaster. In addition, they plan to produce interdisciplinary and socially robust environmental knowledge about the impacts of the disaster by combining the expertise of environmental scientists, social scientists, and Vietnamese-Americans living and working in south Louisiana who bring their deep experiential knowledge of the region?s impacted ecosystems to the scientific work.
Intellectual Merits
The proposed study is interdisciplinary. It is designed to advance basic social studies of science while simultaneously contributing to the production of socially robust environmental science. It does so in the form of two parallel analyses. The first is a community-driven toxicological study of wetlands contamination; the second is a sociological analysis of the initiation, development, and execution of that collaborative process. Both studies address substantively important problems. The community-driven study will investigate the exposure and impacts of petroleum hydrocarbons on finfish species that are culturally and economically important to Vietnamese-Americans whose livelihoods rely on commercial and subsistence fishing. Working together, residents and scientists will identify and prioritize target species and biological endpoints. The findings of the study will provide sound data that form the basis for hypothesis-driven future research on the long-term ecological impacts of the disaster. The sociological study will investigate the lay/expert collaboration for insight into the causal processes that generate successful citizen science.
Potential Broader Impacts
The interdisciplinary knowledge produced by this study will aid in scientific efforts to investigate the social and environmental impacts of the oil disaster by capturing time-sensitive social and ecological data that can be used by other natural and social scientists. The community-driven nature of the project and contributions to knowledge production by an underrepresented social group helps ensure that the scientific knowledge will be socially meaningful to Gulf Coast residents and local governments as well state and federal agencies working to mitigate disaster impacts. The project also holds significant educational opportunities. These include opportunities for interdisciplinary exchanges between social and natural scientists, and research training opportunities for undergraduate students and adult non-scientists. The project will also enhance institutional relationships between Tulane and Washington State Universities that bridge regional and public/private divides in the academy. Finally, the proposed study has strong potential to seed an effective and sustainable community-academic network for addressing ecological and environmental health issues in south Louisiana and elsewhere.
Two primary objectives were the goal of this project. One objective was to scientifically investigate and describe the process of initiating, designing, implementing, and assessing the process and products of an environmental science project stemming from the Deepwater Horizon Event in the context of community laypersons and fisherfolk and relevant scientific expertise in the area. This part of the project led by Scott Frickel is ongoing. The other objective was to determine in this developed context a paramount environmental issue related to the DWH Event. Social scientists at Washington State University studied this process and are continuing to study the process and reactions to the findings of the environmental study. Environmental health scientists at Tulane University in collaboration with local Vietnamese and African-American fisherfolk determined white shrimp and contamination of that economic and dietary priority species was of most concern. Together this same community-academic partnership, field-collected white shrimp from areas of most concern in November of 2010. These shrimp were sent to an analytical laboratory that was agreed upon as a credible laboratory and analyzed for approximately 80 hydrocarbons. These hydrocarbon analytes include the EPA and FDA priority 16-17 as well as a number of hydrocarbons that are specific to crude oil. During the field sampling, local shrimpers described the presence of oil on some of the collected shrimp (see attached image). Results of the analyses are presented in graphical format (see attached graphical image). Based on summarized total levels of all PAHs examined, these results indicate little if any PAH contamination. However, without analyzing similar samples from these same areas prior to the event, it's difficult to conclude that these levels are not a function of some low level of contamination. Discolored gills did not appear to be a function of oil contamination. In addition, white shrimp from local grocery stores that have presumably undergone safety checking revealed similar levels. Overall, this suggests that little if any DWH oil or crude oil in general can be found in the gill and tail muscle tissue if white shrimp in the fall following the DWH event. Furthermore, levels of this comprehensive list of PAHs can be considered well below those that might be of health concern. We have discussed these results with our community partners and the consensus that this study has been successful and worthwhile has been reached. The community shrimp fisherfolk are comfortable with the results and support their overall feelings about the quality of their product. However, the community partners do not feel that this is worth sharing in an open community forum at least at this time. Academic scientists believe that these results will be disseminated more widely however by other routes of communication, primarily by word-of-mouth and casual discussion. This speaks to ownership of the data to some degree. Finally, the local fisherfolk intimately involved in the environmental study have expressed concern that while the levels of the analyzed PAHs are quite low and from a consumption perspective pose little if any health risk, it may be possible these levels effect population health. If that were true, their economical livelihoods, seafood diets, and to some degree, their identities may well still be at risk. Therefore, the sociological analysis of this work will continue at no cost for an additional year. Additional data will be captured regarding some of the larger issues that these fisherfolk face, both prior to and following the DWH event. An initial conclusion is that community needs and concerns evolve in a dynamic fashion during and in the wake of such complicated technological events, and these are often not in concert with the needs and concerns of the academic, scientific community.
