Disinformation expert explores history and future of fake news in new book

Book Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

 

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"A History of Fake Things on the Internet" BY WALTER J. SCHEIRER TO BE RELEASED BY STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS ON DEC. 5.

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CREDIT: STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

The era of fake news feels brand-new.

But a new book, “A History of Fake Things on the Internet,” takes a deeper look into the origins of online deception.

“There’s this conventional narrative about fake news and manipulated imagery on the internet. But when I started to actually research this and looking into the history, it was very apparent to me that these are very long-standing issues,” said author Walter Scheirer, the Dennis O. Doughty Collegiate Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame.

The book takes readers on a journey that begins long before the internet existed, focusing on photo manipulation before diving into digital fakery of the ’80s and ’90s through today. Scheirer recognizes that the big fear people often have is that the perfect fake image or video could be created to fool the world into believing something wrong — he believes that’s unlikely.

“What I have found, which is more interesting and more concerning, is that obviously fake content is getting way more traction on the internet,” Scheirer said. “Things like memes often have a message that’s funny, right? But the message can still be dangerous.”

As an expert in image forensics, machine learning and AI, Scheirer conducts research at Notre Dame that focuses on combatting the rise of coordinated social media campaigns to incite violence, sow discord and threaten the integrity of democratic elections.

Often, these campaigns feature manipulated images exhibiting false claims and misrepresentation of incidents, fabricated news stories and memes, all created with the intent to provoke citizens and supporters of both political parties. The goal of his research with Tim Weninger, the Frank M. Freimann Associate Professor of Engineering, is to develop an early warning system that identifies manipulated images, deepfake videos and disinformation online.

“On the one hand, you have an enormous amount of fake material on the internet. Some of it appears to be threateningly bad. But it doesn’t seem like that’s stopping people from consuming it. In fact, people seem to be generating more and more of it,” Scheirer said.

But Scheirer’s book brings a different, more optimistic approach by questioning the surface level reading of the internet. He points to this idea that the whole world is creating fiction online and telling stories in their own distinct communities. It’s when that fiction reaches community outsiders that misunderstandings can occur.

In the future, he believes generative AI content is going to be the next frontier for leveling up creativity of the internet.

“It turns out the internet’s a really great creative engine. It’s the ultimate medium for storytelling,” Scheirer said. “I love the internet. And I think others can too if they learn to appreciate it as a really innovative, interesting place.”

“A History of Fake Things on the Internet” will be released by Stanford University Press on Dec. 5.

 

Blasts to clear World War II munitions could contaminate the ocean

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

 

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EXPLOSIONS, AS SHOWN HERE, THAT CLEAR ABANDONED WAR MINES CAN RELEASE HIGH LEVELS OF TNT, POTENTIALLY THREATENING MARINE LIFE.

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CREDIT: UWE WICHERT

World War II concluded decades ago, but live mines lurking on the ocean floor still pose threats, potentially spewing unexpected geysers or releasing contaminants into the water. Experts conduct controlled explosions to clear underwater munitions, but concerns have arisen over the environmental impacts from these blasts. Now, results in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology show that the contamination produced by detonation depends on the blast type, with weaker explosions leaving behind more potentially toxic residues.

After World War II, according to research estimates, up to 385,000 metric tons of unexploded munitions — including 40,000 tons of chemical munitions — were dumped into the Baltic Sea. These discarded weapons remain dangerous: They have the potential to jet plumes of water and sediment upward, send shock waves through the ocean, and punch holes in ships’ hulls. In addition, the mines’ metal shells can corrode in seawater, leaking potentially toxic explosive compounds, such as TNT, into the environment over time. Technicians typically clear historic munitions with controlled explosions, but there is debate among scientists about whether weak or strong blasts are better. While smaller blasts minimize shock waves and physical damage, Edmund Maser and coworkers suspected that these weaker ones release more toxic residue than strong blasts. To test whether this is true, the team wanted to measure the explosive residues near underwater mines after controlled detonations of the two different intensities.

The researchers — working in close collaboration with the Royal Danish Navy — first identified World War II mines near a busy shipping route off the coast of Denmark, choosing the sites of two intact and two corroded devices. Divers from the Navy collected ocean water and ocean floor sediment around the mines, and researchers then used mass spectrometry to measure the samples’ levels of TNT. As the researchers expected, chemical contamination was higher near the corroded mines than the intact ones.

Then, using either a low-powered detonation or a high-powered detonation, the team destroyed the leaking mines and assessed the TNT released from the blasts. Sediment contained up to 100 million times more TNT after the weaker explosion than before, and only 250 times more TNT after the stronger blast. Similarly, the TNT levels in water after the weaker blast far exceeded those around the stronger one. The researchers say that the pollution released by the low-power blast meets or exceeds levels previously reported to be toxic to microalgae, sea urchins and fish. Because of the potential threats to nearby marine life, the researchers encourage less invasive methods to remediate submerged World War II relics — like robotic techniques to open and remove abandoned mines’ explosive contents — to prevent unwanted explosions and contamination.

The authors acknowledge funding from the Interreg North Sea Region’s North Sea Wrecks project.

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The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

Note: ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies.

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JOURNAL

Environmental Science & Technology

DOI

10.1021/acs.est.3c04873 

ARTICLE TITLE

Ecotoxicological Risk of World War Relic Munitions in the Sea after Low- and High-Order Blast-in-Place Operations

 

These bats use their penis as an “arm” during sex but not for penetration

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

 

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PHOTO OF A SEROTINE BAT

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CREDIT: ALONA SHULENKO

Mammals usually mate via penetrative sex, but researchers report November 20 in the journal Current Biology that a species of bat, the serotine bat, (Eptesicus serotinus) mates without penetration. This is the first time non-penetrative sex has been documented in a mammal. The bats’ penises are around seven times longer than their partners’ vaginas and have a “heart-shaped” head that is seven times wider than the vaginal opening. Both the penises’ size and shape would make penetration post-erection impossible, and the researchers show that, rather than functioning as a penetrative organ, the bats use their oversized penises like an extra arm to push the female’s tail sheath out of the way so that they can engage in contact mating—a behavior that resembles “cloacal kissing” in birds.

“By chance, we had observed that these bats have disproportionately long penises, and we were always wondering ‘how does that work?’,” says first author Nicolas Fasel of the University of Lausanne. “We thought maybe it's like in the dog where the penis engorges after penetration so that they are locked together, or alternatively maybe they just couldn't put it inside, but that type of copulation hasn’t been reported in mammals until now.”

Very little is known about how bats have sex, and most previous observations of bats mating have only perceived the backs of mating pairs. In this study, the researchers were able to observe the bats’ genitalia during copulation by using footage from cameras that were placed behind a grid that the bats could climb on.

Fasel collaborated with a bat rehabilitation center in Ukraine that opportunistically filmed mating pairs and with a bat enthusiast and citizen scientist, Jan Jeucken, who filmed hours of footage of serotine bat in a church attic in the Netherlands. Altogether, the team analyzed 97 mating events—93 from the Dutch church and 4 from the Ukrainian bat rehabilitation center.

The video recordings revealed that the bats do not engage in penetrative sex. The researchers did not observe penetration at any point during the recorded mating events and noted that the erectile tissues of the penis were enlarged before they made contact with the vulva. During mating, the male bats grasped their partners by the nape and moved their pelvises (and fully erect penises) in a probing fashion until they made contact with the female’s vulva, at which point they remained still and held the females in a long embrace. On average, these interactions lasted less than 53 minutes, but the longest event extended to 12.7 hours. Following copulation, the researchers observed that the female bats’ abdomens appeared wet, suggesting the presence of semen, but further research is needed to confirm that sperm was transferred during these putative mating events.

The researchers also characterized the morphology of serotine bat genitalia by measuring the erect penises of live bats that were captured as part of other research studies (serotine and other vesper bats are conveniently known to get erections under anesthesia) and by performing necropsies on bats that died at bat rehabilitation centers. Their measurements showed that, when erect, serotine bat penises are around seven times longer and seven times wider than serotine bat vaginas, and about a fifth as long as the bats’ head-body length. The bats also have unusually long cervixes, which could help female bats select and store sperm.

The researchers speculate that the bats may have evolved their oversized penises in order to push aside the female bats’ tail membranes, which females may use to avoid sex. “Bats use their tail membranes for flying and to capture the insects, and female bats also use them to cover their lower parts and protect themselves from males,” says Fasel, “but the males can then use these big penises to overcome the tail membrane and reach the vulva.”

Next, the researchers plan to study bat mating behavior in more natural contexts, and they are also investigating penis morphology and mating behavior in other bat species. “We are trying to develop a bat porn box, which will be like an aquarium with cameras everywhere,” says Fasel.

Photo of a serotine bat

CREDIT

Alona Shulenko

Photo of a serotine bat

CREDIT

Olivier Glaizot

This research was supported by the National Science Centre of Poland, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and the Oleksandr Feldman Foundation.

Current Biology, Fasel et al., “Mating without intromission in a bat, a novel copulatory pattern in mammals” https://cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01304-0

Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit: http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2023.09.054 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Mating without intromission in a bat, a novel copulatory pattern in mammals.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

20-Nov-2023

 

Massive 2022 eruption reduced ozone levels

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano changed the chemistry, dynamics of Earth’s stratosphere

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HARVARD JOHN A. PAULSON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCES

When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on January 15, 2022 in the South Pacific, it produced a shock wave felt around the world and triggered tsunamis in Tonga, Fiji, New Zealand, Japan, Chile, Peru and the United States. It also changed the chemistry and dynamics of the stratosphere in the year following the eruption, leading to unprecedented losses in the ozone layer of up to 7% over large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, according to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the University of Maryland.

Driving those atmospheric changes, according to the research, was the sheer amount of water vapor injected into the stratosphere by the undersea volcano. The location of the stratosphere is approximately 8 - 30 miles above Earth’s surface and is where the protective ozone layer resides. 

“The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption was truly extraordinary in that it injected about 300 billion pounds of water into the normally dry stratosphere, which is just an absolutely incredible amount of water from a single event,” said David Wilmouth, a project scientist at SEAS and first author of the paper.

“This eruption put us in uncharted territory,” said Ross Salawitch, professor at the University of Maryland’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center and co-author of the study. “We’ve never seen, in the history of satellite records, this much water vapor injected into the atmosphere and our paper is the first that looks at the downstream consequences over broad regions of both hemispheres in the months following the eruption using satellite data and a global model.”

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption was the largest explosion ever recorded in the atmosphere. The eruption hurled aerosols and gases deep into the stratosphere. Some material reached the lower mesosphere, more than 30 miles above the Earth’s surface, altitudes never recorded from a volcanic eruption. Previous studies found that the eruption increased water vapor in the stratosphere by 10% worldwide, with even higher concentrations in some areas of the Southern Hemisphere.

Wilmouth, Salawitch and the rest of the research team used data from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) aboard the NASA Aura satellite, to track not only how that water vapor moved across the globe but also monitor temperature and levels of chlorine monoxide (ClO), ozone (O3), nitric acid (HNO3), and hydrogen chloride (HCl) in the stratosphere for the year following the eruption. They then compared those measurements to data collected by MLS from 2005 to 2021 prior to the eruption.

The team found that the injection of water vapor and sulfur dioxide (SO2) changed both the chemistry and the dynamics of the stratosphere.

In terms of chemistry, the SO2 led to an increase of sulfate aerosols, which provided new surfaces for chemical reactions to occur.

“Certain reactions that might not happen at all or only happen slowly can happen faster if there are aerosols available on which those reactions can take place,” said Wilmouth. “The injection of SO2 from the volcano allowed sulfate aerosols to form and the presence of water vapor led to the additional production of sulfate aerosols.”

The increased sulfate aerosols and water vapor kicked off a chain of events in the complex atmospheric chemistry that led to widespread changes in the concentrations of a number of compounds, including ozone.

The extra water vapor also had a cooling effect in the stratosphere, leading to a change in circulation, which drove decreases in ozone in the southern hemisphere and an increase of ozone over the tropics.

The researchers found that the peak decrease in ozone occurred in October, nine months after the eruption.

"We had this enormous increase in water vapor in the stratosphere with modest increases in sulfate that set off a series of events that led to significant changes in temperature and circulation, ClO, HNO3, HCl, O3, and other gases," Wilmouth said.

Next, the researchers hope to continue the study by following the impact of the volcano into 2023 and beyond as the water vapor moves from the tropics and midlatitudes to the Southern Hemisphere pole, where it has the potential to amplify ozone losses in the Antarctic. The water vapor is expected to stay elevated in the stratosphere for a period of several years.

The research was co-authored by James Anderson, the Philip S. Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry at SEAS, Freja Østerstrøm and Jessica Smith. It was supported in part by NASA under Grant No. 80NSSC19K0326 and the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1764171.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2301994120 

ARTICLE TITLE

Impact of the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption on stratospheric composition

 

The sound of injustice: Inequitable urban noise impacts people, wildlife

Peer-Reviewed Publication

COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

Noise is an unseen pollutant with very real health impacts. Like many other forms of pollution, because of systemic injustice, it affects some people more than others. It also affects wildlife.  

In a study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, Colorado State University acoustic ecologists found that redlined, or marginalized, communities have more and louder urban noise, which has been linked to negative consequences for people and wildlife.  

Ecological degradation exacerbates injustices against those living in formerly redlined areas, because people benefit from nature and wildlife, said Sara Bombaci, an author on the study and an assistant professor in CSU's Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology. Now illegal, redlining was the discriminatory practice of denying loans or services to those living in non-white neighborhoods. 

"We need to be thinking more about how these systemic injustices and problems are manifesting to shape ecology and evolution,” Bombaci said. 

Bombaci and her research group examined urban noise distribution across historical racial divisions in 83 U.S. cities and evaluated hundreds of studies on the impacts of noise on wildlife. The team originally wanted to analyze ecological data on noise impacts to wildlife, instead of reviewing literature, but data in redlined communities are underrepresented, reflecting historical biases. 

The study is the first to examine noise inequity in redlined communities. Results show that louder noise levels more commonly correspond with redlined urban areas and have detrimental effects on urban ecosystems proportional to their volume.  

Redline noise 

Starting in 1933, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation assigned grades to neighborhoods based on race and wealth. Grade A neighborhoods were wealthier and whiter, while red lines were drawn around grade D neighborhoods where people from various racial and ethnic backgrounds lived. Redlining was outlawed in 1968, but decades of divestment in these neighborhoods caused enduring disparities.  

The study found that grade D neighborhoods experience 17% higher maximum noise levels than grade A neighborhoods, and grades C and D neighborhoods more frequently have maximum noise levels above the level known to cause hearing loss, physical pain and stress in humans.   

"This is directly linked to structural racism,” Bombaci said. “There's a clear signal that ties directly to whether these communities were redlined.” 

Some of the human health effects from noise pollution include hearing loss, stress, insomnia, hypertension and increased risk of heart disease and stroke. Persistent loud noise stresses wildlife too. It can alter animal behavior, including communication, community structure, distribution, fitness, foraging, mating, movement and reproduction. Noise can make some species more vulnerable to predators and cause wildlife to avoid certain areas.  

Righting past wrongs 

Many cities, like Denver, are working toward equitable planning to improve access to parks and green space in underserved communities. Bombaci said noise should be considered in those plans.  

"If we're adding green space without mitigating impacts of noise, we might not be fully recognizing the benefits of these green spaces,” she said. 

Wildlife might not bounce back in urban green space if noise pollution remains a problem, but planning and noise mitigation can help, Bombaci said, and conservation funding and urban planning can benefit both people and wildlife.  

Additional authors of the study, “Inequalities in noise will affect urban wildlife,” are CSU students Jasmine Nelson-Olivieri, Tamara Layden, Edder Antunez, Monica Lasky, Steven Starr and Anahita Verahrami, as well as collaborators Ali Khalighifar (CSU), Theresa Laverty (New Mexico State University), Karina Sanchez (University of New Hampshire) and Graeme Shannon (Bangor University). 

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JOURNAL

Nature Ecology & Evolution

DOI

10.1038/s41559-023-02257-9 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

ARTICLE TITLE

Inequalities in noise will affect urban wildlife

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

20-Nov-2023

 

Half of tested caviar products from Europe are illegal, and some aren’t even caviar

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

 

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A PILE OF STURGEONS BEING SOLD AT A FISH MARKED IN EASTERN EUROPE.

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CREDIT: WWF GEORGE CARACAS

Wild caviar, a pricey delicacy made from sturgeon eggs, has been illegal for decades since poaching brought the fish to the brink of extinction. Today, legal, internationally tradeable caviar can only come from farmed sturgeon, and there are strict regulations in place to help protect the species. However, by conducting genetic and isotope analyses on caviar samples from Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine—nations bordering the remaining wild sturgeon populations—a team of sturgeon experts found evidence that these regulations are actively being broken. Their results, publishing on November 20 in the journal Current Biology, show that half of the commercial caviar products they sampled are illegal, and some don’t even contain any trace of sturgeon.

“The conservation status of the Danube sturgeon populations renders each individual important for their survival, and the observed intensity of poaching undermines any conservation effort,” write the researchers, led by Arne Ludwig of the Leibniz-Institute for Zoo & Wildlife Research.

In Europe, there are four remaining sturgeon species, including Beluga, Russian, stellate, and sterlet, that are capable of producing caviar. The last remaining wild populations of these species in the European Union can be found in the Danube River and the Black Sea. Each species has been protected since 1998 under CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. In 2000, their CITES listing was accompanied by a strict, international labeling system for all caviar products designed to stop illegal trade. Despite these protections, it was widely known from local anecdotal accounts that illegal poaching is still happening, cites the team, even though no formal investigations had been conducted.

To find out the true source of the commercially sold caviar products being produced in native sturgeon regions, the researchers bought caviar both online and in person from a wide variety of sources including local markets, shops, restaurants, bars, and aquaculture facilities. They also included five samples that had been seized by authorities. In total, they collected and analyzed 149 samples of caviar and sturgeon meat.

After analyzing each sample’s DNA and isotope patterns, the team found that 21% of the samples came from wild-caught sturgeons and that these wild-caught fish were sold in all of the countries studied. They also found that 29% of the samples violated CITES regulations and trade laws, which included caviar that listed the wrong species of sturgeon or the wrong country of origin, and categorized another 32% of samples as “customer deception,” such as samples declared as wild products that actually originated from aquaculture.  

“Our results indicate an ongoing demand for wild sturgeon products, which is alarming, since these products endanger wild sturgeon populations,” write the researchers. “The persistent demand fuels poaching and indicates that consumers do not fully accept aquaculture products as a substitute. In addition, caviar being sold in violation of CITES and EU obligations questions the effectiveness of controls in general and the labeling system in particular.”

Three of the samples, served in Romania in a dish called “sturgeon soup,” weren’t sturgeon at all. Instead, the researchers identified the fish as European catfish and Nile perch.

The authors suggest that the large volume of illegal poaching activity could be an indicator that local seafood vendors are lacking adequate income opportunities, which might increase the pressure to engage in illegal fishing activity.  They also point to the fact that there is likely a lack of effective law enforcement in these regions, either because stopping illegal poaching isn’t a priority for local authorities or because they don’t have the tools to prove a fish’s illegal origin. But regardless of the reasons, they stress the importance of taking action, and quickly.

“Although poaching and illegal wildlife trade are often considered a problem in developing countries, these findings bear evidence that a high ratio of poached sturgeon products originates from EU and accession candidate states,” write the authors. “The control of caviar and sturgeon trade in the EU and candidate member states urgently needs improvement to ensure that Danube sturgeon populations will have a future.”

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This research was supported by funding from an EU-LIFE project.

Current Biology, Ludwig et al. “Poaching and illegal trade of Danube sturgeons.” https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01316-7

Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit: http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

Sturgeons being descaled for sale at an Eastern European fish market.

CREDIT

WWF George Caracas

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2023.09.067 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Poaching and illegal trade of Danube sturgeons

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

20-Nov-2023

 

Litigating the Pandemic

How COVID-19 wound up in the U.S. court system

Book Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE COUNTY

When the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the United States, healthcare workers faced new demands, childcare and grocery store workers became essential workers, businesses shut down, and churches and school doors closed. The pandemic also arrived amidst protests over police violence. Deep partisan divisions and record natural disasters amplified these challenges. The national government offered new funding for businesses and individuals and public health guidance, and local governments issued guidelines for gathering in public. 

Litigating the Pandemic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), a new book by Susan Sterett, professor of public policy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, takes a closer look at the complex world of litigation during the COVID-19 pandemic and the litigation history of issues that long predated the pandemic. The book is part of the University of Pennsylvania Press's "Critical Studies in Risk and Disaster" series, which explores how environmental, technological, and health risks are created, managed, and analyzed in different contexts. 

“This book tracks multiple fields in which pandemic measures brought litigation. They are not cases about liability for getting infected at work but cases about insurance and mitigation measures amid elections, contests over the free exercise of religion, and getting people out of prison. All have a history and a set of actors that long predate the pandemic,” Sterett writes in Litigating the Pandemic. 

“By turning to litigation, this book describes links between governing institutions and the pandemic—problems in one could amplify the other. What emerges from the legal process can be patterned differently than when one begins with the president or a leading public health official.”

Disaster cascades

Sterett draws on the work of environmental, political, and public health scientists and critical disaster studies to lay the groundwork for a broader understanding of disaster cascades rippling through our divided institutions. Insurance companies are a key example. During the pandemic, insurance companies were not ready to cover business losses under disaster policies during a pandemic, which affected business owners, employees, and customers.

Disaster cascades are not only physical events but also include the systems in place communities use to take care of each other daily. Around the world, courts govern routine and big political issues, from insurance to democracy. Courts and their priorities and ways of assessing evidence and law will continue to play roles well beyond the COVID-19 pandemic and current climate change.

“Following one causal case also vastly understates the actors involved and who is responsible for what. No one causal agent is responsible for the spread of the virus among multigenerational households or the climate change health experts link it to,” writes Sterrett. “Closure orders, immigration, and state decisions about liability exemptions all include opportunities for lawsuits that attribute responsibility and advance material or ideological advantage for those suing.”

Courts and decision-making

In 2020 and 2021, the increasing partisan divide led conservatives and liberals to sue over long-fought issues. The Supreme Court and lower courts heard cases on religion and property rights. In the state courts, cases were filed to release elderly incarcerated people at risk of serious illness. Expanded voting practices, such as mail-in ballots, were also contested in court.

“The pandemic created an opportunity for groups motivated by preexisting political goals, including goals concerning religion and mass incarceration,” Sterett explains. “Some constitutional claims did go to the Supreme Court during this time period: cases on voting rules, church closures, and the moratorium on evicting people from housing during the pandemic.”

Throughout the pandemic, law firms and law professors aggregated cases people filed in state and federal courts about the pandemic. Sterett uses this data in Litigating the Pandemic to provide an in-depth, 360-degree view into how the U.S. court systems governed in the pandemic. Insurance remains a flashpoint for governing in a changing climate. The place of religion and expertise also continues to be a focus of activism for conservative litigators. 

“The Bill of Rights does not require freedom from quarantines, closures, or vaccines. The flexibility of legal standards means that officials can frame them for their own purposes,” writes Sterett. “Hijacking the meaning of freedom as something we experience individually, without common care or responsibility and involving a high tolerance for death and illness, is not a triumph of either democracy or legal rights. Moreover, it results from governance decisions that refuse to take our interconnectedness with one another and our world seriously.”