Talk:Issues in Interdisciplinarity 2020-21/Truth in Distributing COVID-19 Vaccines

Summary of Meeting 1 (20/11/2020 1:00PM GMT)
In Attendance: Ling Ling, Alexia, Jeanne (Nicola joined the meeting halfway)

General Discussion

-clarified the four marking rubrics and the limit of word count

-compared a few examples in past years

Brainstorming

No one showed interest in History. We think that Evidence and Truth are two issues that come quite similarly when being reflected in the sources available.

Alexia proposed the idea of “Power of technology in the fashion industry”, which the other two group members found interesting. Disciplines like Computer science, Art design and Economics could be considered. Alexia proposed the idea based on the founder of the new fashion firm Bode, which intertwines Microsoft AI with Fashion Design. Some ideas were discussed: the discipline of Economics tends to be dominated by males, whereas art design is like a field involving more females, power dynamics somehow may arise between economists and art designers in the form of ideological clashes.

Ling Ling mentioned some possible angles for investigation e.g. how the development of fashion industry may impact on economic sustainability in long-term, see fashion design from the lens of economists.

While the topic was promising, we were not sure we could find a viable clash between Fashion Design and Computer Science that would work with any of the principles of Truth, Evidence, Power, or History. We still decided, however, to try and see whether we could work on this topic in regards to Power or Truth until our next meeting.

Nicola gave us some useful advice:

1. We should choose an interdisciplinary topic, which could be valuable in some sense.

2. The topic chosen is just like one tool being employed to identify and analyze the nature of Power in that specific context. We may look at fashion simply as one industry.

3. Power as an issue is very tricky. If writing about it, we need to dissect how it is manifested in one of the four forms that we learned from the lectures, and cannot use it simply as one word in day-to-day contexts.

Lily0212 (discuss • contribs) 01:47, 28 November 2020 (UTC) Jupiterjoyner (discuss • contribs), edit: 11th December 2020 (UTC)

Summary of Discussion in WhatsApp Group
Ling Ling rethought the old topic and came up with another new one as the following.

Topic: How to decide the ways of Covid-19 vaccine distribution to maximize social welfare?

Interdisciplinary issue: Evidence

Disciplines: Economics, Biology, Sociology

Experts in different disciplines have differing conceptions of Evidence and prioritized disciplinary perspectives.

==> clashes [But we need to be careful to only write about the differences in their ways of approaching, constructing, and understanding knowledge, which makes the thing arguable.]

-subconscious bias in collecting and analyzing evidence

Biology

-infection systems in the human body, electronic image e.g. the older and certain groups are more vulnerable to the epidemic, should be given priority

Economics

-collect data and construct models, maximize social welfare, make assumptions

-may emphasize the importance of young people as a workforce to economic growth and development

-ignore the role of social factors e.g. the implications of culture and social beliefs on consumers’ behavior

-maximize utility

Sociology

-based on other various social theories

-different research methods e.g. take interviews

Final conclusion: when combining together to facilitate government policy decision making…

Alexia and Ling Ling discussed this in the face-to-face seminar and then proposed the idea to Jeanne in the Whatsapp Groupchat to see whether we should switch the topic. We decided to switch to this topic and work on Evidence as the issue.

Alexia organized a Google Doc where we could share all relevant links to the research on our new topic.

Regarding our new topic, Nicola gave us these suggestions:

1. should emphasize on Evidence (talk about how multiple disciplines gather evidence, this discipline uses evidence like this and that discipline uses evidence like that)

2. how to structure the Chapter: many possible ways of formatting (traditional essay style; other creative ones)

Lily0212 (discuss • contribs) 02:04, 28 November 2020 (UTC) Jupiterjoyner (discuss • contribs), edit: 11th December 2020 (UTC)

Summary of Meeting 2 & Meeting 3
In Attendance: Ling Ling, Alexia, Jeanne

It appeared difficult to find much evidence used by different disciplines on COVID-19 vaccine distribution to support our arguments. So we decided to work on Truth as an issue.

We shared the links to check out:

Epidemiology, Health: Check this book out: Qualitative methods for health research, J. Green, N. Thorogood https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e7ca/dda07e4076073cf3f6777b73800492f878f5.pdf?_ga=2.187360104.1169024446.1606655436-1485175133.1603165432

Published by the School of Public Health Interim Framework for COVID-19 Vaccine Allocation and Distribution in the United States (centerforhealthsecurity.org)

Economics A Covid-19 Vaccine Will Need Equitable, Global Distribution (hbr.org)

Economics https://econlife.com/2020/05/covid-19-vaccine-distribution-dilemmas/

Report from the US Department of Health about the vaccine distribution plan, Operation Warp Speed (OWS) https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/strategy-for-distributing-covid-19-vaccine.pdf It says for example that the distribution has to be ‘equitable’

The definition of “public health” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health (we get many useful insights from this definition)

Chapter title: Truth in Distributing COVID-19 Vaccines

Disciplines: Epidemiology, Economics, Sociology

Potential 5-part structure

1. Introduction - Ling Ling

2. Epidemiology (hard science) - Alexia

3. Economics (social science) - Ling Ling

4. Sociology (social science) - Jeanne

5. Conclusion (potential clashes): Public health practice, policy makers - work together

Final edit: work together

Ways to think about Truth (use the following two rules to guide us when writing on the three disciplines)

1. How they construct truth

2. How what they believe to be true may not be true when they are trying to reflect the complex real-world situation (pros and cons of “truth”?)

Issue should be related to the disciplines, instead of the topic, the topic is just used like the excuse.

Ling Ling proposed the following working timeline which the other group members also agree on.


 * Finish the 1st draft (work on individual parts): by the end of Friday Dec 4


 * Edit the paragraphs: by the end of Tuesday Dec 8

--> do research and read articles on each other's parts, the references we found and put in the Google Doc


 * Improve and finalise the whole Chapter: by the end of Sunday Dec 13


 * Download and submit the PDF file to Moodle: Dec 14

Lily0212 (discuss • contribs) 14:41, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Objectives of Meeting 4
I outlined a brief to-do list in our WhatsApp chat group:

1. Share the idea of paragraph we each wrote (see if we focused on Truth+find clashes about Truth)

2. Check on the quality of all references + consistency in usage of Vancouver referencing

3. Outline the bullet points for final “Conclusion” part

Lily0212 (discuss • contribs) 17:57, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Summary of Meeting 4
In attendance: Alexia, Ling Ling; Jeanne (couldn't attend, but we caught up afterwards in the Whatsapp Groupchat)

We discussed our first drafts and how to find truths in the disciplines we chose and how these truths clash. Epidemiology functions on an inductive-based truth, proposing an age-based program for vaccine distribution, while Economics uses deductive reasoning and Sociology uses social constructionism on the research.

Objectives of today’s meeting

1. Share the idea of the paragraph we each wrote (see if we all focused on Truth+find clashes about Truth) -- checked

We found that in some parts we need to emphasize more definitions and studies we discussed, as well as cut down and use correct wording.

2. Check on the quality of all references, Consistency in the usage of Vancouver referencing  in the works

3. Outline the points for the final “Conclusion” part - in the works

We discussed how truths clash and listed the bullet points for Conclusion.

Jupiterjoyner (discuss • contribs), 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Lily0212 (discuss • contribs) 21:30, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Summary of Discussions in the Whatsapp Group Chat
Dates: 5-13 December 2020

Jeanne:


 * shared in the group chat the two best Wikibook samples on truth from previous years, so we could work on our structure and learn from them


 * reminded us to be specific on the interdisciplinary problem (what we focus on is the vaccine distribution on a national scale, not an international scale)

Alexia:


 * suggested the next meeting date to be Friday 11th and also Saturday 12th so we could revise as a whole what everyone wrote and write the conclusion together on Friday and on Saturday, and check all references and grammar mistakes


 * shared an article in the group chat: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/325/5948/1705.full that would be beneficial in the conclusion


 * shared a PDF file on Vancouver referencing


 * Proposed that until next meeting we all should make a google document, copy-pasting everything that we wrote so far, then editing in it what we want to emphasize in each paragraph or take out, so we don't alter the structure of the wiki book until we discuss together.

Ling Ling:


 * she reminded us of:

-how to find the right resources and use only peer-reviewed journals, books and government papers, not the online blog posts or news

-academic research tools (Google Scholar, UCL library while using Boolean Operators, Scopus, UCL databases)


 * she reminded and urged all group members to work and meet the deadlines ourselves set


 * she often reminded us to be precise and concise


 * shared:

-two good academic articles with detailed explanation on Positivism, Interpretivism, and Social constructionism to understand truth better

https://philosophyterms.com/positivism/

https://research-methodology.net/research-philosophy/interpretivism/

http://groundedtheoryreview.com/2012/06/01/what-is-social-constructionism/

-her lecture notes on Truth

-the link: https://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-readers/publications/epidemiology-uninitiated/1-what-epidemiology that would be useful for Epidemiological methodologies

-the link: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/languages-international-education/ucl-academic-communication-centre/academic-communication-support-and-resources-ucl/acc-useful-0 (UCL general guidance on academic essay writing)


 * pointed out and discussed the problems in the Sociology part she found

(lack of specific arguments, lack of precision and did not focus on the national scale in 2nd paragraph, change of title, lack of references in one paragraph)


 * clarified the marking criteria


 * frequently update the to-do list for the whole Chapter


 * she reminded us to identify and clearly write out the forms of truth, specific theories, and methodologies in the Chapter

(just show clear and precise points to the readers, pointed out the lack of these in Sociology part)

Jupiterjoyner (discuss • contribs), 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Lily0212 (discuss • contribs) 22:37, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Summary of Meeting 5 (12/12/2020 10:00AM-12:30AM GMT)
In attendance: Ling Ling, Alexia, Jeanne

We all worked together to cut down the words and figured out how to improve each part so that the content could be more precise.

We discussed how to paraphrase our sentences and how to make the truth more obvious in the disciplines we chose. We decided to meet again and revise what each of us redid on their paragraph based on the feedback we gave to each other.

Alexia proposed a word limit:


 * 100 words for the introduction


 * 300 words for each of our individual disciplines


 * 200 words for the conclusion

We decided to finish everything on Saturday and Sunday: paraphrase (cut down words), check references, submit into Turnitin

Lily0212 (discuss • contribs) 12:30, 12 December 2020 (UTC) Jupiterjoyner (discuss • contribs+edit)13.29, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Summary of Meeting 6 (13/12/2020 9:00AM-2:25PM GMT)
In attendance: Alexia, Ling Ling

We started the meeting by discussing our final version of the paragraphs. Since we couldn't get in touch with Jeanne, we didn't alter her part. We started with Alexia's part on Epidemiology and discussed what information is not relevant to the Truth in the discipline or to our topic: The Truth in Vaccine Distribution.

Then we started working on the introduction again by cutting down unnecessary words and trying to make it concise and relevant to our topic. Both of us discussed which words would be better to make our statement clear. We searched for an introductory sentence to the paragraph, having in mind adding the timeline of the covid pandemic as declared by WHO. We then realized the exact date is not as relevant as the fact that WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. We then added suitable referencing for the Introduction paragraph.

We then took sentence by sentence the paragraph on Economics and finished its review. We then scheduled another meeting for later tonight.

Jupiterjoyner (discuss • contribs), edit: 13th December 2020 (UTC) Lily0212 (discuss • contribs) 14:37, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Discussion
Hey! I think we can use this in the conclusion or intro: "Once an emerging flu outbreak is detected, public health authorities will attempt to mitigate it by reducing further spread as much as possible. Scarce and/or costly control measures such as vaccines, anti-infective drugs, and social distancing must be allocated while epidemiological characteristics of the disease remain uncertain" ( Reference: Optimizing infectious disease interventions during an emerging epidemic; J. Wallinga, M. van Boven and M. Lipsitch; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107 (2) (2010), pp. 923-928) Jupiterjoyner (discuss • contribs), 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for this quotation, Alexia! I think this part: "epidemiological characteristics of the disease remain uncertain" can be embedded into Conclusion to critically evaluate the positivist truth produced by epidemiological research. But the other words in this quotation seem irrelevant to our topic, "Truth in COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution". Lily0212 (discuss • contribs) 21:57, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes! I agree, not everything needs to be included, but part of it could help us make the conclusion hold better! Jupiterjoyner (discuss • contribs), 12 December 2020 (UTC)

We could also reference this bit of an article and rephrase it in the conclusion: "Keeping vaccination program implementation as simple as possible is key. This includes maximizing the efficiency of individuals who will provide vaccines and minimizing the need to apply overly burdensome or restrictive screening policies for eligibility. National recommendations should be broad enough to offer flexibility, yet specific enough to provide guidance to health care clinicians and facilities, states, and localities as they develop implementation plans." (October 22, 2020, Scientific and Ethical Principles Underlying Recommendations From the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for COVID-19 Vaccination Implementation Beth P. Bell, MD, MPH1; José R. Romero, MD2,3; Grace M. Lee, MD, MPH4; JAMA. 2020;324(20):2025-2026. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.20847; Link: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2772326#jvp200223r6) Jupiterjoyner (discuss • contribs), 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Thank you for this quotation! It is good and would be useful in the Conclusion. Lily0212 (discuss • contribs) 14:50, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Jeanne, I think this will help you: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2771874 :) Jupiterjoyner (discuss • contribs), 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Summary of Discussion through Whatsapp Messages
We told Jeanne the outcomes of the meeting between Ling Ling and Alexia.

Ling Ling reminded Jeanne about the Sociology part:
 * the content about truth is completely lacking, the long paragraphs are filled with all kinds of irrelevant information
 * to talk about the truth in Sociology, instead of things like COVAX, the situation in Lebanon etc., what matters is how sociologists construct truth
 * don't write about distributing vaccines to different countries, but within ONE country (our essay topic)
 * write about - how sociologists construct/produce truth(what they think is true) under the context of COVID-19 vaccine distribution
 * truth is a form of knowledge in academic disciplines, rather than those events happening in daily life or the reality itself
 * despite the quality of all references, pay attention to the referencing way which should be the Vancouver system

[Author(s).+Title.+Publisher.(information)+Published date.+Available from:...]

Lily0212 (discuss • contribs) 16:40, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Summary of Meeting 7 (13/12/2020 10:00PM-12:30PM GMT)
In attendance: Ling Ling, Jeanne, Alexia

We cut down irrelevant sentences in the Sociology part, paraphrase and select wording to make the sentences clearer. All of us took the Sociology part sentence by sentence and in a Zoom call reorganised the whole paragraph and stressed out the importance or refrences for some information we mentioned.

Lily0212 (discuss • contribs) 02:28, 14 December 2020 (UTC) Jupiterjoyner (discuss • contribs), 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Summary of Meeting 8 (14/12/2020 10:00AM-3:30PM GMT)
In attendance: Ling Ling, Jeanne, Alexia

We finalised the content of the whole Chapter by cutting down all irrelevant words, finishing the Conclusion together and selecting appropriate wording. Also, we checked all references, grammar and similarity rates before submission.

We took sentence by sentence the Epidemiology part and then discussed what can be improved. We rephrased the ending and then added a part from our old conclusion in the Epidemiology's conclusion.

We redid our whole conclusion. Our first draft was too long and it didn't focus on the types of approaches to truth the disciplines have, neither did it focus on how this clash. Alexia took the whole conclusion, and reworked it with Ling and Jeanne. We took the main parts of our previous conclusion are rewrote it from the beginning, focusin on how their truths clash in the implementation of COVID Vaccines.

We then added the conclusion in our wikichapter and then re-read the whole text. Then we split, each person with a task. Alexia reviewed the refrences again to see whther all of them are in Vancouver style referencing, Lilly proof read the text for grammar issues and checked if we went over the word limit; we didn't! :)

Alexia searched a relevant picture to our article from Wikimedia then asked for approval and then colaborated with the girls to read again the final draft.

Jupiterjoyner (discuss • contribs+edit), 13 December 2020, 4.23 pm (UTC) Lily0212 (discuss • contribs) 13:36, 14 December 2020 (UTC)