Anything nuclear evokes dread, and the opposition to the plutonium dioxide on board Cassini may be driven more by this single factor than any other. Another issue occasionally raised in hazards literature is public trust of institutions responsible for risk assessment, risk management, and emergency response. The proposed study will attempt to evaluate the extent to which suspicion of NASA itself has inspired mistrust of its process of risk assessment in the case of Cassini. Much of this hazards perception literature is dominated by a focus on individual perception and behavior largely bypassing structures within the whole and their evolution. The structuring of the public and the social reproduction of an activist vanguard will be one contribution of the study.
Risk management is the development and implementation of policy to minimize hazard.
Only risk managers can decide whether Type I or Type II errors have the graver consequences morally and politically, and it is this sort of policy choice that determines whether the epistemological problems inherent in risk assessment delegitimate its findings or not. Prior Work in Media Criticism Media are often criticized for sensationalizing hazard stories, which can inflate public concern about minimal risks. This is a criticism echoed within the NASA Cassini team. Some media observers hold that media should report on breakdowns in institutional protections for society and provide a forum for debate on public issues that might not be well described by official statistics. Opponents argue that NASA's process of risk assessment resulted in statistics designed to protect the mission more than the public.