ArticleRisk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis2017
Communicating Uncertain Science to the Public: How Amount and Source of Uncertainty Impact Fatalism, Backlash, and Overload.
Article in Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Psychological Impact of Ambiguous Health Messages about COVID-19.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2022Trial
- Uncertainty communication, trust and health promotion.Health promotion and chronic disease prevention in Canada : research, policy and practice · 2025Article
- Improving the communication of uncertainty in food safety on social media: a content analysis of aspartame risk messages.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Communicating scientific uncertainty in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic: A message experiment.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2024Article
- Article
- Trust and consequences: Role of community science, perceptions, values, and environmental justice in risk communication.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2022Article
- Examining Rural-Urban Differences in Fatalism and Information Overload: Data from 12 NCI-Designated Cancer Centers.Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology · 2022Article
- Public engagement and argumentation in science.European journal for philosophy of science · 2022Article
- Communication of Uncertainty about Preliminary Evidence and the Spread of Its Inferred Misinformation during the COVID-19 Pandemic-A Weibo Case Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- From information seeking to information avoidance: Understanding the health information behavior during a global health crisis.Information processing & management · 2021Article
- Effects of communicating uncertainty descriptions in hazard identification, risk characterization, and risk protection.PloS one · 2021Article
- The Evolving Field of Risk Communication.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2020Article
- Revisiting nutrition backlash: Psychometric properties and discriminant validity of the nutrition backlash scale.Nutrition (Burbank, Los Angeles County, Calif.) · 2020Article
- Communicating uncertainty about facts, numbers and science.Royal Society open science · 2019Review
- Assessing the impact of the public nutrition information environment: Adapting the cancer information overload scale to measure diet information overload.Patient education and counseling · 2019Article
- Guidance on Communication of Uncertainty in Scientific Assessments.EFSA journal. European Food Safety Authority · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Public dissemination of scientific research often focuses on the finding (e.g., nanobombs kill lung cancer) rather than the uncertainty/limitations (e.g., in mice). Adults (n = 880) participated in an experiment where they read a manipulated news report about cancer research (a) that contained either low or high uncertainty (b) that was attributed to the scientists responsible for the research (disclosure condition) or an unaffiliated scientist (dueling condition). Compared to the dueling condition, the disclosure condition triggered less prevention-focused cancer fatalism and nutritional backlash.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.