ReviewRoyal Society open science2019
Communicating uncertainty about facts, numbers and science.
Review in Royal Society open science, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 93 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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
93 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Factors That Influence Prescribing in Borderline Personality Disorder: A Systematic Review.Personality and mental health · 2025Pooled it
- Experiences of Public Health Professionals Regarding Crisis Communication During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Systematic Review of Qualitative Studies.JMIR infodemiology · 2025Pooled it
- Taxonomies for synthesizing the evidence on communicating numbers in health: Goals, format, and structure.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2022Pooled it
- A robust Bayesian bias-adjusted random effects model for consideration of uncertainty about bias terms in evidence synthesis.Statistics in medicine · 2022Pooled it
- Evidence of detrimental effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on offspring birthweight and neurodevelopment from a systematic review of quasi-experimental studies.International journal of epidemiology · 2021Pooled it
- Trial
- Randomized controlled trial: Quantifying the impact of disclosing uncertainty on adherence to hypothetical health recommendations.PloS one · 2022Trial
- Trial
- Navigating the Prescription Drug Information System.Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics · 2026Review
- Advances in small area population estimation in the absence of national census data.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Review
- Understanding anxiety through uncertainty quantification.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2026Article
- Robust estimates of biodiversity change require high-resolution time series.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Meta-analytic-predictive priors based on a single study.Research synthesis methods · 2026Article
- Enhancing epidemic forecast usability for policymakers: A global mixed-methods study.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Towards a unified approach to formal "risk of bias" assessments for causal and descriptive inference.Quality & quantity · 2026Article
- How understanding the diversity of perspectives and systems in governments can increase the impact of scientific research.Communications health · 2026Review
- Engaging with uncertainty when engagement is uncertain.Frontiers in bioinformatics · 2026Article
- Hedging, ambiguity, and the rejection of misinformation: evidence from Chinese readers.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Uncertainty displays in pandemic dashboards: a review of COVID-19 use cases.Frontiers in digital health · 2026Article
- Scientific publications that use promotional language in the abstract receive more citations and public attention.Communications psychology · 2025Article
33 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Uncertainty is an inherent part of knowledge, and yet in an era of contested expertise, many shy away from openly communicating their uncertainty about what they know, fearful of their audience's reaction. But what effect does communication of such epistemic uncertainty have? Empirical research is widely scattered across many disciplines. This interdisciplinary review structures and summarizes current practice and research across domains, combining a statistical and psychological perspective. This informs a framework for uncertainty communication in which we identify three objects of uncertainty-facts, numbers and science-and two levels of uncertainty: direct and indirect. An examination of current practices provides a scale of nine expressions of direct uncertainty. We discuss attempts to codify indirect uncertainty in terms of quality of the underlying evidence. We review the limited literature about the effects of communicating epistemic uncertainty on cognition, affect, trust and decision-making. While there is some evidence that communicating epistemic uncertainty does not necessarily affect audiences negatively, impact can vary between individuals and communication formats. Case studies in economic statistics and climate change illustrate our framework in action. We conclude with advice to guide both communicators and future researchers in this important but so far rather neglected field.
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.