ArticleRisk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis2025
Out of sight but still in mind: Developing an expectation for surprises by formalizing unknowledge in a contemporary risk-assessment framework.
Article in Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 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
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Potential Surprise Theory as a Practical and Theoretical Cornerstone of the Uncertainty-Based Perspective on Risk.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2026Article
- Looking for a Straw in a Haystack by Bridging the Cracks Between Individual Judgments: Narrowing the Knowledge Gap To Anticipate Surprises by Transforming Risk Assessors' Small Worlds Into Large Worlds.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2026Article
- Adapting Scenario Planning to Create an Expectation for Surprises: Going Beyond Probability and Plausibility in Risk Assessment.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2025Article
- Out of sight but still in mind: Developing an expectation for surprises by formalizing unknowledge in a contemporary risk-assessment framework.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Extreme events like the credit crunch, the September 11th attacks, the coronavirus pandemic, and Hamas' attack on Israel each have in common that they should not have come as a surprise, yet still did. One reason surprises happen is that a risk assessment reflects the knowledge of the assessors, yet risk also includes uncertainties that extend beyond this knowledge. A risk assessment is thus susceptible to surprises as it focuses attention on what is known. Developing an expectation for surprises is key to their avoidance and requires that risk assessors specifically consider their "unknowledge"-that is, what they do not presently know about an event, outcome, or activity and its potential consequences and triggers. One way to emphasize the need for risk assessors to consider unknowledge is to explicitly include it as a separate component in risk-assessment frameworks. This article formalizes the inclusion of unknowledge in a contemporary risk-assessment framework.
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.