ArticlePNAS nexus2025
The effect of uncertainty communication on public trust depends on belief
Article in PNAS nexus, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 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
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Engaging with uncertainty when engagement is uncertain.Frontiers in bioinformatics · 2026Article
- The Endocannabinoid-Microbiota-Neuroimmune Super-System: A Unifying Feedback Architecture for Systems Resilience, Collapse Trajectories, and Precision Feedback Medicine.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Uncertainty communication, trust and health promotion.Health promotion and chronic disease prevention in Canada : research, policy and practice · 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
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Not everyone perceives the communication of uncertainty about scientific evidence as equally trustworthy. We examine whether these differences in trust can be explained by people's prior beliefs-specifically, the consistency between those beliefs and the evidence presented. We hypothesize that the more consistent the evidence is with people's prior beliefs, the less people will trust both the information and its source when uncertainty is communicated compared with when it is not communicated. Conversely, the less consistent the evidence is with people's prior beliefs, the more people will trust the information and its source when uncertainty is communicated. We tested this crossover interaction in two preregistered online experiments on COVID-19 vaccines (study 1:
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.