ArticleScientific reports2025
Understanding health knowledge failures: uncertainty versus misinformation.
Article in Scientific reports, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 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.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Influenza Vaccination Status and Associated Factors Among Older Adults in Suzhou, China: A Comparative Cross-Sectional Survey.Vaccines · 2026Article
- Health literacy and biosimilar acceptance in people with multiple sclerosis: a cross-sectional study.BMC nursing · 2026Article
- Conditional effects of source expertise and pre-existing attitudes on objective knowledge in AI-assisted health information verification.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Understanding Incorrectness: Structural and Ideologic Predictors of Public Knowledge About MAID Legality in the U.S.Journal of general internal medicine · 2026Article
- Predatory marketing and false health promotion on social media: risk pathways in diet, fitness, and supplement communication.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
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
Studies of health literacy often employ knowledge measures and typically focus on the correct answers as reflections of the level of (accurate) knowledge and literacy. The wrong answers are treated as failures but usually without further consideration. This paper argues for the importance of distinguishing two forms of knowledge failure-being uninformed(uncertain about information) and being misinformed(believing objectively wrong information)-because of their differing effects on communication responses and associated judgments and decisions. A measure is developed from the incorrect answers indicating error due to uncertainty versus error due to misinformation. In a survey of a representative sample survey of Swiss adults, the uninformed are more likely than the misinformed to hold positive beliefs and attitudes toward vaccination, recommend them to others, and received more vaccinations themselves. The effects are distinguished from those of objective knowledge and suggest that the misinformed form a distinctive group. The importance of separately measuring and understanding knowledge failures to consumer judgement, decision, and welfare are discussed.
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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.