ArticleSociology of health & illness2025
Why Forensic Pathologists Maintain Uncertainty in Reporting Causes of Death: How Communicative Uncertainty Devices Shape Reasoning.
Article in Sociology of health & illness, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 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
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Structuring medico-legal autopsy data for public health surveillance using the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases: a retrospective cohort study.European journal of public health · 2026Article
- Why Forensic Pathologists Maintain Uncertainty in Reporting Causes of Death: How Communicative Uncertainty Devices Shape Reasoning.Sociology of health & illness · 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
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
This paper examines how forensic pathologists in Sweden understand and reason around how to communicate the un/certainty of cause of death, given their position to other actors. The paper explores uncertainty work related to the understanding and reasoning on how to use a degree of certainty scale. To define the scale, I introduce the concept of communicative uncertainty device, a concept which can stimulate new questions and comparisons across domains. I outline conservative and liberal approaches to reporting certainty and how dependency on the police for circumstantial information maintains communication of uncertainty. The risk of being called to court gives careful formulation of un/certainty weight, but collegial reviewing shapes more precisely what to write.
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.