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?

There are many ways in which we are uncertain about the world around us, without even considering unavoidable uncertainty about the future. Not acknowledging or adequately communicating these uncertainties, leading to unwarranted degrees of weight being put on certain pieces of evidence in the process of decision-making, can have disastrous consequences.

Because of its wide-reaching effects, uncertainty communication should be an important issue for policy makers, experts and scientists across many fields. Many of those fields carry the scars of attempts to avoid communicating uncertainty, or of poorly considered communications of uncertainty.

excerpts from
van der Bles AM, & al. 2019 Communicating uncertainty about facts, numbers and science. R. Soc. open sci. 6: 181870. 

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