Making sense of uncertainty

Sense about Science (a British charity whose name, unusually, is actually accurate) have just launched a publication “Making Sense of Uncertainty”, following their previous guides for the public and journalists that cover screening, medical tests, chemical stories, statistics, and radiation.

Researchers in climate science, disease modelling, epidemiology, weather forecasting and natural hazard prediction say that we should be relieved when scientists describe the uncertainties in their work. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we cannot make decisions – we might well have ‘operational knowledge’ – but it does mean that there is greater confidence about what is known and unknown.
Launching a guide to Making Sense of Uncertainty at the World Conference of Science Journalists today, researchers working in some of the most significant, cutting edge fields say that if policy makers and the public are discouraged by the existence of uncertainty, we miss out on important discussions about the development of new drugs, taking action to mitigate the impact of natural hazards, how to respond to the changing climate and to pandemic threats.
Interrogated with the question ‘But are you certain?’, they say, they have ended up sounding defensive or as though their results are not meaningful. Instead we need to embrace uncertainty, especially when trying to understand more about complex systems, and ask about operational knowledge: ‘What do we need to know to make a decision? And do we know it?’