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The Science of Science Communication III Inspiring Novel Collaborations and Building Capacity: Proceedings of a Colloquium (2018) / Chapter Skim
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9 Communicating Uncertainty
Pages 61-66

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From page 61...
... Communicating uncertainty is one of the biggest challenges journalists face, said Laura Helmuth, national editor of health, science, and environment at The Washington Post, who moderated the session at the colloquium on uncertainty in science communication. Uncertainty is hard to explain and understand.
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From page 62...
... Wishful extrapolation is using untenable assumptions to extend a conclusion in a desired direction, as when limited studies of drug outcomes are used to predict what will happen in clinical practice. Illogical certitudes draw unfounded conclusions based on deductive errors, as with research that misinterprets the heritability of personal traits.
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From page 63...
... Maintaining trust may require expressing uncertainty. "Once you accept incredible certitude and take numbers at face value when they shouldn't be, there may be a slippery slope from incredible certitude to utter disregard for truth.
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From page 64...
... The abstract of the first article said that New Zealand is considering gene drives as a way to locally eliminate mam malian pests and that the article will explore the risk of accidental spread following deployment, concluding that open and international discussions are needed about a technology that could have global ramifications. However, these international discussions have been going on for nearly a decade, Gould observed, raising questions about why the researchers ignored previous work of their colleagues in raising such an alarm and why journalists amplified this alarm without checking with other sources.
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From page 65...
... The largest response when people were asked whether "editing genes in wildlife to decrease or eliminate local populations of animals or plants that are causing environmental problems is morally acceptable" was "neither agree nor disagree," with a rough split between people who agreed with the statement and those who disagreed. The moral context varies from place to place depending on such factors as regulation, laws, institutional rules, and religiosity, Brossard observed.
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  • recently collected

  • maintaining trust
  • laura helmuth
  • conflating science
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  • personal traits
  • institutional rules
  • unsupported assumptions
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  • engineered mosquitoes


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