The Effects of Uncertainty Frames in Three Science Communication Topics
Open accessAbstract
While uncertainty is central to science, many fear negative effects of communicating scientific uncertainties to the public, though research results about such effects are inconsistent. Therefore, we test the effects of four distinct uncertainty frame types (deficient, technical, scientific, consensus) on three outcomes (belief, credibility, behavioral intentions) across three science issues (climate change, GMO food labeling, machinery hazards) with an experiment using a national sample ( N = 2,247) approximating U.S. census levels of age, education, and gender. We find portraying scientific findings using uncertainty frames usually does not have significant effects, with an occasional exception being small negative effects of consensus uncertainty.
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Gustafson and Rice found some negative effects of consensus uncertainty in one topic (climate change) but not in two others (GMO food labeling and machinery hazards).
“Gustafson and Rice (2019) found some negative effects of consensus uncertainty in one topic (climate change) but not in two others (GMO food labeling and machinery hazards).”
From A review of the effects of uncertainty in public science communication (2020) · cites this paper as Gustafson and Rice, 2019
The Summary reports small negative effects of consensus uncertainty in both the climate change (CC) and vibrating machinery (VM) conditions, but not the GMO condition. The Discussion likewise reports significantly lower claim belief for both climate change and machinery, contrary to the claim that machinery showed no negative effect. (LLM, conf=0.92)
Checked by a reasoning model — may be wrong.
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredCommunicating consensus uncertainty can have negative effects on trust, whereas communicating technical uncertainty in estimates or models via confidence intervals or similar techniques has either positive or null effects for perception of scientific credibility.
“Whereas communicating consensus uncertainty - that is, uncertainty in expert opinions on an issue - can have negative effects on trust, communicating technical uncertainty in estimates or models via confidence intervals or similar techniques has either positive or null effects for perception of scientific credibility 154 .”
From Predictors and consequences of intellectual humility (2022) · cites this paper as [154]
Split into 2 atoms — 1 confirmed, 1 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 0 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredGustafson and Rice tested the effects of four uncertainty types across three different science topics, finding that three of the four uncertainty types had no significant effects on beliefs, risk perceptions, or behavioral intentions.
“Gustafson and Rice (2019) tested the effects of four uncertainty types across three different science topics, finding that three of the four uncertainty types had no significant effects on beliefs, risk perceptions, or behavioral intentions.”
From A review of the effects of uncertainty in public science communication (2020) · cites this paper as Gustafson and Rice, 2019
The Abstract and Discussion report that four uncertainty frames were tested across three science topics and that scientific, technical, and deficient uncertainty showed no pattern of significant effects relative to the control. But the paper identifies its measured outcomes as claim belief, credibility, and behavioral intention—not risk perceptions. The claim substitutes risk perceptions for credibility. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredCommunicating uncertainty has been identified by scholars as a type of framing in science communication.
“communicating uncertainty has been identified by scholars as a type of framing in science communication (Gustafson and Rice, 2019;Rice et al., 2018;Ruhrmann et al., 2015;Simis, 2013).”
From A review of the effects of uncertainty in public science communication (2020) · cites this paper as Gustafson and Rice, 2019
Detrimental effects of uncertainty on trust were small and mostly limited to verbal but not numerical expressions of uncertainty.
“Yet, such detrimental effects were small and mostly limited to verbal (e.g. hedges, i.e. words such as appear, seem, likely, might or could) but not numerical (e.g. numerical ranges of estimates) expressions of uncertainty (8, 9, 22).”
From Expressions of uncertainty in online science communication hinder information diffusion (2024) · cites this paper as [22]
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Shorter message, stronger framing increases societal acceptance for hydrogen
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Umgang mit Ungewissheit als Charakteristikum von Nature of Science
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Inclusive science communication as a tool to address One Health challenges
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Effects of Construal Level on Responses to Ambiguous Health Information about Alcohol Consumption
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Treading Waters: The Many Socio-ethical Challenges of Science and Health Journalism
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How to maintain trustworthiness when doctors act as policy advocates
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The evolution of media reportage on GMOs in Ghana following approval of first GM crop
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A toolbox to deal with misinformation in disaster risk management
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The role of consensus messaging in teaching evolution
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Protest Under Uncertainty: Evidence from a Survey Experiment
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Modeling Information Change in Science Communication with Semantically Matched Paraphrases
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BOLD STATEMENTS in environmental and climate science communicationPreprint
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The Pernicious Effects of Uncertainty on Municipal Climate Action
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Klimabildung in der VUCA-Welt: Mit Ungewissheiten und Unsicherheiten umgehen (lernen)
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Science of Science: An Integrated and Methods-Driven Understanding of Science
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News Consumption and the Illiberal Public Sphere During the COVID-19 Pandemic
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- Authors
- Gustafson, A., & Rice, R. E.
- Affiliations
- Yale University (US)
- University of California, Santa Barbara (US)
- Corresponding author
- Gustafson, Abel
- Venue
- Science Communication
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2019-08-30
- Volume
- 41
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 679-706
- ISSN
- 0164-0259 (ISSN-L)
- 1075-5470
- 1552-8545
- OpenAlex
- W2971001315
- Cited by
- 151
- References
- 83
- Citations by year
- 2026: 38 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 50 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 4
- FWCI
- 13.59
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- escholarship.org
- Locations
- Science Communication (publishedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Yale University
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Climate Change Communication and Perception
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Risk Perception and Management
- Social Sciences › Communication › Communication and COVID-19 Impact
- Keywords
- uncertainty framing, public understanding of science, climate change, genetically modified food labeling, mechanical hazards, belief revision, credibility, behavioral intention, technological uncertainty
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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