@article{e30639f3bcfa4f779d1278b96b3a8cbe,
title = "The ethics of scientific communication under uncertainty",
abstract = "Communication by scientists with policy makers and attentive publics raises ethical issues. Scientists need to decide how to communicate knowledge effectively in a way that nonscientists can understand and use, while remaining honest scientists and presenting estimates of the uncertainty of their inferences. They need to understand their own ethical choices in using scientific information to communicate to audiences. These issues were salient in the Fourth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with respect to possible sea level rise from disintegration of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Due to uncertainty, the reported values of projected sea level rise were incomplete, potentially leading some relevant audiences to underestimate future risk. Such judgments should be made in a principled rather than an ad hoc manner. Five principles for scientific communication under such conditions are important: honesty, precision, audience relevance, process transparency, and specification of uncertainty about conclusions. Some of these principles are of intrinsic importance while others are merely instrumental and subject to trade-offs among them. Scientists engaged in assessments under uncertainty should understand these principles and which trade-offs are acceptable.",
keywords = "IPCC, Uncertainty, communication, ethics, expertise",
author = "Keohane, {Robert O.} and Melissa Lane and Michael Oppenheimer",
note = "Funding Information: We are grateful to Michael Lamb for research assistance and substantive contribution to the argument supported by the Princeton University Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) as part of their sponsoring of a research community on {\textquoteleft}Communicating Uncertainty: Science, Institutions, and Ethics in the Politics of Global Climate Change{\textquoteright} in which the authors participate. Craig Murphy and Harold Shapiro each read earlier drafts to our benefit; we especially thank Shapiro for perceptive written comments on a late stage draft. This article was first presented in New Orleans on March 8–9, 2013, at the invited PPE Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the journal Politics, Philosophy and Economics ; a revised version was presented for discussion (initiated by commentator Thomas Hale) at a workshop on the Ethics of Risk and Climate Change sponsored by the PIIRS research community on {\textquoteleft}Communicating Uncertainty{\textquoteright} on April 12–13, 2013; and a further revision was discussed at a PIIRS Director{\textquoteright}s Book Forum on March 5, 2014; a final discussion at the Princeton Workshop on Epistemic Dimensions of Democracy Revised on April 30, 2014, raised broad questions that we must defer to future research. We are grateful to the participants in all of these meetings for discussion and to the anonymous referees of this journal for their helpful suggestions. Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2014.",
year = "2014",
month = nov,
day = "12",
doi = "10.1177/1470594X14538570",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "13",
pages = "343--368",
journal = "Politics, Philosophy and Economics",
issn = "1470-594X",
publisher = "SAGE Publications Inc.",
number = "4",
}