This month’s workshop was on Communicating uncertainty, assumptions and caveats – stakeholders and policy makers’ perspectives. It was a follow-up to the July workshop which had looked at the same issues but from a statistician’s perspective.

communicating uncertainty sketch

Brian Eardly (Biodiversity Unit, Scottish Government), Amanda Penistone (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero) and Lise Ruffino (Joint Nature Conservation Committee) talked about their experiences in policy departments or operating in the science-policy interface. They encouraged statisticians to

  • engage early, review regularly, and tailor output needs
  • know their audience, their technical knowledge, and what they need to make a decision
  • start with the big picture and then zoom in to present storylines
  • keep messages clear and simple
  • ensure caveats are relevant
  • show the full range of uncertainty
  • be open about assumptions and limitations to build trust

Discussion afterwards focussed on storylines, structural uncertainty and training. Storylines describing the most likely scenario and the extremes are all important, but the extremes are more likely to be considered seriously by policymakers when stakeholders hold a strong position on a topic. Assessing structural uncertainty properly (e.g. getting multiple teams to work on the same problem) is desirable, but the costs of doing so would usually be prohibitive. In practice, it is more important to have a good understanding of the modelling assumptions. One-off training events, for statisticians to understand what policymakers might need and for policymakers to understand about uncertainty might be useful, particularly for strengthening key principles of successful engagement, with the caveat that high rotation of government policymakers may present a barrier to long-term relationships. Shadowing of policymakers or stakeholders might be a better option, especially if embedded within a project early on, with opportunities to apply learnings to practical case studies. The most useful approach is to engage early.

Key messages: Engage early, build trust, be transparent, know your audience, keep it simple.