Even though a main goal of science is to reduce the uncertainty in scientific results by applying ever-improving research methods, epistemic uncertainty is an integral part of science. As such, while uncertainty might be communicated in news articles about climate science, climate skeptics have also exploited this uncertainty to cast doubt on science itself. We performed two studies to assess whether scientific uncertainty affects laypeople’s assessments of issue uncertainty, the credibility of the information, their trust in scientists and climate science, and impacts their decision-making. In addition, we addressed how these effects are influenced by further information on relevant scientific processes, because knowing that uncertainty goes along with scientific research could ease laypeople’s interpretations of uncertainty around evidence and may even protect against negative impacts of such uncertainty on trust. Unexpectedly, in study 1, after participants read both a text about research methods and a news article that included scientific uncertainty, they had lower trust in the scientists’ assertions than when they read the uncertain news article alone (but this did not impact trust in climate science or decision-making). In study 2, we tested whether these results occurred due to participants overestimating the scientific uncertainty at hand. Hence, we varied the framing of uncertainty in the text on scientific processes. We found that exaggerating the scientific uncertainty produced by scientific processes (vs. framing the uncertainty as something to be expected) did not negatively affect participants’ trust ratings. However, the degree to which participants preferred effortful reasoning on problems (intellective epistemic style) correlated with ratings of trust in scientists and climate science and with their decision-making. In sum, there was only little evidence that the introduction of uncertainty in news articles would affect participants’ ratings of trust and their decision-making, but their preferred style of reasoning did.

中文翻译：

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新闻文章中的科学不确定性会影响读者的信任和决策吗？

尽管科学的主要目标是通过应用不断改进的研究方法来减少科学结果中的不确定性，但认知不确定性却是科学不可或缺的一部分。这样，尽管不确定性可能会在有关气候科学的新闻中传达，但气候怀疑论者也利用这种不确定性对科学本身提出了质疑。我们进行了两项研究，以评估科学不确定性是否会影响外行对问题不确定性的评估，信息的可信度，他们对科学家和气候科学的信任，并影响他们的决策。此外，我们探讨了有关科学过程的更多信息如何影响这些影响，因为知道不确定性与科学研究一起可以减轻外行人对证据周围不确定性的解释，甚至可以防止此类不确定性对信任的负面影响。出乎意料的是，在研究1中，参与者阅读了有关研究方法的文本和包含科学不确定性的新闻文章后，对科学家的主张的信任度比仅阅读不确定性新闻文章时的信任度低（但这并不影响对科学方法的信任）。气候科学或决策）。在研究2中，我们测试了这些结果是否由于参与者高估了手头的科学不确定性而发生。因此，我们改变了关于科学过程的不确定性框架。我们发现夸大了由科学过程产生的科学不确定性（相对于 将不确定性归结为预期的东西）不会对参与者的信任度产生负面影响。但是，参与者偏爱对问题进行努力推理（智力认识论风格）的程度与对科学家和气候科学的信任程度以及他们的决策相关。总而言之，几乎没有证据表明新闻报道中引入不确定性会影响参与者的信任度和决策能力，但是他们偏爱的推理方式却能做到。