Evidence based uncertainty: what is needed now?

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Acknowledgements

The views communicated in this piece are a summary of key discussion points from a workshop held at the UK Royal Society ‘Evidence based uncertainty: What is needed now?’ in London on the 6th of March 2019. The workshop was hosted by Dr. Elizabeth Surkovic and Benjamin Konnert and chaired by Professor Dame Anne Glover FRS. We are grateful for comments from Baruch Fischhoff on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

1 One way to achieve this would be to have several mini-summits in cities including Brasilia, Brussels, Tokyo and Washington DC with a range of regulators attending each local summit.

2 Key institutional actors involved in further developments of uncertainty guidance documentation could be better supported by clear institutional challenges that are set, either by the Chief Scientific Advisor (as is the norm in the UK policy system) or by the Science Advisory Mechanism (SAM which is the case in the European Commission).

3 For instance, with respect to EFSA, there could be greater engagement between them and Directorate General SANTE – this is the directorate general responsible for the implementation of European Union laws on the safety of food and other products. The reason that forging closer associations would help to illuminate areas of possible misunderstanding, as well as identify areas of common practice and best practice in communicating uncertainty from analyses within EFSA’s risk assessments and beyond.

4 Key institutional actors involved in further developments of uncertainty guidance documentation could be better supported by clear institutional challenges that are set, either by the Chief Scientific Advisor (as is the norm in the UK policy system) or by the Science Advisory Mechanism (SAM which is the case in the European Commission).