In a MedPage Today op-ed earlier this week, the authors made a plea for the government to “communicate about [H5N1] more efficiently and effectively.” Who could disagree?
But their title opens with a dogmatic statement, “Uncertainty Isn’t a Bad Word,” and the piece calls for our federal agencies to “communicate what they don’t know as clearly as what they do know.”
This may hold true for enlightened academics, but when it comes to the general public, uncertainty is somewhere between delicate and dangerous cargo. Uncertainty is indeed a bad word for mass communication when it’s not handled properly.