Communicating Scientific Uncertainty Across the Dissemination Trajectory: A Precision Medicine Case Study

Abstract

This study provides an in-depth analysis of how scientific uncertainty was conveyed along the dissemination pathway for a novel discovery linking genomic markers to depression risk. In this article, knowledge limitations described in the original scientific paper were mostly omitted from press releases, and a majority of news coverage mirrored press release content. However, the affiliated scientists depicted uncertainty to different degrees, appearing to influence the tenor of each institution’s press release and the news reports for which they were interviewed or quoted. News reports sometimes conveyed more caveats than the original scientific report. This case study presents detailed examples of uncertainty representations in the emerging domain of precision medicine, organized by a typology to guide future research.