Science, Policy & Pandemics: Episode 2 - Communicating Evidence and Uncertainty

What do we know about public trust in expert knowledge when the stakes are high and there is considerable uncertainty?

This week, our host Dr Rob Doubleday sits down with Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter and Dr Alexandra Freeman of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication. In the context of the current pandemic, we discuss what research has been done on the best way to communicate evidence and uncertainty and the best way to communicate the relationship between expert advice and political decision making. 

CSaP's Science and Policy Podcast is a production of the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge. This series on science, policy and pandemics is produced in partnership with Cambridge Infectious Diseases and the Cambridge Immunology Network. 

Our guests this week: 

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter is Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge.  He was Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge from 2007 to 2018. He has worked on Understanding Uncertainty, and is the acclaimed author of The Art of Statistics. He has recently been exploring the question "how much ‘normal’ risk does Covid represent?", and he regularly hosts the podcast Risky Talk.

Dr Alexandra Freeman is the Executive Director of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication. She previously worked for the BBC, primarily a producer and director for BBC Science. She worked on a number of popular series including "Walking with Beasts", "Trust Me I'm a Doctor" and "Climate Change by Numbers". Her work has won numerous awards, including a BAFTA and the AAAS Kavli gold award for science journalism. She has recently written about how different countries are reacting to the COVID-19 risk and their governments’ responses.

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This series is hosted by CSaP Executive Director Dr Rob Doubleday, and is edited and produced by CSaP Communications Coordinator Kate McNeil. If you have feedback about this episode, or questions you’d like us to address in a future week, please email enquiries@csap.cam.ac.uk .