EU Agencies within the EU Agency Network for Scientific Advice (EU ANSA) provide scientific advice to EU policy makers across a broad spectrum of disciplines from public health to gender equality.
A preliminary exploration of approaches to address scientific uncertainty by EU ANSA member Agencies was undertaken to better understand how uncertainty is conceptualised and addressed, and to identify common themes and issues as stimuli for further thinking about the identification and communication of scientific uncertainty in Agency scientific outputs.
A simple descriptive assessment reviewed a) overarching guidance on handling uncertainty in each agency, and b) specific scientific outputs from each agency to understand how uncertainty was handled’ ‘in practice’. Participating Agencies were also invited to submit pertinent examples of scientific outputs which illustrate good practice and challenges in handling scientific uncertainty.
The identification and communication of scientific uncertainty was universally recognised as important among the 12 EU ANSA Agencies in the study. The study also revealed some variance in how scientific uncertainty was conceptualised and thus how it was viewed and subsequently addressed. Uncertainty was reported as being relevant in broad number of scientific activities including work planning, study design and methodology, representativeness and reliability of data, interpretation and extrapolation of results and clarity of key messages.
Some Agencies have implemented specific internal procedures to support routine assessment and documentation of uncertainty, including examples of sophisticated frameworks to define and characterise uncertainty with systematic, quantitative approaches. However such a framework may not readily lend itself to the work of some Agencies, and even in the absence of such frameworks, many Agencies invested significant effort to clearly define and communicate methodology approaches and quality control to inform the reader of potential issues that may influence the certainty of resultant conclusions.
Ultimately, most Agencies apply a ‘fit-for-purpose’ approach to uncertainty, but that the opportunity to share experiences and practises with other Agencies supports further review and refinement of approaches, while ensuring that uncertainty is presented appropriately for the mandate and demands of each agency, as well as for their policy stakeholders.