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Uncertainty Risk Trust And Information In Literature Review

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The Article, “Uncertainty, Risk, Trust, and Information: Public Perceptions of Environmental Issues and Willingness to Take Action” written by Reneé J. Johnson and Michael J. Scicchitano in its current form is unfit for publication. Johnson and Scicchitano should be commended for identifying a gap in our ability to accurately quantify the strength and intensity of environmental concerns. This gap is certainly worthy of further study; however, their execution and attempt to quantify this phenomena does not have the necessary wherewithal to close the gap in the literature as it stands. The problems with their work begins almost immediately in the initial literature review. The literature review is plagued by Ill-defined, or simply …show more content…

Further, the literature review suffers from an additional lack of clarity in the paragraph on the bottom of page 634. Here, the authors begin to delve into the theory and rationalization behind including uncertainty as an appropriate measure. The authors write, “Uncertainty can affect an individuals willingness to act on environmental beliefs in several ways” signaling to the reader that a laundry list of factors is to follow. However, they only make mention of one tangentially linked evidence based factor, that an increase in the complexity of issues leads to increased uncertainty in the scientific community. No further examples in support of uncertainty follow this one. Instead, the authors pivot towards unfounded speculation about uncertainties role in individuals willingness to take environmental action, and then they abruptly transition to their discussion of trust. The issue of uncertainty persists in the manner with which the authors have chosen to operationalize their research question. When operationalizing their research question the authors made several critical clerical errors that could have impacted their results. In their discussion of uncertainty there is a lack of clarity in the definition used which could cause confusion given the associated context in which the measure is being used. The definition of uncertainty within the scientific community most certainly differs from the

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