Risk and Uncertainty in a Post-Truth Society

Sander van der Linden is Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Cambridge, UK, where he directs the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Laboratory.Ragnar E. Löfstedt is Professor of Risk Management at King’s College London, UK, and Director of King’s Centre for Risk Management.

• Introduction: Risk and Uncertainty in a Post-Truth Society 1. Trust in Numbers 2. Science and Policy in a Post-Truth World 3. Trustworthiness, Quality and Value: The Regulation of Official Statistics in a Post-Truth Age 4. Risk and Uncertainty in the Context of Government Decision-Making 5. The Handling of Uncertainty: A Risk Manager’s Perspective

"The question of what constitutes acceptable risk has always involved a judgement about both science and politics. This issue is brought into sharp focus in this volume about the changing relationship between science, novel risks and society. The contributors, drawn from academia and the world of government policy, show how this relationship is of critical importance for the ways we now think about trust in institutions and risk governance. The important message of the book is that while we have not yet reached a ‘post-truth’ world in decision-making about risks, we need to guard against such a situation happening in the future. A timely and welcome contribution to a critical contemporary societal debate." -- Nick Pidgeon MBE, Professor and Director of the Understanding Risk Research Group, Cardiff University, UK