Science has its own set of language norms. Understanding those norms is important to understanding the science being communicated.
By Cicely Rude
The word “uncertain” means something different in a laboratory than it does in a classroom, and that gap has real consequences for teachers. This is true for any student, but it becomes especially evident when students are learning English and science at the same time.
In science, uncertainty is a measurement. It tells us how well something is known: how tight the error bars are, how many studies point the same direction, and how much confidence the evidence warrants. To a scientist, saying “we’re 95% confident” is a statement of precision, not doubt. Research has shown that communicating uncertainty does not necessarily erode public trust, but that the way uncertainty is framed shapes how audiences interpret what scientists know (van der Bles et al., 2019).
But walk that same phrase into a classroom and it can land very differently. For many students, “we’re not sure” can sound like an invitation to dismiss the finding altogether. And in communities where trust in institutions is already strained, that misreading may be a completely rational response to words that might signal weakness.
“Uncertainty is a natural part of scientific research, but in the public domain it can be used selectively to discredit undesirable results or postpone important policies,” writes Stephen Broomell of Carnegie Mellon University.
Research by Broomell and Kane (2017) found that people’s sense of how certain a science is doesn’t match reality. Take forensics: Most people see it as rock-solid, yet it actually relies on estimating probabilities, much like psychology does. And people rated psychology as the least certain science of all. Their judgments also shaped how much funding they thought each field deserved. Perception, in other words, has policy consequences. More recent work found that people tend to interpret uncertainty through their own prior experiences and beliefs, not through technical definitions (Beets et al., 2025).
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The language layer
Scientific language makes specific demands on readers, and those demands aren’t always obvious. Academic English carries its own conventions for expressing confidence, and those conventions aren’t intuitive even for fluent speakers. Common hedging phrases like “the data suggest,” “findings indicate,” or “results are consistent with” can sound evasive or uncommitted to students who haven’t yet learned to read them as markers of scientific precision. Research on multilingual learners is particularly revealing here: It shows that students draw on multiple linguistic resources when making sense of scientific ideas, and that their language practices are integral to, not separate from, scientific reasoning (González-Howard et al., 2023). In other words, how students read and talk about science shapes what they understand about it.
A student who hears “scientists believe the climate is warming” and interprets “believe” as personal opinion rather than evidential confidence isn’t making an error. They’re making a reasonable inference from a word that’s in everyday use. The same is true in math and social studies: When a statistician says a result is “significant,” they mean something precise that has nothing to do with whether the finding is important. These mismatches are everywhere, and they’re not always visible to teachers or researchers who have already internalized the vocabulary of their discipline.
When students encounter the phrase “scientists are still studying this,” do they hear (a) science is working, and new evidence will refine what we know, or (b) nobody really knows, so any opinion is as valid as any other? The answer may depend less on the student and more on how the idea was introduced.
What the research suggests for educators
Broomell and Kane (2017) found something encouraging: General attitudes toward a scientific field didn’t necessarily predict how people judged individual research findings. Focused, concrete communication about specific results can shift understanding even when broader skepticism exists. For teachers, this points toward a practical principle: to ground science communication in particular findings and concrete evidence before zooming out to defend scientific practice in the abstract. Here are a few ways to put that into practice in any science classroom:
- Name the uncertainty out loud, and explain what it means. When a text says “researchers believe” or “studies suggest,” pause and ask students what they think that phrase means. Then explain what it means in a scientific context. Making that distinction explicit is more effective than hoping students will absorb it on their own.
- Build in language for expressing degrees of confidence. Model phrases learners can use, such as “The evidence suggests…,” “Based on this study…,” or “Scientists are still investigating whether….” Practicing this kind of language builds scientific literacy while also equipping students to think and talk more precisely about what they know and what they don’t yet know.
- Anchor uncertainty in specific findings. Rather than teaching the philosophy of science as an abstract concept, embed it in real moments: “this study found X using this method”; “here is why a follow-up study might refine that number.” Make the reasoning visible in the context of actual evidence. This approach supports scientific sensemaking for all learners, and is especially valuable for students whose language development and content learning are happening simultaneously (González-Howard et al., 2023).
Teachers as science communicators
One of Carl Sagan’s enduring arguments is that science and democracy share the same roots: Both require people willing to reason from evidence, tolerate uncertainty, and revise conclusions when the data demand it. In a classroom of students navigating new content, new language, and new relationships to institutional authority, that argument may become both more difficult and more urgent.
Perceptions of scientific uncertainty are shaped not only by the evidence itself, but also by the frameworks people bring to interpreting it. Audiences don’t always read scientific precision accurately, so uncertainty can mean very different things depending on a person’s prior experiences (Beets et al., 2025; Broomell & Kane, 2017). Teachers who recognize this are better equipped to help all students focus on the quality of evidence rather than on whether scientific language sounds absolutely certain.
The teachers best equipped to bridge that gap are those who can hold scientific uncertainty in both registers at once: knowing what it means technically, and understanding what it sounds like to someone hearing it for the first time. When those two things come together in a classroom, something useful happens. Students learn not just what science has found, but how science works. And that, according to the research, may be one of the more consequential things a teacher can do.
References
Beets, B., Brossard, D., & Scheufele, D. A. (2025). A mixed-methods study of public understanding of scientific uncertainty. Science Communication. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/10755470251348142
Broomell, S. B., & Kane, P. B. (2017). Public perception and communication of scientific uncertainty. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(2), 286–304. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000260
González-Howard, M., Andersen, S., Méndez Pérez, K., & Suárez, E. (2023). Language views for scientific sensemaking matter: A synthesis of research on multilingual students’ experiences with science practices through a translanguaging lens. Educational Researcher, 52(9), 570–579. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X231206172
van der Bles, A. M., van der Linden, S., Freeman, A. L. J., Mitchell, J., Galvao, A. B., Zaval, L., & Spiegelhalter, D. J. (2019). Communicating uncertainty about facts, numbers and science. Royal Society Open Science, 6(5), Article 181870. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.181870
Featured image credit: Max Goldberg
About the Author
Cicely Rude is Executive Director and Editor in Chief of Science Connected and a doctoral student in Applied Linguistics at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her work focuses on language, education, and making research accessible to wider audiences. Connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cicelyarude/
