said, “ the whole problem of the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. ” so much of public debate today is painted in black and white when the reality is normally multicoloured. in most fields of scientific enquiry from economics, to medicine, to climate change - we make progress by making progressively better guesses. we are uncertain not only about whether our models are calibrated correctly, but even about whether our models are the right ones to be using at all. rather than pretending to be certain and risk frequently getting it wrong, being candid about uncertainty will over the long term build the credibility of experts. as andre gide said, “ trust those who seek the truth but doubt those who say they have found it. ” a good example of that is the use of “ fan charts ” in forecasts produced by the monetary policy committee ( mpc ) which show the wide range of possible outcomes for a given set of initial circumstances. however, conveying uncertainty increases the complexity of a message, making it increasingly difficult to do in a world where short form is paramount. for example, it is a lot easier to tweet “ boe forecasts growth of 2 % ” than it is to tweet “ if economic circumstances identical to today were to prevail on 100 occasions, the best collective judgment of the mpc is that the mature estimate of gdp growth would lie above 2 % on 50 occasions and below 2 % on 50 occasions, ” even though that would be a more accurate description of the true meaning of the fan charts. in short, the modern challenge for experts is how to communicate with brevity, but without bravado. o'neill, o. ( 2002 ) reith lectures : a question of trust. o ’ neill, o. ( 2017 ) questioning trust, routledge handbook ( mineograph ). king, m. ( 2004 ), “ what fates impose : facing up to uncertainty, ” eighth british academy annual lecture, december. gide, andre ( 1952 ), ainsi soit - il ou le jeu sont - faits, paris : gallimard. another example is the chicago booth igm experts panel, in which economists are asked not only for their responses, but also how confident they are in their answers. when collated responses are then presented raw, and weighted by confidence. a particularly famous example of good

who can abuse it ; a world in which more clicks means more revenue rewards the most shrill voices and promotes extreme views. experts, who sift through all the information and make informed judgments, are just one of many voices in this cacophony. and the inaccessible language they use often renders them the least heard. experts define themselves through “ boundary work ” that separates them from non - experts. this can include credentials, jargon, control over journals and control over training the new experts. but this boundary work can also reduce their effectiveness, especially in a world where there are many alternative sources of views. a recent blog post by bank of england staff compares the linguistic complexity of our publications to other sources of information and finds they require a level of reading comprehension which makes them accessible to only one in five people ( chart 2 ). for example, at the bank of england we have learned that talking about “ prices and jobs ” is far more effective than economists ’ jargon of inflation and employment. and in preparing this speech i was pleased to discover that linguistic analysis found it was at an “ intermediate ” level of linguistic complexity – equivalent to a political speech or a tabloid newspaper. papacharissi, z. ( 2002 ) the virtual sphere : the internet as a public sphere, new media & society, 4 ( 1 ), 9 - 27 rifkin and merton ( 1997 ), negotiating expert status. fullwood, j ( 2016 ) “ a cat, a hat and a simple measure of gobbledygook : how readable is your writing? ”, blog on bank underground ( https : / / bankunderground. co. uk / 2016 / 10 / 04 / a - cat - a - hat - and - a - simple - measure - of - gobbledygook - how - readable - is - your - writing / ) all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / speeches chart 2 : level of reading comprehension required for various publications a % of population proficient at each level - mark twain - tabloid newspaper - political speeches - this speech - bank of england publications - commercial bank t & cs - broadsheet newspapers rudimentary ( 1 - 2 ) basic ( 3 - 6 ) intermediate ( 7 - 10 ) adept ( 11 - 15 ) advanced ( 16 + ) literacy grade level of adults source : fullwood, j ( 2016 ), us national adult literacy survey ( 1992 ), flesch -