Norms about disclosure apply particularly to agents in information dissemination and interpretation roles, for example, journalists, accountants, or scientists. Procedural regulations embellish the norm. They touch issues such as standards of proof (corroboration, replication, or second opinions), sampling, randomization, surprise or spontaneity, control groups, statistical inference (or other assessments of validity, reliability, alternative interpretations, side effects), confidentiality or the proprietary nature of information, and the threshold (what is material, what can be omitted) and timing of disclosure. These rules for gathering and disseminating information do not generate objective truth, of course, but do provide a set of explicit conventions by which principals can interpret the data offered by agents.

XREF: Connect to principal-agent theory and epistemic/normative frameworks about trust in expert institutions.

Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Imper…, loc. 67