The late Steve Rayner, a social scientist who studied the intersections of science, policy, and culture (with a particular focus on climate change), observed that Rumsfeld missed what is certainly the most interesting category of uncertainty: the unknown knowns, the things we dont admit that we know, what he termed uncomfortable knowledge In the concatenation of crises that COVID-19 has triggered, Alic and Pielke expose the political expedience at the heart of science and technology policy: throwing money at research and the endless frontier, and justifying it as a contribution to the public good, has been an easy case to make since the end of World War II Different pathways, each really difficult, but both demonstrate how we might realign the nation's approach to science and innovation policy Because the world is far too rich and complex for full comprehension by anyone, unknown knowns are a necessary cognitive strategy for allowing each of us to maintain a view of things coherent enough to allow us to act in the world
Unknown Knowns