Value Capture in the Face of Known and Unknown Unknowns

Known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns and the propagation of scientific enquiry.

In February 2002, Donald Rumsfeld, the then US Secretary of State for Defence, stated at a Defence Department briefing: ‘There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.’ As a result, he was almost universall...

Sepsis-related stress response: known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis response in sepsis remains to be elucidated. Apart from corticotropin-releasing hormone, adrenocorticotropic hormone, and cortisol, many other neuroendocrine factors participate in the regulation of HPA stress response. The HPA response to acute and chronic illness exerts a biphasic profile. Tissue corticosteroid resistance may also play an importan...

Known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns and unknown knowns in DNA barcoding: a comment on Dowton et al.

RUPERT A. COLLINS1∗ AND ROBERT H. CRUICKSHANK2 1Laboratório de Evolução e Genética Animal, Departamento de Biologia, Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Av. Rodrigo Otávio, Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil and 2Department of Ecology, Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Lincoln University, Lincoln 7647, Canterbury, New Zealand ∗Correspondence to be sent to: Departamento de Biologia, Universidade Fed...

Known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns: can systems medicine provide a new approach to sepsis?

Known and unknown unknowns: uncertainty estimation in satellite remote sensing

This paper discusses a best-practice representation of uncertainty in satellite remote sensing data. An estimate of uncertainty is necessary to make appropriate use of the information conveyed by a measurement. Traditional error propagation quantifies the uncertainty in a measurement due to well-understood perturbations in a measurement and in auxiliary data – known, quantified “unknowns”. The ...