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

“Known Knowns, Known Unknowns, & Unknown Unknowns”: Computational Science challenges for analysis of multi-dimensional DNA matrices in Evolutionary & Population Genomics

The advent of so-called NextGen DNA sequencing methods has massively increased the rate at which DNA sequence information can be generated, and the volume and complexity of the data matrices that apply to biological questions, including molecular and organismal evolution and population biology. One such approach is the analysis of complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genomes from multiple species...

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...

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

Unknown knowns: Tacit knowledge in requirements engineering

Donald Rumsfeld famously identified three classes of knowledge: known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. The three knowledge classes map surprisingly well onto requirements knowledge but are all outside the scope of this panel. Our focus is on what Rumsfeld missed: unknown knowns. In RE terms, an unknown known is knowledge that a person (say, a customer) holds, but which they withhold...

S Peaking between the K Nown and the U Nknown

One of the things for which Donald Rumsfeld will be remembered is his distinction between ‘known knowns’, ‘known unknowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’. He was speaking in 2002, at a press conference where he was commenting on the absence of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups: There are known knowns; there are things we know that...