For early career scientists, ignorance--and knowing what areas we are ignorant of--also provides compelling professional opportunities.
To show how scientists depend on ignorance, Dr. Firestein has written a short, highly entertaining book aimed at nonscientists and students who want to be scientists.
Despite government attempts to create a blissful ignorance, scientists, community groups and individuals have gathered enough information to paint a very clear – and very grim – picture, at least for large well-known groups like mammals and birds.
At that conference, I talked about the role of social media in breaking down what social scientists call "pluralistic ignorance"—the belief that one is alone in one's views when in reality everyone has been collectively silenced.
"I'll give a lecture and show a photograph of some huge bodybuilder and someone will say, 'Do you think he took steroids?' I'll say, 'Do you think World War II really happened?' " But scientists say their ignorance about the array of anabolic drugs and their effects remains huge.
Another key dynamic is what's known as "preference falsification" to political scientists and "pluralistic ignorance" to social psychologists: when people privately hold a particular view but do not share it in fear of reprisal, punishment, or violating a social norm.
When asked for reflections on being a scientist, Cerf recommended ignorance as key to understanding ourselves and our universe.
One might add that this fits into another tradition as well: the media eagerly publicizing social scientists pointing out the ignorance of Americans.
When there aren't answers to such questions, Burke says, it's perfectly legitimate for scientists to voice their ignorance.
