In Ignorance and Uncertainty: Emerging Paradigms, Australian sociologist Michael Smithson
observes that Western intellectuals, who once preoccupied themselves with knowledge, are …

This commentary argues that we need to take ignorance and non-knowledge seriously in
the fields of science communication and public understanding of science. As much as we …

In the years since a symposium on science and ignorance at the 1993 annual meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a small but growing number …

The starting-point of this chapter is the observation that people do not simply possess
knowledge about scientific'facts' and scientific procedures and processes, they can also …

An introduction to the new area of ignorance studies that examines how science produces
ignorance—both actively and passively, intentionally and unintentionally. We may think of …

Recent decades have seen a dramatic increase in creative work on scientifc ignorance and
uncertainty, which can be traced in part to a realization that ignorance and uncertainty …

How do individuals decide whether to accept human causes of climate change, vaccinate
their children against childhood diseases, or practice social distancing during a pandemic …

In recent decades, corporate and special interests have developed a wide repertoire of
methods to manufacture doubt about science that threatens their interests. In the case …

This paper addresses the meanings of “ignorance” in the context of “don't know” responses
to questionnaires. First, we consider some of the broader functions of questionnaires …

Sociologists, philosophers, and historians of science tend to focus their attention on the
production of knowledge. More recently, scholars have begun to investigate more fully the …