Abstract
Information that is not made explicit is nonetheless embedded in most of our standard procedures. In its simplest form, embedded information may take the form of prior knowledge held by the researcher and presumed to be agreed to by consumers of the research product. More interesting are the settings in which the prior information is held unconsciously by both researcher and reader, or when the very form of an “effective procedure” incorporates its creator’s (unspoken) understanding of a problem. While it may not be productive to exhaustively detail the embedded or tacit knowledge that manifests itself in creative scientific work, at least at the beginning, we may want to routinize methods for extracting and documenting the ways of thinking that make “experts” expert. We should not back away from both expecting and respecting the tacit knowledge the pervades our work and the work of others.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Weizenbaum J. ELIZA—a computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine. Commun ACM. 1966;9(1):36–45.
Weizenbaum J. Computer power and human reason. From Calculation to Judgment. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company; 1976.
Wallace M, Dunlop G. Eliza, the Rogerian therapist. ©1999 manifestation.com PMB 417, 10800 Alpharetta Hwy, Suite 208, Roswell, GA 30076. http://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/psych101/Eliza.htm. Accessed 29 March 2017.
Weizenbaum J. 1976. Op cit. p. 7.
Douglas Hofstadter and the Fluid Analogies Research Group. Fluid concepts and creative analogies. New York: Basic Books; 1995. p. 155ff.
Jens Schanze and Judith Malek-Mahldavi. Plug & Pray. (Film) Mascha Film GbR; 2010.
Wikipedia entry on Michael Polanyi. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Polanyi. Accessed Aug 2015.
Polanyi M. The tacit dimension. With a new forward by Amartya Sen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 2009. p. 4.
Ibid. p. 18.
Ibid. p. 21.
Taylor P. “George Polya” June 2000. Adapted slightly January 2008 with help from Kevin McAvaney. Australian Mathematics Trust. http://www.amt.edu.au/biogpolya.html. Accessed 12 Aug 2015.
Polya G. How to solve it: a new aspect of mathematical method. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1945.
Polya G. Mathematics and plausible reasoning. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1966. p. 3.
Weizenbaum 1976, Op Cit. p. 261.
Walker AM, Zhou X, Ananthakrishnan AN, Weiss LS, Shen R, Sobel RE, Bate A, Reynolds RF. Computer-assisted expert case definition in electronic health records. Int J Med Inform. 2016;86:62–70.
Rothman KJ. A show of confidence. N Engl J Med. 1978;299:1362–3.
Wasserstein RL, Lazar NA. The ASA’s statement on p-values: context, process, and purpose. Am Stat. 2016;70(2):129–33.
Greenland S, Senn SJ, Rothman KJ, Carlin JB, Poole C, Goodman SN, Altman DG. Statistical tests, P values, confidence intervals, and power: a guide to misinterpretations. Eur J Epidemiol. 2016;31(4):337–50.
Rothman KJ. Disengaging from statistical significance. Eur J Epidemiol. 2016;31(5):443–4.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Prof Albert Hofman, Editor of the European Journal of Epidemiology, for giving me the chance to share these ideas.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Walker, A.M. Tacit knowledge. Eur J Epidemiol 32, 261–267 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-017-0256-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-017-0256-9