Tacit Knowing and the Challenge to Science – C Sean Burns

"...There is an increasing number of researchers, scientists, and librarians who actively pursue a thing called open science. Some of the arguments put forth in favor of a process that opens science includes claims that an open science results in a more efficient and productive system that takes advantage of web and internet technologies, is able to operate with better transparency, is better at re-using other scientists’ data, and is better at attributing other scientists’ work. In some ways, we might say that an open science is the full, or nearly full, realization of the inherent norms of scientific practice....

I am not a skeptic about scientific documentation, but tacit knowing raises very interesting and serious challenges about the conduct and dissemination of science, and as well as any kind of knowledge that must be taught and passed from one generation to the next, from teacher to student, or from co-worker to co-worker. This is the task that Polanyi has placed before us."