The Tacit Knowledge Dilemma in Open Science

A talk about the role that knowledge management (and sub areas) might play in open science. The open science movement has the goal of making transparent as much of the scientific process as is possible. This entails making publicly available (open source, access, etc.) the parts of the scientific workflow, such as the data, the software code, the manuscripts, that are used or generated in the process of doing research. However, Michael Polanyi\u27s theory of tacit knowledge raises a dilemma that knowledge management researchers might be able to address. Specifically, if we accept the theory of tacit knowledge, the idea that we can know more than we can tell, is generally true, and if we accept that it is true for scientists, then this entails that scientists rely on a knowledge of science in their scientific pursuits that cannot be codified. By implication, this suggests that there is something unscientific about doing science itself and that not all science can be opened