ArticleIntegrative psychological & behavioral science2010
Uncertainty as a fundamental scientific value.
Article in Integrative psychological & behavioral science, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- How Epistemic Beliefs about Climate Change Predict Climate Change Conspiracy Beliefs.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Psychology is not primarily Empirical Science: A Comparison of Cultures in the Lexical Hypothesis Tradition as a Failure of Introspection.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2017Article
- Being or Becoming: Toward an Open-System, Process-Centric Model of Personality.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2015Review
- Imagine the Feeling: An Aesthetic Science of Psychology.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2015Review
- Tokenism in psychology: standing on the shoulders of small boys.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2014Article
- Personality as continuous stochastic process: what Western personality theory can learn from classical confucianism.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2014Article
- Connecting experience and economy--aspects of disguised positioning.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2013Article
- Peeking into personality test answers: inter- and intraindividual variety in item interpretations.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2013Article
- Toward poetic science.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2011Article
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The author argues that, though social scientists generally value tolerance for ambiguity, and some even assert a fundamental indeterminacy in human systems, there is still a discipline-wide discomfort with uncertainty and ambiguity. It is argued that this distaste for uncertainty derives from a distorted view of the classical physical sciences, a view that ignores the essentially critical and radical foundations of scientific practice. The drive for certainty, it is argued, is essentially unscientific, in that certain, or adequate, forms of knowledge can only recapitulate the already known and in their dogmatic and institutionalized forms prevent the development of genuinely new knowledge. In contrast, uncertainty is defended as a positive condition, generative of new knowledge because it is open to discovery and to the mystery of the other. The conclusion drawn from this analysis is that the social sciences can only progress if uncertainty, or mystery, is protected and cultivated through a scientific discourse constituted in local and concrete terms (rather than in general and universal ones) and through a self-reflective and self-critical research praxis.
Indexed as
Identifiers
20571939What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.