But in this case Rumsfield’s efforts to infer definite conclusions about the existence of weapons of mass destruction from a mass of evidence that was largely inaccurate, insufficient and inconsistent shares an uncanny similarity to the job that geophysicists do when processing and interpreting seismic exploration data, especially in land scenarios where seismograms typically contain more noise than signal. We are, after all, scientists who come to an understanding of nature from evidence of what is true rather from what we want to be true. We geophysicists and geologists are generally not eager to compare ourselves with politicians. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” We also know there are known unknowns that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. Famously, United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in February 2002 made the following statement in response to the lack of evidence linking the government of Iraq with weapons of mass destruction: “…as we know, there are known knowns there are things that we know that we know.
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