Abstract
In his Treatise on Probability (1921), John Maynard Keynes clearly distinguished between uncertainty and risk, risk being uncertainty completely structured by objective probabilities. When Heisenberg named the famous principle at the heart of quantum mechanics the "uncertainty principle", he ignored the Keynesian distinction. Quantum mechanics, while rejecting deterministic causality, characterizes all physical phenomena within its purview in terms of complete distributions of objective probabilities.
On the other hand, sciences such as ecology, climatology, oceanography and, in many respects, medical science are at least partially uncertain sciences in Keynes's sense. This does not make them unfit to inform collective decisions with potentially far-reaching consequences, insofar as rigorous methods have been developed - and tested - for this purpose in the recent past. But it does make them vulnerable to manipulations of the uncertainty they entail, manipulations designed to discredit them in their ability to shed light on the decisions to be made.
