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How Scientific Consensus Has Gotten a Bad Reputation
nerdyalien writes From the article: "Fiction author Michael Crichton probably started the backlash against the idea of consensus in science. Crichton was rather notable for doubting the conclusions of climate scientists—he wrote an entire book in which they were the villains—so it's fair to say he wasn't thrilled when the field reached a consensus. Still, it's worth looking at what he said, if only because it's so painfully misguided: 'Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results.'" As a STEM major, I am somewhat biased toward "strong" evidence side of the argument. However, the more I read literature from other, somewhat-related fields (i.e. psychology, economics and climate science), the more I felt they have little opportunity to repeat experiments, similar to counterparts in traditional hard science fields. Their accepted theories are based on limited historical occurrences and consensus among the scholars. Given the situation, it's important to understand what "consensus" really means.
True as that may be, people who are absolutely nuts tend to use the perpetual openness of science as an excuse to inject irrelevant, arbitrary insanity into discussions of fact. I'm not just referring to the (particularly common as Slashdot) climate change deniers who dismiss all sorts of careful analysis of data and theory for some unspecified null hypothesis "because we've been wrong before". But crazier people.
Conservapedia's owner cum dictator, Andy Schafly comes to mind as a frequent abuser. Who has made "be more open minded" arguments over things as scientifically established as relativity, which he asserts doesn't exist, or walking on water being scientifically possible.
And creationists do the same.
The point, of course is that while established science can always be wrong, arbitrarily embracing the opposite and asserting the evidentialist structure of the scientific method as a reason is crazy. The proof is in the pudding, if you will.
Which is, of course, silly.
Because discussion is essential to education, and we cannot possibly expect everyone to do all science on their own. The walls of pragmatism and human lifespans stand block the avenue.
As an experimental scientist, I can, with certainty, state that you are wrong when you claim "science is about provability."
It is extraordinarily difficult to prove something experimentally. Most advances come about because we (both individually as experimentors, and collectively as members of a given scientific field), think we've accounted for most potential confounds and artifacts, not because we've conducted perfect experiments. Biological sciences, especially, suffer from a huge number of uncontrolled variables that often we are not aware of, but impinge mightily upon our results. Biology, to continue, is noisy. Very, very noisy. In my lab, we measure phenomena related to visual perception, and I can tell you unequivocally that individual variation usually swamps any underlying phenomenon we examine (meaning, we need to measure with lots and lots of individuals to make sure we aren't being fooled, and even then, we can easily get fooled).
Rarely, if ever, do we prove something experimentally. It's only through the consensus of reproducibility that scientific facts get established.
Piltdown Man, to discuss your example, was due to observational error (ie, a hoax), not experimental evidence demonstrating provability. Observational science, as opposed to experimental science, is rife with missteps and re-interpretations. Look up the history of shooting stars, as one example -- they were considered purely terrestrial phenomena well after the establishment of the United States as a country. It took repeated observational events, not experiments, to establish that meteors are astronomical in origin.
Reproducibility is the cornerstone of modern science. Everything else is consensus. We think we know things, and mostly, we've been correct with a high degree of probability, since we've been able to take given conclusions and build, predictably, upon them. But, every now and then, even firmly-held beliefs with eons of structural experimental integrity are demonstrated to have been mistaken. There is very little scientific truth, merely scientific certainty. If you want absolute truth, look to mathematics instead.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Sure, sure...
Utter nonsense. What's settled is that the climate is changing at the hands of man, what's open to debate is what the impact on us will be in the short and long term. The "consensus" is the same as the "consensus" that supports the modern understanding of evolution - it is a refinement and agreement across the field on the gross mechanism for something, and all the arguments lie in the details.
Kudos for tossing in the pinch of anti-government paranoia, it has to be that and not the desire for massively profitable fossil fuel corporations to defend said profits.
See, what you are saying is correct, some people refuse to acknowledge evidence when it is right in front of their faces, and that's a real problem. The evidence for relativity is fairly clear, and quite strong; if someone rejects it, either they are not looking at the evidence, or not understanding the evidence.
However, when someone says, "you should believe what I say because there is consensus," that is a problem too. Science argues from reproducibility and evidence; from ancient times people believed things because they were claimed by an authority. If Aristotle said it, then it must be true, for example, or if the bible says it, then it must be true.
The great advancement of science was to not believe in authorities, but rather to look at the evidence. Nullius in Verba is the motto. Saying, "believe me because we have consensus" is a step back to the dark ages. If the evidence is strong, then present it. If the evidence is not strong, then your consensus will do nothing.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You do realise the world of riches that awaits a scientist who could show AGW to be nonsense, right? They'd end up with a Nobel prize, their own science department, and a large research budget. This is such an easily-disproven nonsensical claim made by denialists it's not even funny. It only seems to work on other denialists who applaud it and say "See! See! That's what happens!". Others just laugh and assume the denialist in question is a grade-A muppet.
Most non-scientists are not in a position to evaluate the claims of any given scientist.
I'm pretty sure that was the argument the Church had against releasing full, translated copies of its data, a.k.a. the contents of the Christian Bible.
This argument doesn't pass the sniff test. It is the job of a "scientist" to present claim and data that supports said claim in such a way that it may be consumed by anyone and still stand on its own, only then is there "consensus."
The problem is you're not in a position to be able to evaluate the evidence - climate science is difficult and specialised.
If you asked your doctor to show you your MRI scans so that you could evaluate the evidence of his/her diagnosis for yourself, where would you start?
This isn't a "you're too stupid to understand" argument, it's a "it's not your area and it's very tricky, beyond basic concepts" argument.
If you're consistently disbelieving the very large majority of climate scientists when they summarise their findings, then you're a denier (assuming you take other scientists in different fields that are no politically sensitive at their word). If you're simply looking for an easy to digest pile of evidence then you're going to be disappointed. The evidence is all there - it's just not easy to understand, beyond simple threads like "land ice melting > sea level rise" or "higher [CO2] > more retained IR" but how those things fit into the whole is not trivial.
It has become very easy to simply distrust what climate scientists are saying because of a large propaganda campaign to demonise them all. It's almost unique to that particular field - but it happens to a greater or lesser extent where money overlaps with science (pharmaceuticals, GM crops, climate science, renewable energy, nuclear science etc) from both sides of the political spectrum.
The global warming people haven't shown us the value of anything, so far as I can see.
Then you are simply not paying attention. That's just one site, and 10 seconds of typing to get to it. Make an effort to read the data, don't bitch because you aren't getting spoon fed.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
Climate scientist to layperson: "And here's where things get interesting. CO2 by itself only warms the planet modestly, at about one degree per doubling. We introduced feedbacks into our models which amplify that warming by 300%, turning a fairly benign warming into a dangerous one. This has garnered us a lot of international attention. Unfortunately, nature has not been cooperating and surface temperatures have not increased for the last decade and a half, despite an enormous increase in CO2. Rather than revise controversial feedbacks, we figured out a way to preserve the theory by claiming the deep oceans have absorbed all the extra heat. Since we can't measure the deep oceans with any accuracy it's not falsifiable, and since we don't know if or when the heat will "reappear", we can continue to educate the public for another 50 years even if surface temperatures start to cool."
I am a physicist. I have explained the expansion of the universe to many lay people without trouble. I have also tried time and time again to explain it to my mother. All such explanations end with her asking "so where is it expanding into." The short answer to this is: nothing. And one can either accept that or learn metric differential geometry. The belief that whatever any given PhD is working on can "describe in laymen's terms what they are doing" does not mean a laymen has the knowledge to understand or even accept the details of the theory. Heck look at Quantum physics in the early 1900s and you see many very intelligent people thinking it is crazy because it is probabilistic. So in short a good scientist can explain to a laymen what they do but the laymen has to accept their expertise when it comes to many specifics.