A Caution about Consensus

We often hear nowadays that something is true because there's a consensus of experts who testify to its truth. Predictions of climate catastrophe, for instance, are sometimes reinforced by the claim that the vast majority of scientists believe we're headed for climate Armageddon.

Before we accept the consensus of the experts, though, it might be worth considering that some fifty former intelligence experts wrote in a letter that the Hunter Biden laptop story was probably Russian disinformation. As it turned out, however, the sordid and perhaps incriminating information on Hunter's laptop was actually put there by Hunter himself and the consensus of the experts turned out to be foolish and ill-informed.

When we're told that there's a consensus in favor of a certain claim we might reflect upon the words of the late Michael Crichton. Crichton was a science fiction writer (Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain) of some renown and for whom there was little merit in the claim that "everyone knows that X is true." He writes:

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks.

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

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.

The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

Scientists operate in a "knowledge silo." They may be authoritative within the confines of their own silo, but when they jump into a different silo and speak on matters relevant to that other silo their authority is minimal.

We sometimes see such silo hopping when scientists opine on matters of ethics, religion and public policy. In such cases the scientist has wandered far from his area of expertise and his authority diminishes in proportion to his distance from his silo.

In any case, we'd do well to remember Crichton's admonition the next time we're told that there's a consensus among scientists about Covid, climate change, evolution, or whatever. The "experts" might all agree, but they may at the same time all be wrong. The history of science is littered with examples of a consensus that eventually came to grief.

One question we might ask is how many of these scientists have actually themselves studied the issue they're declaiming upon, and how many of them are just parroting what they've heard from others to whose authority they uncritically defer?