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Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: Smacks posted Thu, Nov 5 2009, 2:08pm  "I've been having an interesting (not to mention civil, on-topic and personal-attack-free) debate with Smacks on a few topics." Prov. 15:1 "A gentle response turns away anger, but a harsh word stirs up wrath." Well, I'll let it go that a science fiction author is describing how science is supposed to work and just deal with his claims. First of all, he first seems to suggest that consensus is bad (the best scientists break consensus), and then that it is irrelevant (which would suggest neither good nor bad). No quite clear, but a minor issue. Second, consensus is derived from evidence. I'm not sure what Mr. Crichton was suggesting should happen that isn't. Scientists do evaluate the evidence; that's what reading other peoples methodologies and reanalyzing and reinterpreting their data is all about. Where consensus-based arguments come in is when the scientific community is communicating with the public (or to those in other fields, e.g. physicists talking to biologists). That's where the authority of consensus is used. (Do you disagree?) The question then is whether this is legitimate. I argue that, to a degree, it is. My reasons: 1. The consensus is evidentially based because it comes out of the evidentialist (scientific) community. Politics is based on consensus because there is no external factual basis to be studied. Just saying there is a consensus does not mean it is not fact-based. There is a consensus that the sky is blue because the masses have observed the sky and agreed on its blueness. 2. The public typically depends on consensus of necessity, for it is unable to evaluate claims for itself. This is not to make scientists into some kind of priesthood; they are just people who are trained in their area. My mechanic can evaluate the inner workings of my car, my doctor can evaluate my bloodwork, and scientists can evaluate scientific evidence. This is not difficult to demonstrate. Look at the picture below. THAT is a key piece of evidence demonstrating that DNA has a double helical structure. Who among us can interpret that? Chemists, trained in x-ray crystallography. The CONSENSUS of biochemists, based on evidence, is that DNA is a double-helix, and we believe them. Should we? I think yes, because they have the technical skill that we do not have in order to evaluate the evidence, and they all agree on the interpretation. This is how most everything works in science: the public is largely unaware of the supporting evidence, but the consensus of scientists, who *are* aware of and capable of interpreting the evidence, guides their beliefs. This is ordinary and non-controversial until someone has an a priori disagreement (creationism, climate change denialism, etc). Now, within the scientific community, this changes. The actual evidence must be presented; this is the process of peer review, and it is one of the foundations of science. No one cares who you are or how many people agree with you; it is all based on evidence. My point is, consensus means squat within the scientific community. Michael Crichton wouldn't know because he doesn't deal much with it. The consensus can be wrong, for sure, as has happened many times. That alone, however, does not allow one to be anti-consensus. To do so is to ignore evidence, Mr. Crichton's concern. For the consensus to be overturned takes strong evidence (as it was built on strong evidence), which those in the scientific community are still waiting on from the pseudosciences. ""What are relevant are reproducible results." This is where OOL and macroevolution totally fail." And this is where you don't appear to understand what reproducible results means. Not all science is based on a laboratory experiment. We get reproducible results all the time in macroevolution research, but it is of a sort that is commensurate with the claim. You can't reproduce a process that takes millions of years, but you can reproduce observations and measurements and make predictions (such as the location of a transitional form, in the case of Tiktaalik.) The point of reproducibility is that the evidence can't just be accessed by a single person at a single point in time. Peace. Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: hroth posted Thu, Nov 5 2009, 6:18pm  I highly recommend Crichton's book 'State of fear,' about climate change. It's massively researched. I dunno what to think about consensus myself. Crichton raises eugenics as an issue that found lots of consensus. Newtonian physics worked great until it crashed about a century ago. I don't think many people expected it to fall - many people here don't agree that it has fallen. I agree that reproducible results aren't the only way to do science. I think that falsifiable hypotheses are what it's all about. Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: luna1580 posted Fri, Nov 6 2009, 2:16am  crichton may have done a lot of research, but he seems to have done a very poor job of absorbing the parts of it that conflicted with the opinion on climate change he had going into that research process. just for a start: RealClimate: Michael Crichton's State of Confusion RealClimate: Michael Crichton's State of Confusion II: Return of the Science Review of Michael Crichton's State of Fear : Weather Underground Answers to Key Questions Raised by M. Crichton in State of Fear | Pew Center on Global Climate Change: The Pew Center on Global Climate Change Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: hroth posted Fri, Nov 6 2009, 11:18am  I think he made a pretty good case for land use playing a significant role in the perceived increase in temps worldwide... And it's obviously heavy-handed about Hollywood types, no doubt. But it is a novel, after all.

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