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 its fair to say he wasnt thrilled when the field reached a consensus. Still, its worth looking at what he said, if only because its so painfully misguided: Lets 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, its important to understand what consensus really means. Read more of this story at Slashdot. ift.tt/1xynwr3
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 15:11:18 +0000
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