The story of Ignaz Semmelweis is one of my favorite tales of scientific consensus at work. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_…

And yet in virtually every case where Google warriors tackle a position that a mainstream scientific community has iterated toward consensus…that evolution is real, the Earth is spherical, climate change is due to humans, vaccines work, black holes exist, etc, they are wrong.

BuT LEgaCy sCieNce tWiTteR wAs sO gReAt aND iNtElLecTuAL!

Serving on a university tenure committee, it was amazing how well we could evaluate vitaes from other fields by indirect clues.

For anyone, however low their IQ, an important skill is learning who to trust. For scientists in a given field, an important asset is the common person's trust. In the US, that asset has depreciated heavily this past ten years.

Torn between the quoted tweet being generally right, the ways the sentiment can be negatively utilized, and a hang up that I’m pretty sure that person was key to the ShirtGate fiasco

If your first instinct is to say “Trust me, bro,” then you might want to take a moment and re-evaluate. Most of us, even scientists outside their field, rely on expert consensus. But it should be earned: transparent methods, real, open criticism, and a readiness to shift with solid new evidence. Blind trust? No thanks. Provisional trust earned through an honest process? Yes. Without that humility, “trust the experts” too often feels like “we're smarter, just nod along.”And that extra layer of authority baggage? It pushes people away instead of inviting wonder.

It even worse when a s scientist who is brilliant in one field turns out to be a complete crackpot in another.

It's been a few years, but I have a vague impression that she was part of the mob going after dissidents. Not for dissenting on topics on astrophysics, but on other issues she's not an "expert" on. So this is kind of rich coming from her. Unless I'm remembering it all wrong.

The problem remains when scientific consensus uses bullying tactics in areas still open to interpretation and academics acquiesce or even promote ridiculous points of view to further careers not discourse.

yup , e.g.

Surprised she doesn't know 'expert opinion' is considered the lowest grade of evidence

A lot of this comes down to opinion versus fact. When they start mixing political opinions with scientific facts, the trouble starts.

Consensus as a term is a falsehood How many agree is not a measure of the truth of the position The most evidenced claim is the truth The one that stands up to scrutiny Climate models are the great hoax of our time. The concept of climate warming is not established by C02 causation No one has done a space with co2 levels higher and lower and equal light or heat energy into the system. Co2 should show the impact claimed. Not one experiment has sought to confirm the co2 role in a controlled environment But this myth taught and accepted now makes all modelling that assumes co2 driven warming to be best ideas of truth ahead They are never shown correct Isolated extremes are held up as climate change proof but the media simply seeks out this type of news now to confirm the climate change they are told is the cause It’s all circular. When someone says consensus they merely want to use volume of voice and not evidence of claims to win the argument Consensus means a collective of groupthink The more far reaching the claims the more impossible the consensus can be real Complexity should deny single views dominating at larger scales The theories should multiply with the distance they seek to explain Climate science is fraud and mass produced

You think? They made up dark matter. Then they made up dark energy. Then they said dark energy isn't constant. To explain their theories and justify the accuracy of observational methods. That's happening right now. You think science is manufactured? You think!

Yet it wasn’t the contemporary equivalents of podcasters or “google warriors” who overturned heliocentrism, phlogiston, creationism, miasma, or who put forward evolution by natural selection, relativity, quantum mechanics, continental drift. It was always scientists with evidence

Here’s what you’re really saying: 🔥Lemma: “ To the proportion a consensus must be defended by appeal to consensus as proof of its objective truth, the more likely its conclusions are scientifically false. “ ✨

"Scientific consensus" isn't even a meaningful phrase If there's consensus on something, then why would anyone be attempting to explain it further in the first place? Science only exists because there is NOT consensus on almost anything

Sometimes experts are not being malicious or incompetent, but their vague conclusions full of hedging language become a lot clearer with background knowledge or experience. In these two cases, you need either one to decide whether to take modafinil if you're not sleep-deprived or whether you should use daily or weekly periodization if you want to improve both hypertrophy and strength. The conclusions don't provide the relevant information about dopaminergics being more useful for attention and working memory heavy tasks, and cholinergics more useful for complex long-term tasks, or the fact that effective strength training necessarily requires prior hypertrophy, because it is harder to objectively prove, even though it's known to everyone with experience.

I see her point that for most, referring to scientific consensus is often a good option. Problem is: (1) few ideas (outside of physics) actually have scientific consensus; activist scholars manipulate/bully people here and (2) "trust the science" is just a bad way to see science

One does not have to be an expert in any given field to observe facts, compare the scientific consensus to the facts, and evaluate the value of that consensus.

well of course everyone remembers how Phrenology was overturned by dissident phrenologist.

The idea of a scientific consensus is obscene, and mocks the entire foundations of empirical science. This is medieval Scientism, not science.

Astrophysicist or not, anyone who says what that gal did is a lightweight. The fact that I'm not an expert doesn't mean I have no business questioning one. Even if the installer has 30 years' experience and I wouldn't know a carpet stretcher from a bottle capper, I'm still entitled to question his opinion that 20 sq.ft. of carpet is enough to cover an 8x10 room wall-to-wall.

Who is a "trained expert"? Someone who has already been indoctrinated and admitted into the club whose consensus they are then to question? It's not the training that allows one to meaningfully question the orthodoxy of consensus, but the depth and substance of their ideas.

This hits at something I've observed to motivate/quell lay disagreement across just about any field of study. The manner in which consensus is perceived to have been reached matters enormously, and among uninformed contrarians consensus itself is seen as the evidence of falsity.

It's much worse than that: we know that 40% of their research can't be replicated, 30% of it is likely fraud; they refuse to provide their data even when legally req'd; and we know they were selected based mostly on DEI rather than actual achievements. At this point, you'd be

I'm guessing her reaction to the Cass Report was not, Ah, yes, of course, I defer to the conclusions of this thorough scientific review.

I'm not sure about the context for this post. I guess I agree with her insofar as it is strictly applied to a narrow technical discipline. The problem is 'mission creep'. I.e. the "consensus" that James Webb was an anti-gay crusader (even though evidence says 'no').

I think Mack’s principle here varies by field . It’s very hard for an outsider to develop a robust independent view on, say, climate, but much easier for medicine. Clinical papers are generally intelligible to a generally educated person, who can listen, read and form a view.

In the middle of the deadliest pandemic in a century, experts tried to tell the public that it was a "conspiracy theory" that the deadly bat virus might have leaked from the deadly bat virus lab in the authoritarian dictatorship that covered it up then destroyed the evidence.

eppure, se muove

The consensus, Occham's companion gate keeper. But Occham and consensus gets you funding to work on the same hypothesis as the others. The same cul-de-sac everybody says will someday get you a Theory. do you 'see' where Occham stands? Outside of Science. Occham is not science it's not even stats.

How eloquently you put it! But how can this tendency be tamed when a whole lucrative industry & professional prestige have sprung out of the consensus?

this is the story of academia, 1990-2024.