Scientific Consensus


Some scientific ideas are so easily grasped that they are easily explained to the general public.  Other ideas can only be fully understood after a minimum level of training and studies in the relevant area.  A few ideas are so obscure, so far removed from everyday experience that only a very few specialists fully understand the topic.

Science is a landscape in which anyone may wander.  How pleasant to sit in the green pastures of accumulated knowledge and dip the fingers in a stream of certainty.  But how much more exciting it is to scuba-dive through flooded caves in search of the foundations of science: how much more satisfying it is to climb the highest peak and see the bigger picture.

Some people, through no fault of their own, can never go scuba-diving or mountaineering.  They must get their knowledge of such things at second-hand.

The big question when obtaining knowledge at second-hand has always been and will always be: 'Who do you trust?'

In matters of science, should we trust the scientist who attracts the greatest amount of popular support in a blog, or the scientist with the best credentials?  Science is not a democracy, nor is it a meritocracy.

Science is not supposed to be performed by consensus.  There are many areas in which theories and results are disputed.  If several different people report different numerical values in an experiment, we don't 'go all democratic' and average the results.  We publish the individual results.

If it becomes necessary for a politician or entrepreneur to make a policy decision based on a wide range of data, then it becomes necessary for the experts who produced that data to get together and determine the error bars.  If the data is mainly historical then most of the original experts will no longer be alive.  How to replace them?  You replace them with acknowledged experts in the relevant field.  And how is that expertese best acknowledged?  Through consensus.

When seeking experts to address an issue in order to come to a consensus opinion on data and error bars, you must first ask scientists to name experts in the relevant field.  From a list of nominees you select the names that get the most support from their peers in the relevant field.

Self-nomination to a board of science review is no recommendation.  If the purpose is to generate a consensus view of what the science is telling us, then the vital first step is to get a consensus view of the people who are most likely to know what they are talking about.

Who shall tell the world the truth about human impacts on climate?

Agendists and propagandists who want to tell the public what to think?

Or scientists selected by other scientists democratically through peer-review of relevant expertese?

Can you have a valid consensus of scientific opinion about anything at all unless there is a public and transparent method by which the experts themselves were selected by consensus?


Discussion:

Tens of thousands of scientists are reporting climate change, and the effects of climate change: from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean; from pole to equator to pole.

Satellite images and ground-level surveys show that the Arctic ice is retreating faster this year than at any time in the records.

A few bloggers are trying to spread the message that all this talk of climate change is a scam, and that the Arctic ice isn't melting as fast as is being reported by scaremongering warmist alarmists.

In making plans for your children's and grandchildren's futures - who will you trust?