Everything about Scientific Consensus totally explained
Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and
opinion of the
community of
scientists in a particular field of
science at a particular time. Scientific consensus is not, by itself, a scientific argument, and isn't part of the
scientific method; however, the content of the consensus may itself be based on both scientific arguments and the scientific method.
Consensus is normally achieved through communication at conferences, the process of publication, and
peer review. These lead to a situation where those within the discipline can often recognize such a consensus where it exists, but communicating that to outsiders can be difficult. On occasion, scientific institutes issue position statements intended to communicate a summary of the science from the "inside" to the "outside". In cases where there's little controversy regarding the subject under study, establishing what the consensus is can be quite straightforward. Scientific consensus may be invoked in popular or political debate on subjects that are controversial within the public sphere but which are not controversial within the scientific community, such as
evolution.
Philosophy
The issue of consensus is important in the
philosophy of science. The view that the goal of science is the creation of such a consensus holds that the scientist is a
skeptic using his or her analytical and
critical thinking faculties to evaluate all evidence presented before delivering an opinion. Unlike other forms of knowledge, scientific knowledge consists of messages that are consensible — that's they can be mutually understood so that they can be evaluated for agreement or dissent and have the possibility of becoming part of the consensus. Thus, consensibility is a prerequisite for consensuality.
There are always outliers, remaining advocates of earlier ideas which have been superseded, cliques or individuals with unique points of view or with new ideas which have not yet been thoroughly tested, and other
dissidents. Each of these groups can be quite forceful in pushing their points of view and often are. As science impinges on society, societal groups become advocates of outlying theories for policy purposes, not scientific ones, which can confuse scientific truth.
A final problem in understanding the value of a consensus is the tendency to exaggerate the number of times that a consensus has been overthrown by an outside theory. By its nature there are many more ideas that fail than those that become established. Since progress is almost always incremental, radically new ideas that become accepted are very rare and often years of stringent testing are required before they do so. There is a natural tendency to overestimate the value of radically new ideas. By their nature newspapers and magazines, looking for good stories do so, as do some of the best scientific publications such as Nature and Science.
Lack of substantial doubt
In its strongest form, the term is used to assert that on a given question scientists within a particular field of
science have reached an agreement of rational opinion without substantial doubt, through a process of
experimentation and
peer review (see
scientific method).
For example, in
physics there exists scientific consensus on
general relativity and
quantum mechanics.
Special relativity and quantum mechanics are unified in the framework of
quantum field theory (QFT). There exists scientific consensus that QFT is a very useful description, but it isn't a final theory. For example, it doesn't include
gravity. General relativity and quantum mechanics may be unified by
superstring theory but there's no consensus whether this candidate unifying theory is the correct description of reality.
Uncertainty and scientific consensus in policy making
In public policy debates, the assertion that there exists a consensus of scientists in a particular field is often used as an argument for the validity of a theory and as support for a course of action. Similarly arguments for a
lack of scientific consensus are often encouraged by sides who stand to gain from a more ambiguous policy.
For example, many people of various backgrounds (political, scientific, media, action groups, and so on) have argued that there's a
scientific consensus on the causes of global warming. The
historian of science Naomi Oreskes published an article in
Science reporting that a survey of the abstracts of 928 science articles published between 1993 and 2003 showed none which disagreed explicitly with the notion of
anthropogenic global warming. In an editorial published in the
Washington Post, Oreskes claimed that those who opposed these scientific findings are amplifying the normal range of scientific uncertainty about any facts into an appearance that there's a great scientific disagreement, or a lack of scientific consensus..
Many
creationist organizations have
falsely argued that there's considerable debate over the
theory of evolution, and used this to justify their public policy arguments that evolution not be considered the only possibility for education in scientific curriculum. Their argument isn't based on scientific methods but only on faith based biblical references. In this case their view doesn't measure up acceptable bilateral contention.
Opponents of these creationists, such as the late biologist
Stephen Jay Gould, have claimed that the creationists misunderstand the nature of the debate within the pertinent scientific community, stating that the debate with the scientific community isn't about whether "if" evolution occurred, but instead is about "how" it occurred. Again, in this instance "scientific consensus" is seen, if it exists, as mandating a certain form of public policy (for example, that there's no scientific basis for the teaching of alternatives to Darwinist theories of evolution in public schools), and disputing whether or not a consensus exists in the scientific community is one way of combating this mandate.
The inherent uncertainty in science, where theories are never
proven but can only be
disproven (see
falsifiability), poses a problem for politicians, policymakers, lawyers, and business professionals. Where scientific or philosophical questions can often languish in uncertainty for decades within their disciplinary settings, policymakers are faced with the problems of making sound decisions based on the currently available data, even if it's likely not a final form of the "truth". In this respect, going along with the "scientific consensus" of the day can prove dangerous in some situations: nothing looks worse on a record than making drastic decisions based on theories which later turned out to be false, such as the
compulsory sterilization of thousands of mentally ill patients in the US during the 1930s under the false notion that it would end mental illness. Certain domains, such as the approval of certain technologies for public consumption, can have vast and far-reaching political, economic, and human effects should things run awry of the predictions of scientists.
Additionally, because of the inherently uncertain aspect of scientific knowledge, it's easy for political opponents to emphasize the
constructed nature of facts employed, making the argument that the claim of "science" is just a way of justifying whatever opinion one wants to go with. As such, the domain of science and policy has been an area of constant controversy since at least the beginning of the twentieth century, but especially so in the period after
World War II.
How consensus can change over time
There are many philosophical and historical theories as to how scientific consensus changes over time. Because the history of scientific change is extremely complicated, and because there's a tendency to project "winners" and "losers" onto the past in relation to our
current scientific consensus, it's very difficult to come up with accurate and rigorous models for scientific change. This is made exceedingly difficult also in part because each of the various branches of science functions in somewhat different ways with different forms of evidence and experimental approaches.
Most models of scientific change rely on new data produced by scientific
experiment. The philosopher
Karl Popper proposed that since no amount of experiments could ever
prove a scientific theory, but a single experiment could
disprove one, all scientific progress should be based on a process of
falsification, where experiments are designed with the hope of finding empirical data that the current theory couldn't account for, indicating its falseness and the requirement for a new theory.
Among the most influential challengers of this approach was the historian
Thomas Kuhn, who argued instead that experimental data always provide some data which can't fit completely into a theory, and that falsification alone didn't result in scientific change or an undermining of scientific consensus. He proposed that scientific consensus worked in the form of "
paradigms", which were interconnected theories and underlying assumptions about the nature of the theory itself which connected various researchers in a given field. Kuhn argued that only after the accumulation of many "significant" anomalies would scientific consensus enter a period of "crisis". At this point, new theories would be sought out, and eventually one paradigm would triumph over the old one — a cycle of
paradigm shifts rather than a linear progression towards truth. Kuhn's model also emphasized more clearly the social and personal aspects of theory change, demonstrating through historical examples that scientific consensus was never truly a matter of pure logic or pure facts.
Lastly, some more radical philosophers, such as
Paul Feyerabend, have maintained that scientific consensus is purely idiosyncratic and maintains no relationship to any outside truth. These points of view, while provoking much discussion, have generally not caught on, even with philosophers.
» See: Theories and sociology of the history of science
Scientific consensus and the scientific minority
In a standard application of the psychological principle of
confirmation bias, scientific research which supports the existing scientific consensus is usually more favorably received than research which contradicts the existing consensus. In some cases, those who question the current paradigm are at times heavily criticized for their assessments. Research which questions a well supported scientific theory is usually more closely scrutinized in order to assess whether it's well researched and carefully documented. This caution and careful scrutiny is used to ensure that science is protected from a premature divergence away from ideas supported by extensive research and toward new ideas which have yet to stand the testing by extensive research. However, this often results in conflict between the supporters of new ideas and supporters of more dominant ideas, both in cases where the new idea is later accepted and in cases where it's later abandoned. (See:
List of minority-opinion scientific theories).
Thomas Kuhn in his 1962
book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions discussed this problem in detail., most scientists are deeply skeptical.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Scientific Consensus'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://scientific_consensus.totallyexplained.com">Scientific consensus Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
