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"scientific consensus" I am very troubled by this phrase -- it's almost an oxymoron. Science is not democratic, and scientists aren't anointed arbiters of fact

"scientific consensus" I am very troubled by this phrase -- it's almost an oxymoron. Science is not democratic, and scientists aren't anointed arbiters of facts. Anyone can be a scientist simply by following the scientific method and collecting data in good faith; and a lone outsider with new data can challenge 100 years of "consensus". Obviously they are subject to challenges themselves, or if it's unlikely enough they might reasonably be ignored (e.g. a known charlatan saying they observed cold fusion). Did this terminology start with the "scientific consensus" on anthropogenic climate change (which I do not dispute, by the way)? I think I understand why it was used in that debate, but I don't think it was a good precedent. Now it's being used to directly apply to policy ("growing scientific consensus on the failures of the global war on drugs"). Before long, it will be used directly in political debates to try to force some scientific organizations to choose a side. And then all credibility is lost. Researching policies that require deep analysis of scientific (or other) data should be left to think tanks or something similar.

kelnos 9y ago
While science is in theory "perfect", unfortunately the people doing the science are still just flawed, imperfect humans. Even scientists who have no malicious intent can still have their work influenced by unconscious biases if they aren't careful. Given that, I think "consensus" is a useful term. It suggests that a strong supermajority of scientists have findings that agree with something, and with that chorus of agreement, it's harder to oppose those claims by accusing all of those scientists to have flawed results. I think you can probably find a lot of science out there that supports criminalization of drugs, and showing that there's a "growing scientific consensus" on the failures of criminalization is useful to show that previous research on the subject has either been debunked or proved false by later observations. Because that's literally what's happening.
- graphitezepp 9y ago
  Yeah, scientific consensus is a valuable thing. It just means "oh like a lot of probably smart people who looked at this issue rigorously mostly agree" and that is pretty much as close to truth as we have.
- tertius 9y ago
  > Even scientists who have no malicious intent can still have their work influenced by unconscious biases if they aren't careful. There are more obvious things that influence scientists without malicious intent. - Money. - Internal politics. I.e. not wanting to go against major players or "consensus." - The need to publish or forego money.
avip 9y ago
Strict hard science is not applicable for vague questions s.a "should drugs usage be legal". We are not going to conduct a series of controlled experiments. We're left with a collection of statistical observations, polluted by various uncontrolled externals ("this is Portugal", "that is Netherlands"). The only sensible way to reconcile the different outcomes in a manner the mob can understand is using the annoying term "scientific consensus"
microcolonel 9y ago
Yeah, as much as I agree with the policy position, I detest the "scientific consensus" speak. It's exactly the slimy approach to engaging the public which has made something as straightforward as climate change controversial.
- majewsky 9y ago
  The thing that made climate change controversial is the interests (and deep pockets) of the fossil energy lobby. Science communication can be improved, but you can't reasonably blame it for this.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    I actually think they're one and the same. Al Gore is literally being paid by Al Jazeera, the state media for the world's largest oil exporter pretending to be a country. I suspect that the biggest influence big oil has had is in making overblown, unconvincing, scaremongering communications which ultimately make people more suspicious than convinced.
    - aianus 9y ago
      Al Jazeera is the state media of Qatar which exports natural gas, not oil.
- lerpa 9y ago
  > as much as I agree with the policy position So do I. But that is irrelevant. > I detest the "scientific consensus" speak Same here, specially when implying that health researchers talking not about their actual results but about the _opinions_ they have of what should be the law and what shouldn't, are in some way scientific. Research and policies are not the same things. . Otherwise next you'll see things like "Researchers find most animals kill each other mercilessly, so we should decriminalize murder."
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    > Otherwise next you'll see things like "Researchers find most animals kill each other mercilessly, so we should decriminalize murder." Yeah, a naturalistic fallacy will take something good (e.g. a firm and objective grasp of biology) and turn it into a crime against humanity (e.g. negative/mortal eugenics campaigns).
spaceseaman 9y ago
I don't know. I think the phrase still has a quite a bit of usefulness. The point is to communicate to the public that many people whose job it is to research such a thing agree. I also disagree that consensus has any implication with democracy. It's a word used for general agreement, and in my experience democracies are rarely in agreement. How else would you tell people that most scientists agree on a position? Also, even if a lone outsider challenged the new data, that's not something you communicate to the public yet. Policy and publicity would need to wait until consensus actually did occur because at that point, the legitimacy of the science would have been worked out. This terminology is ancient and has been used long before climate change debate.
- tertius 9y ago
  What is the margin of error for democracies? What is the margin of error for "scientific consensus"?
pjc50 9y ago
> think tanks I'm not sure what you think a think tank is, but they're basically either (a) PR organisations, especially the ones with opaque funding or (b) some guy with a letterhead and skill at getting articles published. They certainly aren't impartial in any way. I'd much prefer my policy research to be done by civil service bodies which might at least nominally be impartial. I don't think it's feasible to impose a boundary between science and politics. If scientists think that something is both true and important, then why should they not speak up about it? Especially if they believe that doing so will save lives.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  Because of the effect of politics on intellectual honesty. Once a debate triggers our "political" brain, it seems to scramble the kind of intellectual honesty science requires. An even more insiduous cousin of the maxim: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I think the use of the phrase: "scientific consensus" indicates to jeff (it does to me) that we are having that kind of a conversation, and its likely to be quickly misused to the point where it makes reaching a political/societal "consensus" even more difficult. I don't think it's possible to seperate science and politics either, but I think "Science" needs to be wary of speaking for science, instead of speaking as well informed and interested individuals. It's fine to speak for science on purely scientific matters. When it comes to policy, especially social policy like this, it's preferable if they don't push the boundary towards rhetorical cheating. For the record, I agree with this article and most others on the "scientific consensus" side.
  - jeffdavis 9y ago
    ""Science" needs to be wary of speaking for science, instead of speaking as well informed and interested individuals." Well said. "It's fine to speak for science on purely scientific matters." The thing about science is that one high-quality study is often all you need to have a lot of confidence. They don't need 100 experiments confirming the Higgs boson, they just needed one really good experiment. And bad studies can be summarily ignored for the purposes of fact finding. 100 bad studies are no better than one or zero. The only thing they tell you is an area that may be interesting to conduct a good study later. If there are a hundred high-quality studies saying one thing, and one high-quality study saying something else, then something very interesting is going on and everyone should pay close attention and get ready to learn something new. But this is very rare and is certainly not a situation where you want to inject politics. So the only time when it makes sense for science and politics to intersect is when you have one good study concluding something relevant to the policy decision, and no high-quality studies to the contrary. And in that case you only need to cite one study and be done with it -- you don't need to "speak for science". There is room to argue over the quality of experiments and studies, of course. And that's where the sparks should fly -- not over signatures on a report. If the results of one study are contended, it could go through some kind of extreme peer review that can re-analyze the results or question the data collection methods. The great thing about this is that laypersons will back out and wait, and the scientists and statisticians can argue in peace among their peers. When the smoke clears, then you can take those facts to the bank. This doesn't for scientific fields where study quality is a major problem (social sciences are hard and don't usually have nearly enough funding to produce quality studies -- or have funding from overly-interested parties). But in that case, you definitely should not lend undue weight to the claims by speaking for science.
amelius 9y ago
> "scientific consensus" > I am very troubled by this phrase -- it's almost an oxymoron. Yes, so if scientists do reach consensus, it must mean something special, and you better take note.
abtinf 9y ago
Anytime "scientific consensus" comes up, I think of the "Aliens Cause Global Warming" essay by Michael Crichton: http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Crichton2003.pdf http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers...
- wavefunction 9y ago
  Unfortunately Michael Crichton is an unreliable figure when it comes to science, especially climate change.
BearGoesChirp 9y ago
>Anyone can be a scientist simply by following the scientific method and collecting data in good faith; That's like saying anyone can be a classic car collector by buying classic cars. It ignores people who are missing certain prerequisites. Many people do not have the resources (namely money) to do so. Many scientific experiments have a large cost to produce, and cannot be done by the average person. Many do not have the time to reach the level of knowledge needed to apply the statistics correctly. And science is driven by consensus. It doesn't make it right, but it does make it science. If 85% of science think X, then that is what is presented as science. It may take a generation before the majority of scientist move on to Y and that becomes science. Thankfully the consensus changes faster than that in most cases. A lone outsider who is ignored won't change anything. The beauty is that scientists tend to look at the new data and give it fair weight, and respond accordingly. Even then most don't buy into it immediately but wait for replication. And I've found in some fields (namely soft sciences), things are far less driven by even new data, with many scientist making the data fit the theory (seems easier to do with research on people than research on inanimate matter/energy).
- ColanR 9y ago
  > If 85% of science think X, then that is what is presented as science. "Science" is a process [1], not consensus. It uses the scientific method, which is a "body of techniques" for investigation [2]. That is exactly what parent said - if you are "following the scientific method and collecting data in good faith" you are "doing science" - i.e, you are a scientist. [1] a "systematic enterprise" (wikipedia.org/wiki/Science) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method EDIT: bad formatting.

kelnos 9y ago

While science is in theory "perfect", unfortunately the people doing the science are still just flawed, imperfect humans. Even scientists who have no malicious intent can still have their work influenced by unconscious biases if they aren't careful. Given that, I think "consensus" is a useful term. It suggests that a strong supermajority of scientists have findings that agree with something, and with that chorus of agreement, it's harder to oppose those claims by accusing all of those scientists to have flawed results. I think you can probably find a lot of science out there that supports criminalization of drugs, and showing that there's a "growing scientific consensus" on the failures of criminalization is useful to show that previous research on the subject has either been debunked or proved false by later observations. Because that's literally what's happening.

graphitezepp 9y ago
Yeah, scientific consensus is a valuable thing. It just means "oh like a lot of probably smart people who looked at this issue rigorously mostly agree" and that is pretty much as close to truth as we have.
tertius 9y ago
> Even scientists who have no malicious intent can still have their work influenced by unconscious biases if they aren't careful. There are more obvious things that influence scientists without malicious intent. - Money. - Internal politics. I.e. not wanting to go against major players or "consensus." - The need to publish or forego money.

avip 9y ago

Strict hard science is not applicable for vague questions s.a "should drugs usage be legal". We are not going to conduct a series of controlled experiments. We're left with a collection of statistical observations, polluted by various uncontrolled externals ("this is Portugal", "that is Netherlands"). The only sensible way to reconcile the different outcomes in a manner the mob can understand is using the annoying term "scientific consensus"

microcolonel 9y ago

Yeah, as much as I agree with the policy position, I detest the "scientific consensus" speak. It's exactly the slimy approach to engaging the public which has made something as straightforward as climate change controversial.

majewsky 9y ago
The thing that made climate change controversial is the interests (and deep pockets) of the fossil energy lobby. Science communication can be improved, but you can't reasonably blame it for this.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  I actually think they're one and the same. Al Gore is literally being paid by Al Jazeera, the state media for the world's largest oil exporter pretending to be a country. I suspect that the biggest influence big oil has had is in making overblown, unconvincing, scaremongering communications which ultimately make people more suspicious than convinced.
  - aianus 9y ago
    Al Jazeera is the state media of Qatar which exports natural gas, not oil.
lerpa 9y ago
> as much as I agree with the policy position So do I. But that is irrelevant. > I detest the "scientific consensus" speak Same here, specially when implying that health researchers talking not about their actual results but about the _opinions_ they have of what should be the law and what shouldn't, are in some way scientific. Research and policies are not the same things. . Otherwise next you'll see things like "Researchers find most animals kill each other mercilessly, so we should decriminalize murder."
- microcolonel 9y ago
  > Otherwise next you'll see things like "Researchers find most animals kill each other mercilessly, so we should decriminalize murder." Yeah, a naturalistic fallacy will take something good (e.g. a firm and objective grasp of biology) and turn it into a crime against humanity (e.g. negative/mortal eugenics campaigns).

spaceseaman 9y ago

I don't know. I think the phrase still has a quite a bit of usefulness. The point is to communicate to the public that many people whose job it is to research such a thing agree. I also disagree that consensus has any implication with democracy. It's a word used for general agreement, and in my experience democracies are rarely in agreement. How else would you tell people that most scientists agree on a position? Also, even if a lone outsider challenged the new data, that's not something you communicate to the public yet. Policy and publicity would need to wait until consensus actually did occur because at that point, the legitimacy of the science would have been worked out. This terminology is ancient and has been used long before climate change debate.

tertius 9y ago
What is the margin of error for democracies? What is the margin of error for "scientific consensus"?

pjc50 9y ago

> think tanks I'm not sure what you think a think tank is, but they're basically either (a) PR organisations, especially the ones with opaque funding or (b) some guy with a letterhead and skill at getting articles published. They certainly aren't impartial in any way. I'd much prefer my policy research to be done by civil service bodies which might at least nominally be impartial. I don't think it's feasible to impose a boundary between science and politics. If scientists think that something is both true and important, then why should they not speak up about it? Especially if they believe that doing so will save lives.

dalbasal 9y ago
Because of the effect of politics on intellectual honesty. Once a debate triggers our "political" brain, it seems to scramble the kind of intellectual honesty science requires. An even more insiduous cousin of the maxim: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I think the use of the phrase: "scientific consensus" indicates to jeff (it does to me) that we are having that kind of a conversation, and its likely to be quickly misused to the point where it makes reaching a political/societal "consensus" even more difficult. I don't think it's possible to seperate science and politics either, but I think "Science" needs to be wary of speaking for science, instead of speaking as well informed and interested individuals. It's fine to speak for science on purely scientific matters. When it comes to policy, especially social policy like this, it's preferable if they don't push the boundary towards rhetorical cheating. For the record, I agree with this article and most others on the "scientific consensus" side.
- jeffdavis 9y ago
  ""Science" needs to be wary of speaking for science, instead of speaking as well informed and interested individuals." Well said. "It's fine to speak for science on purely scientific matters." The thing about science is that one high-quality study is often all you need to have a lot of confidence. They don't need 100 experiments confirming the Higgs boson, they just needed one really good experiment. And bad studies can be summarily ignored for the purposes of fact finding. 100 bad studies are no better than one or zero. The only thing they tell you is an area that may be interesting to conduct a good study later. If there are a hundred high-quality studies saying one thing, and one high-quality study saying something else, then something very interesting is going on and everyone should pay close attention and get ready to learn something new. But this is very rare and is certainly not a situation where you want to inject politics. So the only time when it makes sense for science and politics to intersect is when you have one good study concluding something relevant to the policy decision, and no high-quality studies to the contrary. And in that case you only need to cite one study and be done with it -- you don't need to "speak for science". There is room to argue over the quality of experiments and studies, of course. And that's where the sparks should fly -- not over signatures on a report. If the results of one study are contended, it could go through some kind of extreme peer review that can re-analyze the results or question the data collection methods. The great thing about this is that laypersons will back out and wait, and the scientists and statisticians can argue in peace among their peers. When the smoke clears, then you can take those facts to the bank. This doesn't for scientific fields where study quality is a major problem (social sciences are hard and don't usually have nearly enough funding to produce quality studies -- or have funding from overly-interested parties). But in that case, you definitely should not lend undue weight to the claims by speaking for science.

amelius 9y ago

> "scientific consensus" > I am very troubled by this phrase -- it's almost an oxymoron. Yes, so if scientists do reach consensus, it must mean something special, and you better take note.

abtinf 9y ago

Anytime "scientific consensus" comes up, I think of the "Aliens Cause Global Warming" essay by Michael Crichton: http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Crichton2003.pdf http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers...

wavefunction 9y ago
Unfortunately Michael Crichton is an unreliable figure when it comes to science, especially climate change.

BearGoesChirp 9y ago

>Anyone can be a scientist simply by following the scientific method and collecting data in good faith; That's like saying anyone can be a classic car collector by buying classic cars. It ignores people who are missing certain prerequisites. Many people do not have the resources (namely money) to do so. Many scientific experiments have a large cost to produce, and cannot be done by the average person. Many do not have the time to reach the level of knowledge needed to apply the statistics correctly. And science is driven by consensus. It doesn't make it right, but it does make it science. If 85% of science think X, then that is what is presented as science. It may take a generation before the majority of scientist move on to Y and that becomes science. Thankfully the consensus changes faster than that in most cases. A lone outsider who is ignored won't change anything. The beauty is that scientists tend to look at the new data and give it fair weight, and respond accordingly. Even then most don't buy into it immediately but wait for replication. And I've found in some fields (namely soft sciences), things are far less driven by even new data, with many scientist making the data fit the theory (seems easier to do with research on people than research on inanimate matter/energy).

ColanR 9y ago
> If 85% of science think X, then that is what is presented as science. "Science" is a process [1], not consensus. It uses the scientific method, which is a "body of techniques" for investigation [2]. That is exactly what parent said - if you are "following the scientific method and collecting data in good faith" you are "doing science" - i.e, you are a scientist. [1] a "systematic enterprise" (wikipedia.org/wiki/Science) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method EDIT: bad formatting.