> there is an element of faith That's exactly my point. >if you take consensus to mean "a large majority like 66%+ portion of the scientific literature within

> there is an element of faith That's exactly my point. >if you take consensus to mean "a large majority like 66%+ portion of the scientific literature within the field(s) relevant to that specific instance" that becomes a lot more testable for an individual issue. Yeah we can say that for some specific issue like choosing what time of year to plant tomatoes, expert consensus is useful, but that doesn't generalize, which was also my point.