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Science works on consensus, the consensus of experts. When the experts on a topic don't have consensus, we say the science is undecided. When they have consensu

Science works on consensus, the consensus of experts. When the experts on a topic don't have consensus, we say the science is undecided. When they have consensus, we call that science settled. And for the science to change under new evidence, again the consensus of experts is required, otherwise the new change remains on the fringe.

User23 5y ago
> Science works on consensus, the consensus of experts. This is scientistry, not science. Science works on observation and experiment. In a perfect world perhaps consensus would be established scientifically, but that’s observably at odds with the history of science.
- jltsiren 5y ago
  That's like saying that software engineering is about typing. Observations and experiments are low-level activities you perform while doing science. Actual science works on higher levels. Convincing yourself that your ideas are right is a low bar. The key part of doing science is convincing yourself that your ideas are wrong. It's about telling the difference between actually discovering something new and making mistakes in experiments and reasoning. If you fail to convince yourself, you ask others to convince you that your ideas are wrong. If they also fail, you are starting to build a consensus that maybe you have actually discovered something. Believing in something that contradicts the consensus is politics. Building a consensus among experts who are skeptical but open to new ideas is science.
  - User23 5y ago
    Thanks for the clear demonstration that the use of analogy is no substitute for reason. The problem is one of confusion. There are at least three distinct things that we call science. Primus, the social enterprise itself. This is where “consensus” applies. Secundus, the method for understanding the rules governing the system of the world. This is where what you call “low level” activities are. Tertius, the body of accepted knowledge that’s been ascertained. Unfortunately, this doesn’t necessarily follow from the scientific method. Sometimes it instead follows from the needs of the social enterprise of science, which we rather clumsily call politics. It’s only by clearly and distinctly considering these three concepts that we can avoid frankly intellectually crippling confusion.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
_3u10 5y ago
Nah, when the science is settled it becomes a law. Like the Laws of Thermodynamics. Those things take hundreds of years. We don’t even have a working model of climate change which is why they average out hundreds of them. The science on climate change is far from settled. It’s pretty easy to take any given climate change model and watch it give inaccurate predictions.
- driverdan 5y ago
  > when the science is settled it becomes a law That's not how it works for most of science. Most consensus ideas are theories because they are impossible to prove well enough to call them a law.
  - _3u10 5y ago
    Couldn’t have said it better myself. Climate change is an unproven theory, far from the certainty that the political side of science makes it out to be. For all intents and purposes until we have better modeling climate change is largely a political topic. People for the most part have a pet form of energy generation they want the world to switch to and use wildly inaccurate climate models to beat everyone who disagrees with them over the head with. See Germany and switching to oil and gas over climate friendly nuclear and trying to get gas added as a renewable form of energy and nuclear removed.
- Retric 5y ago
  Laws aren’t based on consensus or age as we have plenty of Laws that are known to be wrong and stuff gets called a law fairly early. F=MA fails really obviously at high velocity but the error doesn’t go away at low speed it just becomes small enough to be ignored. Even the most known Law of conservation of energy fails in expanding space time. The basic rule of thumb is can you write a useful equation? And for climate change it’s just too complex for that.
- dlivingston 5y ago
  > …when the science is settled it becomes a law. This is absolutely and completely wrong. “Hypothesis -> Theory -> Law” is not actually the scientific pipeline. Theories and laws not only can co-exist, but often do. From Wikipedia [0]: > Scientific theories explain why something happens, whereas scientific law describes what happens. An example of this is the theory of gravity [1], which contains laws of gravity [2]. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law [1]: https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/ESSAYS/Bekenstein/bekenstein.html https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/ESSAYS/Bekenstein/bekens... [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_law_of_universal_gravitation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_law_of_universal_gr...
nlitened 5y ago
How can the consensus ever change if we deplatform, defund, and ostracize all scientists (or would-be scientists) researching and publishing any evidence that contradicts consensus?
- ChrisLomont 5y ago
  We don't. We do that to people ignoring science that post things that demonstrably hurt people. Any scientist is welcome to publish science and have the truth of arguments win out. Science isn't done on Twitter or Facebook.
- owisd 5y ago
  How can the consensus change if only the side that can afford the most twitter ads get to put their position forward?
  - rhino369 5y ago
    Allowing one side to advertise doesn't mean the other side doesn't get to "put their position forward."
    - owisd 5y ago
      If, as you say, not advertising on twitter doesn't mean you don't get to put your position forward then nothing of value is being lost by the twitter policy change.
      - rhino369 5y ago
        I'm saying that allowing A to advertise on twitter doesn't prevent B from advertising on twitter.
        owisd 5y ago
        If one side has a financial incentive to push bad faith arguments, whereas the other side has no financial incentive or resources and is just interested in science for the sake of science, then by supporting having the debate via twitter ads you've created a system that locks out one side.
ssivark 5y ago
(Assuming the parent comment is normative/prescriptive rather than just descriptive) This is a dangerously wrong perspective. There are many beliefs that we consider laughably crazy today that were “settled” per the experts of the day. Remember “Eppur si muove”? It is impossible to establish who the “experts” are by the old truths — we need the new truths for that. To channel Max Planck, scientific revolutions happen not publication to publication but funeral to funeral as old experts die and people grow up with new truths.
- ChrisLomont 5y ago
  The number of bad and wrong ideas stopped by this format vastly outnumber the few examples you think this format impedes. The proper way to evaluate this system is not to cherry pick a few rare examples and claim it as the norm. The correct way is to take all inputs, true and false, and see the outcome. Then you compare this info to other systems that have been tried. And maybe propose new systems, but only after you understand the problems with previous systems that led to the current one so you don't simply repeat past errors.
mlindner 5y ago
> Science works on consensus No it doesn't. I can't believe people are even claiming this. Science has NOTHING to do with consensus. If evidence is produced that goes against a consensus then the consensus is wrong. Consensus has nothing to do with science. Consensus is a problem of humans that disrupts the scientific process.
- mrtnmcc 5y ago
  Worth remembering the scientific method relies on some sense of repeatable phenomena for idealized "experiment". Social science, medicine, astronomy, geology, earth science, each have their own axioms for what that means. (E.g., assume the universe is isotropic). I don't think each of these are as solid as the other. Climate science is certainly less testable than say particle physics. Not that we shouldn't work together as humans to model, understand and keep our (only) planet stable as best we can.. but "scientific consensus" is less meaningful in this field.. used as a political word to motivate people at the expense of more nuanced understanding. But like vaccines, it's probably better to act now before we understand it all.. (on the day before we go extinct).
- mithr 5y ago
  > If evidence is produced that goes against a consensus then the consensus is wrong To be more specific, then the consensus may be wrong. The bar to demonstrate that something is wrong and be taken seriously is meant to be higher than simply claiming one can produce evidence to the contrary. When such evidence is discovered, the idea is that one would present that evidence to peers, who would attempt to replicate the findings, and support them if they are able to do so, or otherwise publish their counter-findings in response. This is obviously more complicated in practice because we're dealing with humans and not ideals (and thus we have things like the replication crisis), but that is the theory of how we advance the body of knowledge that we derive from scientific theses and experiments. We do not advance it by claiming that evidence has been found and then leaving it at that, in a vacuum. So it's not exactly that science "works on consensus", in the sense that just a majority doesn't prove anything, but -- convincing, using evidence, the majority of the scientific community in your field, is certainly part of the process.
- 5y ago
modzu 5y ago
physics was settled by newton. any writing about those pesky quantum effects should have been banned
djbebs 5y ago
No it doesn't. Consensus is at best irrelevant to science, and if anything it's harmful because it reduces the search space for the truth.
- ChrisLomont 5y ago
  It also focuses questions and helps allocate resources to worthwhile areas to pursue. I doubt any modern science breakthroughs are done by someone who mastered none of the previous consensus to learn where to dig.
mrtnmcc 5y ago
Kuhn and Popper may have something to say about that.
kirykl 5y ago
Science works on empirical evidence. Consensus perhaps is important in testing that evidence is repeatable and true. But the basis is evidence.
nathanaldensr 5y ago
No, science works on skepticism.
timcavel 5y ago
edmcnulty101 5y ago
Labotomies won the Nobel prize supported by the consensus. Heliocentric theory and antiseptic theory was scoffed at by the mainstream. Consensus is merely a guide, there's no such thing as settled science. The reason is, we're studying an infinite universe with the limited technology and when that technology or that current mode of understanding changes, our entire understanding of the univ. changes.
belorn 5y ago
Let say someone want to advertise natural gas as an green energy source. What is the consensus among climate researcher on that, and what does EU politicians consensus say? Which authoritative sources should we pick here?
11thEarlOfMar 5y ago
Choose your experts carefully.

User23 5y ago

> Science works on consensus, the consensus of experts. This is scientistry, not science. Science works on observation and experiment. In a perfect world perhaps consensus would be established scientifically, but that’s observably at odds with the history of science.

jltsiren 5y ago
That's like saying that software engineering is about typing. Observations and experiments are low-level activities you perform while doing science. Actual science works on higher levels. Convincing yourself that your ideas are right is a low bar. The key part of doing science is convincing yourself that your ideas are wrong. It's about telling the difference between actually discovering something new and making mistakes in experiments and reasoning. If you fail to convince yourself, you ask others to convince you that your ideas are wrong. If they also fail, you are starting to build a consensus that maybe you have actually discovered something. Believing in something that contradicts the consensus is politics. Building a consensus among experts who are skeptical but open to new ideas is science.
- User23 5y ago
  Thanks for the clear demonstration that the use of analogy is no substitute for reason. The problem is one of confusion. There are at least three distinct things that we call science. Primus, the social enterprise itself. This is where “consensus” applies. Secundus, the method for understanding the rules governing the system of the world. This is where what you call “low level” activities are. Tertius, the body of accepted knowledge that’s been ascertained. Unfortunately, this doesn’t necessarily follow from the scientific method. Sometimes it instead follows from the needs of the social enterprise of science, which we rather clumsily call politics. It’s only by clearly and distinctly considering these three concepts that we can avoid frankly intellectually crippling confusion.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

_3u10 5y ago

Nah, when the science is settled it becomes a law. Like the Laws of Thermodynamics. Those things take hundreds of years. We don’t even have a working model of climate change which is why they average out hundreds of them. The science on climate change is far from settled. It’s pretty easy to take any given climate change model and watch it give inaccurate predictions.

driverdan 5y ago
> when the science is settled it becomes a law That's not how it works for most of science. Most consensus ideas are theories because they are impossible to prove well enough to call them a law.
- _3u10 5y ago
  Couldn’t have said it better myself. Climate change is an unproven theory, far from the certainty that the political side of science makes it out to be. For all intents and purposes until we have better modeling climate change is largely a political topic. People for the most part have a pet form of energy generation they want the world to switch to and use wildly inaccurate climate models to beat everyone who disagrees with them over the head with. See Germany and switching to oil and gas over climate friendly nuclear and trying to get gas added as a renewable form of energy and nuclear removed.
Retric 5y ago
Laws aren’t based on consensus or age as we have plenty of Laws that are known to be wrong and stuff gets called a law fairly early. F=MA fails really obviously at high velocity but the error doesn’t go away at low speed it just becomes small enough to be ignored. Even the most known Law of conservation of energy fails in expanding space time. The basic rule of thumb is can you write a useful equation? And for climate change it’s just too complex for that.
dlivingston 5y ago
> …when the science is settled it becomes a law. This is absolutely and completely wrong. “Hypothesis -> Theory -> Law” is not actually the scientific pipeline. Theories and laws not only can co-exist, but often do. From Wikipedia [0]: > Scientific theories explain why something happens, whereas scientific law describes what happens. An example of this is the theory of gravity [1], which contains laws of gravity [2]. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law [1]: https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/ESSAYS/Bekenstein/bekenstein.html https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/ESSAYS/Bekenstein/bekens... [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_law_of_universal_gravitation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_law_of_universal_gr...

nlitened 5y ago

How can the consensus ever change if we deplatform, defund, and ostracize all scientists (or would-be scientists) researching and publishing any evidence that contradicts consensus?

ChrisLomont 5y ago
We don't. We do that to people ignoring science that post things that demonstrably hurt people. Any scientist is welcome to publish science and have the truth of arguments win out. Science isn't done on Twitter or Facebook.
owisd 5y ago
How can the consensus change if only the side that can afford the most twitter ads get to put their position forward?
- rhino369 5y ago
  Allowing one side to advertise doesn't mean the other side doesn't get to "put their position forward."
  - owisd 5y ago
    If, as you say, not advertising on twitter doesn't mean you don't get to put your position forward then nothing of value is being lost by the twitter policy change.
    - rhino369 5y ago
      I'm saying that allowing A to advertise on twitter doesn't prevent B from advertising on twitter.
      - owisd 5y ago
        If one side has a financial incentive to push bad faith arguments, whereas the other side has no financial incentive or resources and is just interested in science for the sake of science, then by supporting having the debate via twitter ads you've created a system that locks out one side.

ssivark 5y ago

(Assuming the parent comment is normative/prescriptive rather than just descriptive) This is a dangerously wrong perspective. There are many beliefs that we consider laughably crazy today that were “settled” per the experts of the day. Remember “Eppur si muove”? It is impossible to establish who the “experts” are by the old truths — we need the new truths for that. To channel Max Planck, scientific revolutions happen not publication to publication but funeral to funeral as old experts die and people grow up with new truths.

ChrisLomont 5y ago
The number of bad and wrong ideas stopped by this format vastly outnumber the few examples you think this format impedes. The proper way to evaluate this system is not to cherry pick a few rare examples and claim it as the norm. The correct way is to take all inputs, true and false, and see the outcome. Then you compare this info to other systems that have been tried. And maybe propose new systems, but only after you understand the problems with previous systems that led to the current one so you don't simply repeat past errors.

mlindner 5y ago

> Science works on consensus No it doesn't. I can't believe people are even claiming this. Science has NOTHING to do with consensus. If evidence is produced that goes against a consensus then the consensus is wrong. Consensus has nothing to do with science. Consensus is a problem of humans that disrupts the scientific process.

mrtnmcc 5y ago
Worth remembering the scientific method relies on some sense of repeatable phenomena for idealized "experiment". Social science, medicine, astronomy, geology, earth science, each have their own axioms for what that means. (E.g., assume the universe is isotropic). I don't think each of these are as solid as the other. Climate science is certainly less testable than say particle physics. Not that we shouldn't work together as humans to model, understand and keep our (only) planet stable as best we can.. but "scientific consensus" is less meaningful in this field.. used as a political word to motivate people at the expense of more nuanced understanding. But like vaccines, it's probably better to act now before we understand it all.. (on the day before we go extinct).
mithr 5y ago
> If evidence is produced that goes against a consensus then the consensus is wrong To be more specific, then the consensus may be wrong. The bar to demonstrate that something is wrong and be taken seriously is meant to be higher than simply claiming one can produce evidence to the contrary. When such evidence is discovered, the idea is that one would present that evidence to peers, who would attempt to replicate the findings, and support them if they are able to do so, or otherwise publish their counter-findings in response. This is obviously more complicated in practice because we're dealing with humans and not ideals (and thus we have things like the replication crisis), but that is the theory of how we advance the body of knowledge that we derive from scientific theses and experiments. We do not advance it by claiming that evidence has been found and then leaving it at that, in a vacuum. So it's not exactly that science "works on consensus", in the sense that just a majority doesn't prove anything, but -- convincing, using evidence, the majority of the scientific community in your field, is certainly part of the process.
5y ago

modzu 5y ago

physics was settled by newton. any writing about those pesky quantum effects should have been banned

djbebs 5y ago

No it doesn't. Consensus is at best irrelevant to science, and if anything it's harmful because it reduces the search space for the truth.

ChrisLomont 5y ago
It also focuses questions and helps allocate resources to worthwhile areas to pursue. I doubt any modern science breakthroughs are done by someone who mastered none of the previous consensus to learn where to dig.

mrtnmcc 5y ago

Kuhn and Popper may have something to say about that.

kirykl 5y ago

Science works on empirical evidence. Consensus perhaps is important in testing that evidence is repeatable and true. But the basis is evidence.

nathanaldensr 5y ago

No, science works on skepticism.

timcavel 5y ago

edmcnulty101 5y ago

Labotomies won the Nobel prize supported by the consensus. Heliocentric theory and antiseptic theory was scoffed at by the mainstream. Consensus is merely a guide, there's no such thing as settled science. The reason is, we're studying an infinite universe with the limited technology and when that technology or that current mode of understanding changes, our entire understanding of the univ. changes.

belorn 5y ago

Let say someone want to advertise natural gas as an green energy source. What is the consensus among climate researcher on that, and what does EU politicians consensus say? Which authoritative sources should we pick here?

11thEarlOfMar 5y ago

Choose your experts carefully.