Prove consensus exists among scientists

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No.
Studies provide data, which can be used to undermine or support theories; for example, there is near 100% consistency that pure water freezes at 0 degrees centigrade, but that is not the same as 'near 100% consensus' in the idea that H2O molecules become locked into a rigid crystal lattice by hydrogen bonds as their movement slows due to dropping temperatures.

edit: not sure about the quote boxing there. Apologies to whomever I have mixed up.

And THERE is a Research Proposal:

"A Preliminary Classification of Crackpots in the Life Sciences in Big Ten Universities in Light of Zbigniewski's Work on Oxford Dons"

Possibly too big a project - needs a team.

A nice example.

The whole thing about any science is that what we have - whether or not we have consensus - is what hasn't been falsified YET. And it is the life work of every scientist to kill a little bit of that YET.

You know, there are respectable scientists who are also theists.

I also know a stridently atheist chemist with a background not only in chemistry (mostly organic and physical) but electrical engineering as well - who has told me more than once that the sheer number of really convenient biochemical reactions found everywhere on this planet goes a long way toward him accepting the concept that maybe nature on this planet was seeded by an outside intelligence.

By which he means a perfectly corporeal being with a level of technology which is indistinguishable from magic by a bunch of apes like us.

And not that he believes this, but that if it were to suddenly return and explain things, there's a lot of evidence on hand to support the proposition.

As for anthropocentric climate change, I've never met a scientist in any field even vaguely related to the study of physical forces and energy who, after looking at available data, did not seem to agree that our climate is on the up-swing, and very few who didn't think we were making a meaningful difference.

But many of them hasten to relate anecdotes like, the last time our climate was where some predict it will be in a few hundred years, ice core samples indicate that the amount of co2 in the atmosphere was around 50x what we have now.

Science does not progress by consensus.

For half a century, the consensus was that humans had 48 chromosomes. Then in 1955, someone ignored the consensus and actually counted, and found that we actually had 46 chromosomes. The consensus was wrong.

Consensus is the enemy of scientific progress.

But you actually have to challenge the consensus with additional science, not wishes. Grumbling about consensus doesn't make every fringe view correct. Most fringe views are there because they belong there. Because they are obviously wrong.

And the pyramid of scientific consensus is what allows today's specializations to exist at all. They don't dismantle the whole thing each morning and rebuild it to taste each evening. Ever heard the phrase, "standing on the shoulders of giants"? It's praise for earlier established work that led them to something new.

You have to support the consensus with actual science, too. Too many of today's scientific consensus views are supported only by politics.


Yes. The "giants" are individuals, though, not consensus views. That's why it's not "standing on the shoulders of the masses".

But the point is they are often praising accepted work, that may be widely accepted, that allowed them to reach something new. It's not a zero sum death match versus the whole of human knowledge. Consensus can be helpful and it can be correct.




You of course don't like consensus because you are a denialist. You think you are brighter than researchers at MIT, NASA, NAS, etc. That's fine. Think whatever you like.

The funny thing is, in Newton's famous quote regarding standing on the shoulders of giants, he was in fact arguing that his "seeing farther" allowed him to overturn the consensus view held by Hooke and others.

Ok, well, google is fun.

But that doesnt change how the term is used today or address any of my points. Believe whatever you like.

Chemists and physicists who believe things like that are much more plentiful than geneticists or biologists.

*shrug* geneticists and biologists work more in investigating how the building blocks fit together than studying how the building blocks themselves work.

And keep in mind i said seeded, not designed. It's glaringly obvious to anyone with even a passing interest in genetics that there is no design.

General design versus experiental details topic

I think the problem with creationists versus scientists involves a large picture instead of looking at individual parts. Apples and oranges. Science does not have a history of developing grand designs, only theories, which change when experiments or other bits of evidence are discovered.

Creationists and theists are concerned with the larger picture, and tend to discount details that do not fit. Evidence for evolution would be details that do not fit the Grand design. I am not sure there will ever be consensus in this realm. could there ever be? Is this desireable? Again, apples and oranges.

If creationists/religionists are comfortable with their consensus and this turns their crank, then so be it. But Science does not operate this way. Many voices are needed, and the quest is ongoing.

Like, for instance, what binds atoms together, how the universe formed, how the variation we see today in hundreds of thousands of species came to be over thousands of millenia? That kinda thing?

If scientists have a history of "developing" ideas about the nature of reality as indicated by THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OR ALL AVAILABLE DATA, I should say they are the best source of truth.


This is why I despair for the state of the educational system.

The only time the consensus issue is bandied about is when the Creationists try to discredit the Theory of Evolution.

There has never been unanimity in any scientific theory. There are always folks on the fringe who bring up troublesome divergences between the theory and observation. There are others who point out that scientific theories (i.e. physical theories) are not complete. There are many phenomena which are not predicted by current physical theories. However during a relatively "calm phase" of science there is much agreement on the theories and the evidence that supports them. If you examine Kuhn's thesis it is only when lots of troublesome divergences between theory and observation crop up (like at the end of the 19th century) that things crumble a bit and new theories are proposed which are at first opposed then later accepted by the younger scientists. Old theories are rarely overthrown in the entirety. It is the older generation that supports them which dies out.

It took a few dozen years after Boltzman for atoms to be generally accepted and a few decades for aether to be dropped as a viable hypothesis.


ruveyn

Eh, what i was referring to was the way that biological systems show a lot of trial and error and random chance when you get down to the nuts and bolts of how they work.

Like a watch with three times as many gears as it needs and several of them not even turning, it doesn't look as though it was designed in a deterministic way toward a specific end result.