Michael Crichton is good at saying things that seem to make sense as long as you don’t try to think about them very hard. In this case, the main stupid thing he is doing is confusing the notion of “consensus” to make it seem like it is being proposed as part of the scientific process. I think everyone agrees that within science, it is important and useful to have people with a wide variety of different views…and it is even important to have some scientists stubbornly defending positions when it looks like the evidence is mounting against them.
Where the notion of “consensus” comes into play is when it is necessary for the greater public to understand what the current science is on a certain subject, e.g., because it has implications for public policy. What Crichton seems to want to do is to say that as long as there are a few scientists who disagree with the general consensus in the field, our choice should be to believe the science is unsettled and thus (e.g., in the case of climate change) not take any action until we are more sure because sometimes the consensus is wrong and the dissidents are correct. (He conveniently ignores the fact that this is far more the exception than the rule.) Of course, this is a recipe for paralysis…and it is in fact the recipe that is proposed by all entities fighting the spector of government regulation. As an internal memo from the tobacco companies once said (quoting from memory): “Doubt is our product.”
Tough question to answer. The only think you can do is read a variety of sources, even if you can’t dig thru the original scientific journals. The more you do it, the better you get at spotting faulty ananlysis. But don’t ever expect to be able to do this for every scientific field out there. You have to focus. Even scietists who are experts in their own fields can’t necessarily cut across disciplines to feret out the good stuff.
If only that were true. The fact is, in many cases, scientists who deviate from a consensus position can be subjected to vicious personal attacks, quite frequently from other scientists. Look at E.O. Wilson, who now enjoys something of a consensus. There was a time when he publically excoriated by his colleagues (including the esteemed Stephen Jay Gould), and had to legitimately fear physical assault from members of society at large who felt his ideas were tantamount to Naziism. If he had not been a tenured professor at Harvard, it’s not absurd to speculate his academic career would have ended with the publication of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. It would be wonderful to believe that a diversity of well-reasoned (if not always correct) ideas were always welcome and given a fair hearing, but there have been, and continue to be, significant deviations from this essentially mythical ideal. The formulation of the scientific method is almost perfect. As implemented by human beings, it can be an unjust and attrocious mess, depending on who is bucking a trend, and when they choose to strike out on their own.
I don’t see how your question is anything other than an attempt at diversion.
I will, however, give an example of where consensus was incorrect: Galileo. At the time, consensus was that the Earth was the centre of the universe. He showed that it is not, and sufferred.
Umm… no. You listen to a scientist put on the spot in a neutral interview. Where they’re citing facts, they will do so; where they’re not, they’re distinctly different.
This is, IMHO, a poor example. For one thing it was really before there WAS a codified scientific method, with peer review. They were basing their decisions not on the science but on other political factors.
Also, IIRC, Galileo didn’t suffer because of his scientific findings per se, but for other frictions with the church…and also the fact that the man was a bit of an ass. A GREAT man to be sure…but an ass none the less.
This is exactly what I was getting at. I should have let YOU write the OP. The thing is to be aware of, to the best of a laymans abilities, the things going on under the surface, and to realize that the more popular and more accepted view at any given time may not survive the rigors of review in the future. Its the beauty of science that its NOT a popularity contest, and that though a theory is very popular today or in the past, others will keep chipping away at it, and eventually the thing may crumble to dust and be replaced by a new theory. We, the laymen (well, me at least) have to then be skeptical, or at least not buy in to the point where we become fanatic about a theory to the exclusion of all else…less when that theory falls to new data or new experiments. We need to be flexable about these things.
I will say though that if by some (highly unlikely) chance Evolution is ever discredited and there is a proof that ID actually happened that my own world view will be hopelessly shattered. Good thing its about as likely as Bush getting elected as president of France, ehe?
Feel free…all excellent questions. Next time I’m going to write one of these I’ll email you and Loopydude and have you guys whip something up, ehe?
That’s not what he said. There is no question that a consensus may be incorrect, since the consensus is based on the best available information at the time. There was no widely held consensus than that Newton’s laws were correct - and that consensus changed rapidly with new information. Claims of consensus, however, are usually fairly accurate. An excellent example is the consensus for evolution, and IDers and creationists feeble attempts to make it look like there is no consensus by dredging up mechanical engineers and the like who are creationists.
I’d suspect that a false claim of consensus would get batted down quite quickly.
Quartz, no one is claiming that consensus is always correct. Clearly it is not. New ideas come, new data emerges. Science does not work off of proof that an idea is correct; it manages the ever present doubt and uncertainty. It remains open to the possibility, however small, that a current idea, even one accepted broadly, is wrong. It does not allow that small but finite doubt to paralyze it.
We are still left with how we develop our our conclusions on areas outside our expertise and ability to competently review: by believing authors like Crichton who have made careers of creating fictional horror stories of science done bad, or by the opinions of real experts in broad if not absolute agreement.
A complicating wrinkle is that no all conseses are of equal quality. To use the sad example of Wilson, many of his critics did not attack the soundness of his hypotheses directly (though there were, and are, perfectly reasonable criticisms of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology that are logical and evidence-based), but rather objected to the mere idea of human behavior having a more than the barest heritable component. Such dangerous notions would lead inevitably to the rebirth of Social Darwinism, and so forth. That old consensus was largely demolished on both political and evidential grounds, and now we’re left with a somewhat more nuanced and tolerant debate on the subject. The degree to which human behavior is “hard-wired” is far from settled, but at least it’s seen as a legitimate subject of evidence-based study.
In the case of the modern evolutionary synthesis, however, the rather devastatingly enormous body of evidence in support of the eminently cogent theory ought to give any sane person a degree of pause before they attempt to refute it. The consensus that it is the correct theory of the evolution of life on this planet is, I think, about as judicious as any widely-held opinion can be.
It’s all a matter of degree. Those who have serious problems with some of the more widely-held conclusions of evo. psych. have, I think, a reasonable cause to question, given the relatively tenuous nature of some of those conclusions. But the theory of evolution itself? I think it’s fair, at this point, to say “gimme a break”. Sure, anyone is allowed to say any damn fool thing they like, but some arguments can be adequately settled, I think. It isn’t hubris to consider some theoretical foundations solid enough that one can build upon them without serious concern.
Maybe time should be a factor then? If a theory has stood up (like Evolution) to over a century of testing and refinement, peer review and counter theories, I think its safe to say that, at a minimum, its pretty damn solid. Even to a layman. Of course time has another benifit (to the layman)…it allows for more explainations to be filtered down to us bottom feeders, and allows the theories to be more watered down and consumable to those not versed in all the various convoluted esoteric in’s and out’s.
Time might be an OK indicator, simply because it takes time to accumulate supporting data, but I think it’s the volume and quality of the data that helps build the consensus, no matter how long it takes to aquire it.
Actually, there was no scientific consensus regarding heliocentrism. As xtisme has already pointed out, science (as we know it today) was still in its infancy, so the criticisms of Galileo were not a “consensus” of scientists. In fact, there was no consensus regarding the Ptolemaic model (modified by Brahe, or not) vs the Copernican model among the people who were engaged in (what was becoming) science. The large majority view (which still did not amount to consensus) was held among learned philosophers deferring to Aristotle and a small but powerful minority of religious persons who attacked Galileo for what they perceived to be his intrusion into theology.
So, on multiple points, Galileo fails as an example of scientific consensus gone wrong.
So, do you happen to have an example of a claim by some group of scientists where there was not actually a consensus.
Let’s step back. The issue in question is how a person who is not schooled in a particular field of science can recognize which pronouncements from that field are legitimate. To the extent that there remains controversy in any field, the lay person is really at the mercy of whichever group within the field proposes arguments that resonate with that layperson.
There are, however, some aspects of most fields of science that are considered settled (barring new information). The way in which the lay person identifies those theories (or even facts) is to seek out information that indicates that there is a general consensus among experts in the field. To the extent that there is any significant opposition to a “settled” conclusion of any field, there is no consensus.
Holding up a fiction author as an expert whose opinion overrules organizations consisting of thousands of real scientists is a bad idea. But holding up Michael Crichton is a particularly bad idea, because he has always been militantly opposed to science, reason, logic, and the people who use those belief systems. In his novels, he portrays the vast majoirty of scientists, engineers, and business people as boring, stuffy losers, too caught up in their own arrogance to see the truth. His handful of “good” scientists are the rogues who challenge orthodoxy and battle the oppression of the scientific community. He always makes a big deal about how his heroes don’t fit in with the big organizations and institutions of the scientific world.
Now this is a fine romantic notion, if you’re trying to write best-selling fiction, or generally produce anything in the popular media. It’s a rather poor notion if you’re trying to find empirical truth. Dr. Atkins was a scientist who could be considered an outsider; he boldly challenged the consensus opinion that low-fat diets were the best path to weight loss. Unfortunately Atkins was wrong and the consensus was right. His ideas were popular with the mass media, who gave the public an incorrect conception of where the majority of professional nutrionists stood on the issue. But real scientific validation hasn’t happened.
Here’s the sad truth: the boring, stuff losers are usually right and the lovable outsiders who challenge the mighty are usually wrong. In other words, consensus has an outstanding track record. That’s the final answer to the question, “As a member of the public at large, non-expert about most things, how do I use expert opinion to formulate my opinions about areas outside my usual knowledge base?” If you take Crichton’s opinion that consensus means nothing, then you’ll never allow yourself to have an opinion about any scientific topic.
I think Crichton’s point is that, when something has been sufficiently proven (such as the boiling point of water at atmospheric pressure) there is no need to appeal to “the consensus”. The boiling point of water is something that anyone can prove for themselves, given the proper equipment. It would be ridiculous to say, “most scientist agree that the boiling point of water is 100 C”.
Yeah, but what about something like “Sufficiently massive stars collapse under their own gravity and become black holes, enormously curved regions of space-time surrounded by an event horizon, from which not even light can escape.”
There are very sober and credentialed people who claim “black holes” as such don’t exist (google “gravastar” or “dark energy star” some time). The consensus is, to put it kindly, that these alternate models of stellar collapse are wrong. So, is the purported existence of black holes, objects which we’ve never actually directly observed or probed (because thus far we bloody-well can’t), an example of “pernicious consensus science”? It’s certainly not as obvious to the untrained as water’s physical properties that they exist in the form the majority of physicists claim they do.
Can Handle the Truth: Well, it is clear that some things are more complicated than other things. And, yes, studying the earth’s climate system is a more complicated thing because…well…it’s a complicated system and furthermore it is not directly amenable to tabletop experiments [unless you have a really big table ].
So, that is part of the issue. However, the other part is simply that there are people around who have either have strong political or philosophical convictions or strong economic interests that cause them to strongly doubt the science of global warming. This is very similar to evolution…and in fact almost every tactic one hears deniers use in discussions about global warming has a close analog in debates about evolution.
I have little doubt that if there were strong political and economic interests that had a stake in quantum field theory being incorrect, you’d have tons of websites telling you how QFT is wrong and how the calculations often come up with embarrassing infinities that have to be massaged away … Not to mention all the jokes about Schrodinger’s cat!
If these “sober and credentialed” people have alternate theories that make sense and that fit the observed data, but are supressed or belittled just because they’re a minority opinion, then yes it is pernicious.
They’re certainly not suppressed. I imagine a few people think they’re crackpots, and the vast majority of the rest think they’re simply incorrect. So, now that we know there are alternative models besides the standard “black hole” we all hear about, what do we do with that information? How are mere mortals like ourselves to evaluate either position?
Scientists who hold out for pet theories long after the evidence has gone against them are ridiculed or pitied to a certain extent. It seems the end of Hoyle’s life was not very happy. The issue is not going against the consensus - it is going against the evidence.
Well then the profundity of his thought boils down to “Some issues have no one who has an alternative POV and no one bothers to say ‘absolute consensus’ then.” How it follows that anything else other than that is “pernicious” is only explainable by his total lack of understanding of how science really works. Consensus, as a dynamic ever-changing beast, is exactly how science works.
Black holes are a great example. There is consensus that black holes likely exist. The vast majority of those with the most knowledge believe it to be true. As non-experts, we’d be wise to bet with the consensus.
Consensus in this context almost implies that scientists are not holding on to their beliefs strongly. In the field of science experiments and new data are comtinuously being gatherered. Sometimes it changes everything, like the discovery of the background radiation in the universe that assisted the big bang theory.At this moment many scientists changed their views. It took evidence and a strong reasoning process to develop a working theory. to comvince the diehards.
The thing is to be aware of, to the best of a laymans abilities, the things going on under the surface, and to realize that the more popular and more accepted view at any given time may not survive the rigors of review in the future. Its the beauty of science that its NOT a popularity contest, and that though a theory is very popular today or in the past, others will keep chipping away at it, and eventually the thing may crumble to dust and be replaced by a new theory. We, the laymen (well, me at least) have to then be skeptical, or at least not buy in to the point where we become fanatic about a theory to the exclusion of all else…less when that theory falls to new data or new experiments. We need to be flexable about these things.
].