Science by consensus

The Earth is round. There is a consensus among scientists that this is the case. Am I being had? Is the world truly flat?

Damn!

Crichttons science is many times just goofy. he should not be calling kettles black. Sure science is right or wrong, but its unusual for only one person to be handed a special revelation. All scientists do their work by perching on the shoulders of those whove gone before.
with no Rosalynd Franklin , there would have been no Watson or Crick. withoutt sir Bragg, there woruld ave been no Rosalind Franklin, If there were no Frances Lauey there would be no sir Bragg. If there were no Paaul Groth, ttere would be no optical propertties of xls, and so on and so on.

In general terms I think he's got a valid point. NickFun makes light of the world being round but at one point the concensus was that is was flat. It took one person to stand up and say "It's not so!" before people were willing to go back and look at the science again.

We have the current debate on public policy towards gays and one side claims that science is on their side in claiming that being gay is the result of social influences. Another side pipes in claiming that science proves being gay is the result of genetics. Both sides are trying to influence public policy by trying to gain a concensus yet, from what science I've seen, there is no conclusive answer either way and a 3rd position in the debate is trying to use that muddiness to claim that the science proves that both factors are involved.

All 3 of these positions can't be right but all 3 claim to have a measure of concensus, so, from their POV, the matter is settled and their view should win out. *shrugs*

cold fusion was te work of a single team, consensus became the reason we spend little ttime on it.Maybe his use of consensus is mere irony but work neeeds validation. We dont laugh at many of the hidden geniuses any more.

Wheter we like it or not , peer review can help keep ttings honest even.
Alfred Wegner posed continental drift, itt waas an observation without any proof. We didnt have proof until WWII use of sub hunting magnetometry started noting tthhat the ocean bottom was full of magnetic "stripes" The cause of these stripes was that magma cooled and had frozen into its iron minerals the magnetic declination of the rocks at te time of their formation. then we started to discover that, no matter where we go in an oceaan basin, the oldeest rocks wee see are Jurassic.
all these facts were put togetther in a Penrose symposium in 1967 in which a mecanism called PLATE TECTONICS emerged. The participants all became contributors in the discoveries.

Sometimes science reaches some discovery by a sisngle scientist working alone .
So Crichton, by putting down consensus and peer review, shows a certain ignorance for how many thhings actually happen

I read Crichton's words very differently than you do apparently. I don't think he is disparaging the idea of discovery and validation leading to concensus at all. In fact his words that "What is relevant is reproducible results." implies that he believes that validation is entirely necessary.

I read his words to criticize the exact opposite - where there is a concensus and people make decisions without applying science or only applying enough science to support their foregone conclusion.

fishin, I read consensus to be full agreement , which , in science is achieved by repeatability and discovery.
One of thhe resons I dont like Crichtons writing is his attempts to sound profound when he isnt. The fact that he agrees withh repeatability or validation should be a non starter, thats why I questioned were hhes coming from.

The only thing that I can bring to mind that approximates a "consensus " as you mentioned would be the weeight loss DOCTORS who get ipsidixitistic withh each others wok , and it turns out that most of them are hucksters.

But is that what Crichton means by the use of consensus? In business management classes the idea of consensus is merely that the majority is "satisfied" (neither happy nor unhappy with). It doesn't require that everyone (or anyone for that matter!) be in full agreement.

Is he speaking of discovery followed by repeatability and then forming consensus as you are looking at it or is he lamenting the idea that if you start with consensus, discovery is hindered?



If you use the dictionary definition of "general agreement" for consensus there are plenty of areas where groups have formed one concensus or another about various sciences. There is a consensus that global warming is happening but there is significant disagreement over it's causes for example. The nature of "being gay" as I mentioned earlier is another.

Crichton out of his depth
An author slamming scientists? I guess everyone has an opinion.

Concensus is a key player in fields where we are not able to create "results that are verifiable by reference to the real world." Not everything can be proven via experiment. Relativity is a good example. When it was proposed, it could not be proven. Eventually, its ability to explain observed phenomena and advances in science that allowed some of it to be tested produced consensus that it was correct. Evolution is another really good one. Good luck actually proving evolution. But as a theory, it explains a lot of observations in the world. Can it be proven with verifiable results in the real world? On higher order animals? Not unless you have a really cool experiment and a few millenia. None the less, the scientific community has consensed that this is the best theory at present. Doesn't mean it is right, only that it is the best we have. If another theory comes up, the community can debate it and if it can win enough converts, it will be in text books one day. A good example of that was the death of the dinosaurs debate. A few decades ago, texts said the dinos died due to climate change over a long period. Along came this meteorite theory. Over the period of a couple of decades, the it won the debate. Ask any six year old what killed the dinosaurs and they will tell you a meteorite strike.

I guess until we can seed a world with dinos and hit it with a big rock, Crichton will say that is rubbish.

In general, I like Michael Crichton. I think he's a good writer and a smart guy, but I think he's making a sloppy argument with his statements on "concensus science".

I think what is annoying him is the invlovement of scientists in the politics of making legislation, especially when it comes to Global Warming (which is the backdrop of his comments in this article).

My intepretation of his comments is that he does not want a few scientists stepping forward and speaking for "all of science" when it comes to issues like Global Warming. He prefers for science to make itself known through repeatable evidence and to let the chips fall where they may. Most of which I agree with.

However, the reason I posted this article is because it is being used by creationist groups to attack scientific standards which are supported by a "majority" of scientists. The majority is equated to the concensus, and then Crichton's comments are used to undermine the idea that "science agrees on something".

Farmerman, I anticipate that you will begin to see this argument used in Creation/ID pushes whenever we try to define the limits of a science class. Right now, we say that what should be taught in science class is the mainstream, agreed upon, science of the day. But if this is labeled as "consensus science", and equated with the political push for global warming legislation, then the waters of valid science will be increasingly muddied for those people on school boards who have to defend their decisions.

Hopefully, most people know that nobody can be an expert on everything. It is not wrong to rely on the consensus of experts, no matter what the subject.

good point. Phase III of the Creationists /ID ers is "well here is this controversy that has all science taking sides. Let us teach the controversy"

chrichtons Jurassic Park had a major series of flaws.
1 the beasts werent Jurassic but CRetaceous

2 DNA has degraded after about 20 to 30 K years and amber isnt a sealant its been chemically altered

3 arbitrarily doing gene splicing in a place that hasnt been mapped could lead to T Rex with slime not parthenogenic species. There needed to be a back story there that showed thhey even thought about it cuz they only stuck frog DNA into places that were missing and they didnt know which genes they were

4 Biggest one Amber from that area is EOcene not Juraassic

I dont like his style either its like R Winchester. Is he a Brit? im being petulant I know, hell, I never question Stephen King , but Crichton started off in Med and Biochem

He also wrote 'Congo' - now that was a pile of dino droppings.


He trained as an MD, but has never practiced (doesn't like icky medical procedures). He took to writing instead, also described as a 'computer expert' (whatever that means). The only really useful 'work' he's ever done is as "the Creator and Executive Producer of the television series ER".

To get back to topic I'd say that his training as a doctor would make him a little leary of the 'big breakthrough'. In medicine you don't take big leaps into the unknown for fear of killing the patient or being sued if you don't. Peer review is pretty big important and reputations and egos just as big as any other branch of science. Personally I would recommend he stick to making TV and writing crap fiction.

CONGO, was that his?


oy

Granted his books are a bit far fetched, but his commentary is going to cause us heartburn once the creationists start to use it.

The argument is tricky to debate. He is saying that Conscensus should not be used to determine correct science, citing breakaway theories like Alvarez meteor strikes as examples of singular divergence from the majority which proved to be true. And yet, peer review is a conscensus driven process.

The truth is that new theories are not considered correct until a new conscensus agrees with them, but at first blush, the transitions between old and new science seem to show problems with conscensus.

The opinons of the mainstream (consensus?) are almost correct most of the time in the hard sciences and engineering. Ten other mechanisms are at work besides concensus. We could reduce consensus and increase free speech and access to the forum/media/lawmakers/legal system. That would likely improve results. Enhancing any of the other mechanisms is likely to worsen results. ie More power to Michael Critchton, to the science adviser of GW Bush, to college presidents, to college professors, to editors of peer journels (there may be more than ten!) Neil

I am a bit dismayed when scientists and engineers express confidence in mainstream opinions. Better to regard them as a working hypothesis and be prepared to change gears when new evidence suggests a better explanation. This is especially true in the soft sciences, which likely have nothing exactly correct, and much that is badly flawed. Neil

Hi Neil, can you give examples of what you call "soft sciences" and "hard sciences". Thanks.

Hard science = physics except smaller than a proton or larger than our galaxy, most of chemistry, algebra, calculus.
Things like ecconomics, history, current events, art, socialism, ET visiting Earth, paranormal, religion, politics, monetary system, government, justice, bureaucracy, psychology, biology, medicine often spill over into soft science. I had not given it much thought until you asked, so I am receptive to rebuttal. Neil